Should We Clone Extinct Animals?

While it's true that human caused extinction isn't necessarily "unnatural" it sounds like a lot of people in this thread are taking that to too far an extreme, like we shouldn't question or undo human caused extinction because that's how evolution works. A lot of animals are going extinct for reasons that are absurdly preventable like being harvested for the exotic pet trade. Being apathetic to that sort of thing sets a really nasty precedent that will fuck us over in the long run.

Also, although an ecosystem will eventually reach a point where, after a species is gone long enough, it will change to the point where reintroducing it won't make any sense, it takes a long time for that to happen and a lot of species went extinct very recently. There is big difference between reintroducing a species that's left 10 years ago and reintroducing a species that left 1,000 years ago. (Like, seriously who's arguing to reintroduce saber-tooth tigers?)

Yes, humans are a natural part of our ecosystem, but what makes us unique is that we can understand how are actions can effect the ecosystem and adjust our behavior accordingly.

Sabretooths do need to be reintroduced since humans were responsible (indirectly) for their extinction. But I suggest we wait until we bring back their food supply (which we exterminated).

IMO it takes over a million years before things change so far that bringing something back is going to end in disaster (note that the cutoff line I chose is 20 times shorter than this). Otherwise, even with changes nothing is going to end in catastrophe. Life is flexible. It can change back to fit the original conditions if it has changed before.

edited 3rd May '15 11:48:32 AM by Bk-notburgerking

Change in these cases of evolution can only go forward, not backwards.

Just out of curiosity. What exactly is your scientific background in terms of biology? Since you claim a problem is not insurmountable, I am just wondering.

edited 3rd May '15 12:03:11 PM by 3of4

Just to clarify my personal position on this, I concur with the pagetopper. Saying "human-caused extinctions are natural, and we should nothing about them" is just a bizarre position to me. Leaving aside the question of if things have the "right" to survive, do we really want to live in a less diverse world where it's just us and the livestock? That strikes me as a planet I'd rather not live on.

It's also strange to me that people will be all for doing everything we can to preserve species that are currently in danger of going extinct, but will balk at the idea of resurrecting one that has only recently gone extinct. I think that if we can save a species, we should, and if cloning tech processes to the point where we can resurrect the dead (or increase genetic diversity in the near-dead, which is a related topic) that we should do it.

That said, I'm not for bringing back everything that has ever died. We've paved over too much of North America to bring back mammoths or mastodons, or the large predators that fed on them, like the sabretooth cats. In fact, sabretooth cats would likely have gone extinct even without human assistance—they filled a very specific niche (preying on megafauna) and any disruption to that would have spelled their doom (this is also, by the way, why I'm not a fan of panda conservation. Even without human interference, that's a niche species that would be highly vulnerable to extinction).

My preference is for using cloning to a) introduce greater diversity in at-risk populations, and b) bringing back a few, key species, who can more or less slip back into the roles they used to fill, before people shoved them out.

Here, for instance are two projects I can get behind:

I am by no means saying we shouldn't do anything. I am just saying that treating human caused extinctions as "unnatural" is an artificial and arbitrary distinction.

And if we can bring a species back (which again, is a lot more difficult than just cloning it) we should do it *provided* it does no further harm to the environmental system.

Bringing back one species only to wipe out another seems nonsensical to me so I'm agreeing with a) and b) there with you.

I am basically not arguing against bringing back species. I am arguing against the mindset that we must/should bring them back because we wiped them out in some grand apologizing gesture or to re-establish a no longer extant environment that can in no possibly way work.

edited 3rd May '15 12:50:11 PM by 3of4

In regards to "the world currently has no place for extinct animals brought back to life," what about dodos? Can they survive in this day and age?

Possibly. The reason the Dodo died out is that it only existed on one Island (making it a small population) and that made it simply so that there were not enough Dodo's to survive to really integrate the "Humans find us tasty" lesson into their instincts, as well as the problem of macaques preying on Dodo eggs.

Assuming we clone them, and we properly wilder them out (again: *not* easy) we could adjust that by creating more than one population (and bigger ones) and making them a bit more paranoid of two-legs?

edited 3rd May '15 12:56:41 PM by 3of4

Sabretooths were specialists for sure, but without us the big game would be still here, and the cats would also be here.

