Is Extinction Only Temporary?

Logic Bomb writes: "A group of researchers at a privately-owned Massachusetts company are trying out an experiment that could help solve some of earth's problems with endangered species. An article from the Washington Post details their project to create a cloned Asian Guar using a good ol' American cow as a surrogate mother. The new guar, 'Noah,' is due to be born next month -- in other words, the project is a success. The company sees great possibilities for earth's wildlife, because as long as an appropriate surrogate mother can be found -- of the same or another species -- there is hope for any endangered animal. The next project is to bring a species of Spanish mountain goat back from extinction(!). Giant Pandas are on the schedule too."

Comments

Re:While we're bringing back things from extinctio

[FallLine]

I agree 100% on the keyboard thing. But how about:

Techies at computer stores that actually know anything.

Competent and friendly technical support lines.

"Manly" products that might actually hurt you without any warning labels. As opposed to the watered down, idiotproof, disclaimer'ed products of today.

News programs on TV that actually have _some_ worth.

Decent seats on the airlines.

The unapologetic hiring of attractive waitresses and such.

.... ;)

All together now...

[the_tsi]

God creates dinosaurs;
God destroys dinosaurs;
God creates man;
Man destroys God;
Man creates dinosaurs;
Dinosaurs destroy man.
...
Woman inherits the Earth.

while interesting ...

[jetpack]

... this is largely crap. Not that it doesnt work, but the point is more that so many species become extinct every year, we can hardly keep track of them, little less keep up with reproducing them. Not to mention that this doesnt cover all the plant life that becomes extinct.

This is nteresting, and in some way good news, but this is hardly a good reason to stop worrying about destroying natural resources.

What about genetic diversity?

[c=sixty4]

I don't think anything like this is feasible, for the simple reason that a healthy species *needs* genetic variation to survive.

Imagine the inbreeding problems when an entire population is basically copies from one or a few individuals!

There is also the question of whether the ecosystems have adapted to being without the extinct species for so long, that reintroducing that species will have the the same potential for messing up the ecosystem as introducing an alien species.

Re:What about genetic diversity?

[AndrewTaylor]

There are extant species which have no genetic variation - the entire population is a clone. If you'd prefer a mamalian example, the limited gneteic variation of the Cheetah is well known - but people often forget that until recently it was very successful with a huge range across Africa and Asia - one of the most widespead of all mammals. Andrew Taylor

"in other words, the project is a success..."

[stefanlasiewski]

No it's not. The project isn't a success until the organism is born and lives to an age where it can breed and pass it's genes on.

I understand that the goal of this project was simply to birth one extinct animal out of a common animal, but if the almost-extinct-critter doesn't make it to breeding age, then what's the point?

We're getting closer to "Total Control"

[Crimplene Prakman]

As a race, we have pushed further and further along a path away from nature. There are many - for want of a better word - "zealots" who claim to be "for nature" etc. Maybe they are right. Maybe that guy in the article claiming that guars should grow up in guar jungles, surrounded by guar trees and guar babies, maybe he's right. But then he can't see the wood for the trees.

So, thousands and thousands of years ago some clever homonid decided that a stick was better at braining things than his fist. That was against nature, no?

Soon after that, another clever homonid found that rubbing sticks together, or banging a rock off another rock, could start fire, making dead things easier and tastier to eat. Was not that also against nature?

And so on. Man (meant in the non-sexist way :-) has spent all his time since then developing new and better ways to use his surroundings. We have McDonalds, Pepsi, Nike, Ford, etc., all different ways to do the same things we've been doing since before we were we - eating, drinking, getting from place to place. Except now we do it in style.

We have been farming for many thousands of years. Is that not against nature?

Time perhaps for some new-age philosopher to step forth from the ranks and announce the radical thought that maybe man was right to develop the stick. Maybe man was right to develop the wheel, even. And fire. And clothing. And multi-storey homes. And alternative modes of transport. At the rate we're going, heck even another place to live would be handy, as we're apparently ruining this planet as a habitat. But the point is we've had some power over nature for thousands of years, and no-one has drawn the line for us yet. Why stop now?

/prak
--
We may be human, but we're still animals.

Nothing new here

[jheinen]

They've been using surrogate mothers for endangered species for a long time. It goes back at least to 1983, when scientists used a common Eland antelope as a surrogate for the rare Bongo antelope. In 1989 they used a common housecat as a surrogate for the endangered Indian Desert Cat. Cloning has been around for awhile. Cloning endangered and extinct species and then using surrogates isn't exactly a breakthrough idea.

-Vercingetorix

Re:Nothing new here

[Mateorabi]

But those weren't cloning I don't think. Those were 'only' endangerd species not extinct ones. I believe that they simply used artoficial insemination. No cloning or anything. And the surogate was so close to the real thing to make things much easier.

