Should We Clone Extinct Animals?

I think you are vastly underestimating the inter-connectedness of the ecosystem. Living things are like one vast jigsaw puzzle, a tightly woven network of energy exchange linking every species to every other. Removing one species is like throwing a stone into a pond, it has ripple effects that move across a wide range of other living things, their ability to exist, and their physical form and their inherited behavior. You couldn't remove a top species like a Mammoth without it also removing or permanently changing the existence of countless other species directly or indirectly connected to them. Add to that the thousands of species changes that have occurred since then, most of which will have been undocumented, and what you have today is an ecosystem which wont have the capacity to go back, even if we knew what we were trying to change it back into. It's not the case that you could simply put the Mammoths back and that by itself would restore the ecosystem or their niche back to what it was ten thousand years ago. Too much has happened since then. I gave two examples: the earthworm, which is not a native species and was introduced to North America in the 1600's by Virginia tobacco farmers. Now they are ubiquitous across nearly the entire continent. Can you imagine what the flora would be like without earthworms aerating the soil? Neither can I. The other example I gave was the honeybee, which is also not a native species and now pollinates countless domesticated and undomesticated plants everywhere. We simply don't know how the eco-system changes that these two species alone have caused might affect the niche of an animal that hasn't been seen around here for ten thousand years, but the odds are overwhelming that the changes have been profound. Could the Mammoths adapt? And if they did, what would happen to the native species that now live here? Even the ones that were around back then have changed since, evolved to adapt to new conditions. Could they re-adapt if the Mammoths came back? Introducing a completely new species would have profound and unpredictable consequences for the species that now exist within the eco-system as it is. And then you have to multiply all that by every invasive species and extinguished species since mankind has been interacting with nature in the last ten thousand years. And you want to put all that back to the way it was? Not going to happen, my friend.

Then there is the point I raised that, even if we knew what to do, we wouldn't do it, because all that land is being used for agriculture, so there isn't any room for free ranging species like the Mammoth, or the Buffalo for that matter. Where would all those people go? They couldn't live side by side, either- Elephants eat a lot, and in Africa we see that their descendants eat domesticated crops just fine. Once they started eating the corn and whatnot, they would be seen as pests and removed. Romantic as it may seem, it's just an impractical idea.

The tell me what can we do. Because there literally is no other option left!!!

There are solutions. But you don't seem to give a crap about the ecosystem and the huge implications that such measures would cause. In fact, some species get extinct due to the introduction of "alien" species.

And these are living species. I can't imagine the damage that would be caused from an extinct species being cloned and introduced into the wild.

edited 2nd May '15 8:23:46 PM by Quag15

On the subject of cloning dinosaurs, it can't be done anyway. DNA more than 800 000 years old is, at least from what I've read, unusable.

Depends on when it went extinct. There's a difference between, say, cloning the mammoth, which died out 50 000 years ago, and cloning the Tasmanian Tiger, which died out 70 years ago. The former is probably a bad idea (at least outside of zoos), the latter, not so much (reintroducing it could be much like reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone and its environs, bringing back a key predator in order to help alleviate the need for human management of herbivore populations).

edited 2nd May '15 9:12:24 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

The woolly mammoth went extinct on the mainland 10,000 years ago, and on their last stronghold on Wrangel Island a mere 5,000 years ago.

"The tell me what can we do. Because there literally is no other option left!!!"

To do what? I dont know what your goal is.

To keep Earth running.

And 50000 years isn't too far back. Every species alive today was alive back then. If we were talking about 400000 years, that is indeed too far back.

edited 3rd May '15 6:27:29 AM by Bk-notburgerking

Earth will continue running.

Whether it does so with humanity still on it is up to debate. But we haven't even caused enough devastation to equal the asteroid that ended the Cretaceous.

Earth will continue to run, regardless of bringing back extinct species or not.

But, if you really want to keep Earth going, in your own view, then it's best to do the way Ambar said - by only resurrecting recently extinct species like the Tasmanian Tiger and which are less likely to tamper with the present ecosystem.

Bringing back species that are long gone are a bad case of ultra-Nostalgia Filter mixed with the usual human need to interfere with nature, even with the best intentions in mind.

Species come and go, some by human interference, some by non-human factors. Let them go gracefully.

A bit 'd

edited 3rd May '15 6:41:29 AM by Quag15

I suspect that BK would agree with the point that this song is poking holes in:

Because, as stated above, if you brought these animals back, you couldn't release them into the wild. Then what else could you do except keep them contained?

edited 3rd May '15 7:11:34 AM by TotemicHero

Since they don't appear to have been posted here before, I thought I'd post some TED links on de-extinction, including some projects that are currently underway.

Thought this one might be of interest. Will put up more on specific projects in another post (since you can apparently only post one functioning vid at a time).

EDIT: Also thought I'd provide this link to a de-extinction website. You can see for yourself some species that are under consideration, and whether they meet the criteria for being resurrected. For those who don't click the link, passenger pigeons are rated as excellent candidates, while a dinosaur couldn't be brought back even if we wanted to (DNA is too old).

edited 3rd May '15 8:59:31 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I agree that only recently extinct species should be cloned, but you don't seem to realize your lines are too recent. A species hat went extinct 10000 or even 50000 years ago is a recently extinct species, since that is new enough to be considered modern (every species alive today was alive then)

As long as it went extinct because of humans (which puts the cutoff date at 50000 years ago) I'm fine. So mammoths are OK, wooly rhinos are not.

edited 3rd May '15 9:32:52 AM by Bk-notburgerking

Say we bring back sabre-toothed cats (extinct ~11 000 years ago). What do we do with them? Where do we put them? We have no idea about what the consequences of introducing a long-extinct apex predator back into the wild might be, but they'll probably be bad.