Speaking of specialists...I am also against panda conservation, but for for the fact it's not a keystone species (not a predator, not a giant herbivore, eats a species thats elf-regulates), not because it's specialized.

edited 3rd May '15 12:56:54 PM by Bk-notburgerking

One question I would ask you: define "further harm to the environmental system." As someone mentioned previously, the reintroduction of wolves in much of the USA, caused coyote populations to crash. It also reduced deer populations. But neither coyote nor deer are in any danger of going extinct (both are species of "least concern"); rather their numbers have simply returned to what they were when the wolves were present in the first place. It also cut down on the need for people to cull the deer population, because the wolves were now doing it for us. To me, that sounds like a very successful reintroduction, but I'm sure you could find somebody who would complain about it.

As for human driven extinctions being "natural" my take on it is this—since we first started building cities, people have done everything we can to separate ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom. We took the few species we liked (our livestock and our pets) and tried to wall ourselves off. We don't, as a group, consider ourselves part of the natural world, and I think that matters when discussing our impact on it.

Perhaps more importantly, though, we're the only species who can really control our impact on our fellow species. If an animal goes extinct because it couldn't survive competition from similar animals, there's not much point in bringing it back; it'll just die out again. An animal that was killed off by us, conversely, has a shot if resurrected, since we can choose to modify our behaviour so that history doesn't repeat.

Another video discussing pros and cons of de-extinction:

edited 3rd May '15 1:01:45 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Wait, macaques ate Dodo eggs?

Exactly. Only problem with your argument is that more species qualify for that than you think-almost all of the species that net extinct in the Ice Age qualify. After all they coexisted with all surviving species except one-ourselves.

At this point it's pretty clear that with the exception of the Eurasian species (and even that excludes the mammoth), they all went extinct due to humans, so they will survive and not wreak the environment if reintroduced.

As you said, if the population of a species declines due to a species wiped out by humans returning to life, that's not a bad thing.

EDIT: That's exactly the same principle as wolves decimating coyotes and deer. It's normal. And I did say that before we reintroduce sabretooths we need to reintroduce their prey.

I do agree that Australia needs a native predator, but the thylacine's only the tip of the iceberg. The marsupial lion, two reptilian predators and even an omnivorous kangaroo are also in the "wiped out by humans (albeit much earlier by Aborigines) and we're suffering because they're missing" camp.

edited 3rd May '15 1:05:08 PM by Bk-notburgerking

Here's the thing though—we'd have to resurrect that entire environment to give them a shot, which would in turn require altering much of the habitat that is left. To bring back sabretooth cats, for instance, we'd need to first bring back the megafauna, then bring them back. That's long, complicated, and would very likely have a negative impact on the wolves, bears, deer, etc, that have been living in their old habitats for thousands of years now.

In contrast, since the extinction of the thylacine (Tasmanian wolf/tiger) there has been no top predator in Tasmania, besides ourselves. Bringing it back is a far easier proposition, and far less likely to have a negative impact on other species. In fact, it would likely have a positive impact, by returning an apex predator, and cutting down on the need for human management of animal populations (at least according to what I've read; if somebody from Tasmania wants to correct me, I'm all ears).

We build cities. So does ants. We domesticate animals. So do ants.

Doesn't matter if humans "consider" themselves part of the nature or not. Fact is, we are *part* of it, just as ants, bee's and whatever else that runs around.

Yup. Eggs, full of protein. Very nutrient.

edited 3rd May '15 1:04:25 PM by 3of4

Personally, I'd like to see a reconstitution of our major corral reefs. Many reefs, in conjunction with wetlands, act as a natural barrier against natural disasters like floods and hurricanes. Destroying those natural barriers is what contributes to events like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I can't say I particularly agree with that analogy. If I want to, I can go my entire life without ever encountering a wild animal, without ever running into anything but people, pets, and livestock. Ants can't say the same thing.

That's beside the point, though. The difference between us and other animals is that we have considerably more control over our actions. There would be no point, for instance, in bringing back any of the marsupials that arrived in South America prior to it joining up with North America. Competition from placental mammals is what killed them, and we're not going to shoot all the placental mammals to restore that ecosystem. Conversely, something like the passenger pigeon, which went extinct because of the commercial bird harvest, has a chance, since we can choose not to do that anymore.

Humans may be part of the natural world, but for the purposes of this particular conversation, there is a difference between extinctions caused by us, and extinctions caused by other factors.

