TigerCloning

BeaverWise writes "Looks like puss and boots is coming back. The last known Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, died in captivity in 1936, but a team of Australian biologists believes the animal's extinction may simply be a 70-year hiccup. DNA from a Tasmanian tiger has been found, and cloning is under way."

Comments

If you can clone an extinct animal...

[Panamon777]

...to what extent do you repopulate the wild? Do you produce three or four for display in zoos, or do you reproduce millions of them (a la the Passenger Pigeon) to put them back into nature at the levels they once were?

This does, of course, assume that the cloning works perfectly. If it does, it'll have a significant impact on the Endangered Species list - don't worry about killing off endangered animals, because "they" can always make more! It might do more harm than good in that respect.

Evan

Tasmanian Perspective

[Basalisk]

I live in Tasmania, and so I feel this is quite close to home. When White Tasmanians came here, there was a thriving population of Tasmanian Tigers, or Native Wolves as they were called back then. It was thought that there population could cope with the amount of hunting that was going on. However by the late 1890s, They were becoming scarce. They weren't as easy to find. The last of the species died in Hobart Zoo in 1936. It was thought that the Thylacine was extinct, as no confirmed sightings have occurred since then. There are many unconfirmed sightings every year. Some people think that there is still a small remainant colony in some parts of Tasmania, mainly the SW World Heritage Area because of it's remoteness. That part of Tassie is still very wild.
The Thylacine would probably benefit from being ressurected. If there is still a wild group, this may help to boost their numbers. I think the tiger should be brought back, not just because it is an extinct animal, or possibly endangered (unlikely tho), but because it represents a group of mammals (I think is) unique to Tasmania, The Carnivorous Marsupials. Most carnivorous marsupials that developed on mainland Australia were squeezed out by the dingo, a close relative of the dog. The dingo did not reach Tasmania and as such its CM populations were left undisturbed. The Tasmanian Devil is also a CM. However the thylacine was the only active hunter. I just hope that enough genetic diversity can be found among the 'samples' to provide a stable population.

Re:Is this the right thing to do?

[Mike Connell]

> It's the way things work, and fighting it is only self-congratulatory nonsense.

Not meaning to be rude, but: Utter nonsense.

"Survival Of The Fittest" isn't some great plan - it's a description of a process. You seem to be saying that we should just lie back and take whatever comes; after all, if something becomes extinct then it just wasn't fit enough, and it's somehow right that it should be dead! What if we nuked half of the planet? Oh, "Survival Of The Fittest", those creatures weren't fit enough to survive, and we shouldn't try to save them...

If you really want to base your view on "Survival Of The Fittest" as a big unbreakable rule, look at it this way. That tiger has proven to *be* fit even after it become extinct. By being an interesting creature, it is fitter than others that we might bring back. Another example: furry seals get more protection than slimy eels. Why? Because they are *fitter* (cuter).

best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Breeding population

[Reziac]

Firstoff, animal breeding is my professional field, and after 31 years I think I have a clue:

Someone says: "They make 50 copies of each and breed the males with the females. The children of these parents will actually be genetic siblings. You don't want to interbreed siblings for well-known reasons."

You don't know what you're talking about. Firstoff, in animal husbandry "interbreed" means "crossbreed within the same general type". Frex, a crossbred dog would be say a Malemute and a Labrador Retriever (from two different breed groups entirely) and an interbred would be a Lab and a Golden Retriever (from two similar breeds, but still not a purebred).

Second, what you meant, to wit "inbreeding", does ***NOT*** IN ITSELF ***CREATE*** problems, contrary to popular perception. All inbreeding does is *concentrate the genes you already have*. If they're bad you get worse results. If they're good, you get better results. If you want to find out exactly what genes are really present in your breeding stock, inbreeding will display both the results of homozygous recessives (such as most colours other than black) and the results of homozygous dominance (such as better muscling in beef cattle) much more quickly -- in one or 2 generations, with no GUESSWORK required. This applies to both positive and negative traits. The sooner you know what genes you have in your herd, the sooner you can breed for OR against that trait.

Nearly all commercial livestock species have been intensively inbred for over 100 years, because inbreeding FROM SOUND DEFECT-FREE STOCK produces consistent, predictable, uniformly positive results. MOST animals in the wild inbreed to some extent, because they don't have any "moral" objections (they will cheerfully breed their siblings, in fact the tendency is to *want* to breed within animals that smell the same, ie. are closely related), and because generally there is not a lot of movement between population territories.

The notion that inbreeding is automatically BAD comes from the fact that in animals with a LOT of genetic defects in the gene pool, such as humans, ANY time you double up on a set of their genes, chances are you've also doubled up on something Bad. The average human carries an average of 25 to 75 genes for LETHAL defects. The average dog carries for one or two. Beef cattle generally carry NONE. Wild animals, per observational evidence, tend to carry FEW or NO lethal defects -- because unlike with humans who have access to medical treatment, in the wild natural selection does its job: An animal with a defect doesn't survive long enough to reproduce; therefore defective genes tend to eliminate themselves.

I'd say I was sorry about the long rant, but I hear these ignorant statements all the time and I get sick of it. I could draw an equally-valid analogy to the effect that the linux community is inbred and therefore defective.