It isn't an invasive species or a long-extinct one. It's a species that went extinct recently (11000 years is recent in biological terms), and one that would still be here if not for us. A repatriation would causes changes, but not damages. It would be akin to he return of wolves to Yellowstone.

I guarantee they would be killed due to the new value of sabre tooths.

edited 3rd May '15 9:41:14 AM by Quag15

To those who complain that extinct species would wreak havoc:

Would you consider the decline in coyote numbers by the reintroduction of wolves environmental damage? Because those are the types of changes that would happen with any reintroduction or resurrection.

You yourself say changes happen and use that as your argument yet you think these change are bad? Isn't this hypocrisy?

edited 3rd May '15 9:56:53 AM by Bk-notburgerking

Any species that is extinct for a few centuries (say) and is being brought back is per definition a invasive species *now*

The environment moved on. Their niches have probably be taken over by other species expanding into it, or moving fully into it. By reintroducing it you are creating evolutionary pressure which will result in *new* circumstances, not some older on.

You *cannot* reset this stuff. Its basic evolutionary theory.

And your example with the coyotes is exactly that. One species (the coyotes) getting pressured out of their environmental niche by another (the wolves). What if by reintroducing one extinct species (and let us just ignore for a moment of how difficult it would be to wilder out a lab grown population with no example-setting adults) we drive another to extinction? Will we clone that one too?

That sounds like getting a snake to kill a mouse, getting a mungo to kill the snake, etc...

And my argument basically is that what you are proposing there is a defined natural state and by applying extinct species like freaking computer patches we can return to it instead of only creating new natural states. IF it should be done it should be done very carefully and deliberate.

edited 3rd May '15 10:02:00 AM by 3of4

So you are willing to deny the right of existence just so you can maintain the status quo no matter how bad it is.

Coyotes took over in the first place because we wiped out the wolves. That was the way it was until we changed it. That isn't normal. Likewise sabretooths causing other populations to adapt or change is normal, and not destruction at all.

edited 3rd May '15 10:32:36 AM by Bk-notburgerking

Well, extinction has kinda seen to that "right" being revoked.

Only applies for natural extinctions, which still means mammoths, sabretooth cats, passenger pigeons, etc have a rout to exist.

For some reason, a small edit became an extra post. See below for what should be here.

edited 3rd May '15 10:43:37 AM by Euodiachloris

Say you bring the animal's physical existence back. The problem with it, though, is that humans are not the only animals to pass along knacks in a way that basically equates to culture.

How the hell do we even know how the extinct animals behaved culturally or how that impacted the environment of their day? What if that cannot be replicated and they adjust to the new environmental reality by never developing an analogue culture of one like their extinct twins had?

Okay. Lets get a thing straight. There is no difference between "natural" and "human caused" extinctions.

We are a natural cause. Just as if one population of birds move to another island might drive another population of birds to extinction by pressuring them out of their niche, we might cause the extinction of species by our actions.

We are part of nature. We just basically have the Game-Breaker Evolutionary Power called "Sapience".

There is no "unjust" form of extinction just because *we* were involved. There is not big bad Santa Claus esque list of "Naughty" species who went extinct because it was their point to die out. The Environment changed and they failed to adapt. No matter *why* it changed.

That is *normal*, that is *natural*

We are not *not* part of nature.

Doesn't mean we should't be smart about it and do all we can to not self-destruct ourselves and our planet. But the idea that we humans are by our very nature un-natural is just, with all due respect, some neo-luddite bantha poodoo.

edited 3rd May '15 10:43:57 AM by 3of4

As the ecosystem is concerned, there is no such thing as a "right" to existence. Nature does not now, nor has it ever cared about preserving species. That's a human thing.

We do not possess the power to scorch the Earth bare of life. To salt it so nothing can ever grow again. Even the climate changes we've introduced, at worst, will make the planet uninhabitable for us. And life will go on.

Because life goes on. Species die out, new species rise, and life goes on. Some day, that may happen to us, and if humans become the last species driven to extinction by humans, I hope nobody clones us back either, because the world will have changed by the time anything has the potential to do so. And life will go on.

Sapience is overrated. The written language is our Game-Breaker. It allows us to retain knowledge from one generation to another. The fundamental difference between humans and other intelligent species like, say, dolphins is that I can learn things I never discovered, because someone who lived ten thousand years ago is still able to teach me. All I have to do is build on what has already been learned before.

edited 3rd May '15 10:47:55 AM by TobiasDrake

To clarify, I don't mean resetting to Pleistocene conditions, I mean setting it to a "what could have been if humans didn't cause the sixth mass extinction". The climate would be different, but most of the species would still thrive.

That can be taught. I can see where that's coming from, but it isn't an insurmountable problem.

edited 3rd May '15 11:45:25 AM by Bk-notburgerking