No argument there.

edited 3rd May '15 1:12:32 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Who says that? A drone might live its entire life inside the ant nest only waiting to have sex. Sounds like a Sitcom to me?

And we have now more knowledge and power about it. We only really learned about the last century about what our actions have in consequences on the environment. A human tribe domesticating wolves into dogs (and being domesticated by cats in turn) doesn't have that knowledge.

And I do not disagree with you on the fact that human caused extinction is different in terms from other forms of extinction. I just disagree on the idea that human caused extinction is "unnatural" or not part of some imaginary natural order.

edited 3rd May '15 1:16:33 PM by 3of4

I think when I step on said nest and kill them all, that drone can be safely said to have encountered another animal. Nevertheless we're getting into semantics, and semantics that don't particularly matter for this debate.

We can control, to a degree, the human factor in extinctions. We cannot control, in any real way, other factors in extinctions. Therefore, on the topic of de-extinction, it is important to distinguish between extinctions caused by humans, and extinctions caused by other factors.

"And we have now more knowledge and power about it. We only really learned about the last century about what our actions have in consequences on the environment. A human tribe domesticating wolves into dogs (and being domesticated by cats in turn) doesn't have that knowledge."

I'm not quite sure what your point here is. You're not wrong, but I fail to see how it effects the conversation, since we're discussing what we can do now and in the future, as cloning, and other technologies, become more effective.

edited 3rd May '15 1:15:42 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Yes, but remember that a lot of specie people believe went extinct naturally had actually been wiped out by anthropogenic causes.

I think we are talking a bit past each other. I am mainly disagreeing on Bk's definition on human caused extinction being somehow unnatural and thus all the animal species we wiped out thus have a "right" to be brought back by us to fix the planet in some vaguely and undefined way.

I agree with you that bringing back some species might be of value, especially if bringing them back poses no harm (carrier pidgeon) or may even be beneficiary.

I am just disagreeing on the idea of doing it to restore some imaginary natural "normal" state from which we humans "deviated" by not being part of nature somehow.

Anthropogenic causes are natural causes.

edited 3rd May '15 1:20:18 PM by 3of4

I think we may be. Let's assume we understand each other, and move on now, since I don't think we have a major cause of disagreement.

One concept in the Hank Greely talk that I posted that I find interesting is his mentioning of how resurrecting an extinct animal could, in some cases be used as a pressure point to help clean up environmental disasters. I can see it, at least in some cases. "We have the technology to bring this fish back. We're just waiting on you to clean up its habitat".

You want to clone back an extinct species? Convince people they make good eats. We spend millions of dollars stocking lakes with Walleye, Lake Trout, Basses etc. where they would not naturally maintain a self-sustainable population because people like to fish for them.

On the more general topic of preventing extinction / species re-introduction. There's no intrinsic right to exist...nature does not care how many species go extinct. We humans care (or should care) because existing ecosystems perform important and vital ecosystem functions for us and losing too many species degrades those functions and lower our quality of life.

edited 3rd May '15 1:45:33 PM by nightwyrm_zero

Watching this is reminding me of this song.

"Clone back" or "de-extinct" always gets me as a misnomer, though. At best, what we can do is cultivate a new hybrid using germ line DNA of an extinct species — and introduce it to an unsuspecting ecosystem. And, it'll be that: a hybrid. We suck at mitochondrial revival and a lot of the other epigenetic extras you need to actually revive a species. So, consider it what is actually is: extreme back-crossing (and a little genetic shuffling).

Worse, all this "but, they'd be around if it wasn't for us: we're uniquely bad!" hand-wringing is a lot of bull. Snowball Earth? Likely caused by photosynthesis becoming a thing. That's a hell of a lot of plant-based geological shaping... And, only one ecample of it.

"Bringing back" what we messed up? Is just as likely to go pear-shaped as dropping rabbits in the wrong place if we overdo it. <_< We're pretty awful at judging knock-on effects, even now we sort of care about them. And, that's us in a nutshell.

We still have instincts and unconscious processing that goes back to before we ever banged rocks or sticks together to refine our grips enough to get really creative. We aren't ever removed from "nature", thanks to our underlying biology.

So, yes: if a hybrid of an older model is feasible and useful, bring it back. If it isn't useful and causes environmental devastation, well, we just fucked up an introduction. Again.

edited 3rd May '15 11:49:56 PM by Euodiachloris

Isn't that what they're doing with the Quagga?