Re:Nothing new here

[startled]

This is, in fact, new. This has never been done: "Bessie's gaur, named Noah and due to be born next month, was cloned from a single skin cell taken from a dead gaur".

It may seem like an obvious extension of cloning and surrogates, but it's not nearly that simple. They've been trying to get this sort of thing quite some time. One issue with dead animals is how well their DNA has been preserved-- that's a big issue with cloning the wooly mammoth.

The coolest new possibility the article mentioned at the end was this: Even if that cloning effort is successful, it will be impossible to re-create a breeding population of bucardos, because cells have been preserved from just one sex. That means a mate will have to be created.... The ACT team hopes to gain permission from Spanish authorities to use recently developed molecular techniques to give some of the preserved bucardo cells a male chromosome taken from a related goat.

Extinction Permanent? Yes and No

[fm6]

This is not a new issue. Ever since DNA was discovered, it's been obvious that as long as you had DNA from a species, you could re-create individuals from that species. You might have to wait a long time for the necessary technology, of course.

But is recreating individuals the same as preserving the species? Absolutely not.

A species doesn't exist in isolation. It exists as part of a larger natural community. ("Ecosystem" is a hot-button word, so I won't use it.) It preys, and is preyed upon, it has symbiotic and parasitic relationships ... in short, it has thousands of relationships with the rest of the world, most of which science simply doesn't understand.

Consider the Aurochs. There's no shortage of Aurochs DNA -- you ingest some every time you visit McDonald's. There have even been attempts to create "new" Aurochs by backbreeding from their domestic descendants, the cows. But even if you could create a "real" Aurochs, you'd have nothing but a scientific curiousity that can't survive without ongoing human maintenance. That all you'll have until somebody also re-creates the Aurochs natural environment. That's not going to happen. Even if we had the motivation and the resources (and we can't even supply that for existing environments) we don't know enough about the forests of Bronze-age Europe to recreate them.

A more modern example is the chimp. Unlikely to go extinct, even without fancy DNA techniques. They're too popular in zoos and labs. But the environment needed by an authentic wild chimp is more or less gone already, and I doubt if it will be fully understood before it is gone completely.

There's a poignant description of "technically non-extinct" animals in Bruce Sterling's latest (and best) Distraction&a mp;l t;/a>

__________

Do we really want to save animals from extinction?

[Skim123]

Extinction weeds out those species that can't adapt to the current environment. Why should we worry about saving unfit species? Where the hell are we gonna keep them? Preserves? Zoos? Scientific labs? Folks, their species are dying for a reason, because they can't adapt to the changing environment (most likely the encroachment of man). In any case, let the fit live, and let the unfit die. It's seemed to work just fine that way for hundreds of millions of years before man was around...

human surrogates

[konstant]

We have neanderthal DNA extracted form ancient bones. Anybody want to be the mom of a slope-headed baby?


-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!

But what's the point?

[RevAaron]

The reason (most) of these species are extinct is a loss of habitat caused by "civilization" moving in and changing it, whether to take resources or to build houses or businesses. In most cases of extintions caused by such a situation, the native habitat of these plants and animals are still in the state they're in when the species went extinct.

So, what am I trying to say? With no habitat to go back to, to repopulate, what's the point of bringing them back? Just to say we can do it? Putting them in a non-native habit will simply change that environment, possibly bringing other species to extintion. Put them in a reserve or zoo? Completely artificial- they would be serving the purpose for which they evolved, so why bother?

While we're bringing back things from extinction..

[Mr. Neutron]

Here are some suggestions for what they should bring back:

Desktop environments that don't require a PIII 800 to run smoothly.

Websites that aren't full of tables, frames, and layers that take two minutes to render.

Newsgroups that aren't full of illiterates, flames, and spam.

Those elegant, sturdy, indestructable IBM keyboards that you could spill coffee on and they would still work.

/. polls that are interesting and enlightening, and actually tell us something about the current readership.

JennyCam, back when Jenny was naked all the time.

Local BBSes, back when they were cool and had real geeks on them.

New Star Trek series that don't suck.

That's about all that I can think of now. Anyone care to add to the list?

--
"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"

Habitat Timesharing

[victim]

Great! Now we can destroy most of the remaining habitat for commercially nonviable species and timeshare it. Say something like...

• 2010-2040: gazelle, lions, elephants
  
• 2040-2070: wildebeast, leopards, rhinos
  
• 2070-2100: gnus, hyenas, buffalo
  
• 2100-2130: repeat...

I'm sure we can make it a big event, the changing of the beasts. Maybe switch over a different ecosystem every four years, sell tickets to the extermination of the previous tenant species and the release of the new creatures.