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Coming Back Soon... The Tasmanian Tiger?
adoll writes: "Melbourne's The Age is reporting that DNA has been extracted from a 110 year old Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) bone. Scientists are now wondering if genes can be implanted into eggs of an existing species and born to surrogate mothers (numbat and Tasmanian devil are mentioned as possible hosts). The last tiger died in Hobart, Tasmania on September 9, 1936. It was believed the tigers were hunted to extinction (CD: Thems was good eatin) on Tasmania, but unconfirmed sighting have persisted to this day".
One? It's great to bring back an extinct species, but it kinda sucks if there's only one of them.
Dyolf Knip
OK, they implant the genes into a new cell, and hope it turns into the critter. However, that's utterly ignoring the mitochondrial DNA, which also makes the animal unique. Unless they have that, *and* remove all the mitochondrial DNA from the new cell, what they'll get is an erzatz animal, one that may or may not be close enough to the original to give the desired results.
:(
This is the same reason why, even though frozen Wooly Mammoths can be found in Siberia, they have yet to make a new living mammoth. Jurassic Park totally ignored this whole point, which, to me, made the whole premise rather lame
Lemon curry?
Lets hope if they do decide to bring them back, they decide also to make it illegal to hunt. Otherwise you mine as well just be making them to eat. And that would not be bringing back a species that was killed by us. That would just be bringing back the Tasmanian buffet.
Also what happened to Natural Selection? Even if they are a great species, lets not try to recreate Jurassic Park by bringing back things that are dead. I say leave nature alone and use that money towards saving us from falling into the dead species category.
Gizmo
The founder effect, which is the sharp reduction in the genetic variety of a population when it arises from a very small group of individuals (Iceland is an excellent example), has a great potential to be a problem here. The cheetah, for example, went through a bottleneck at some point in the past (no one knows why). Individual cheetahs are so genetically similar that organs (such as skin) can be transplanted between individuals with little or no rejection.
Unless samples from multiple thylacines can be retrieved and successfully used to clone infants, these animals will always be sucsceptible to being wiped out by a plague (since they all have the same genotype.)
And that's to say nothing of the issues with captive-raised animals that have none of the instincts that their wild counterparts would. For example, falcons that have imprinted on humans (and think they're human as a result) cannot be released into the wild -- it would be disastrous. They would never fear humans and would be unable to hunt to feed themselves.
i am a soviet space shuttle
The australian TV show, "the science program", described this idea as complete and utter rubish last night.
:)
They say that with current technology the scientists are "dreaming" to think such a thing as possible, and anytime in the near future.
I would love this to be possible, but i am very very doubtful..
anyway, a dodo bird would be alot nicer to re-create
stuff
Then again, there is some debate over whether the thylacine is truly extinct.
evanchik.net
A tasmanian tiger would be cool, but personally I'd rather see the giant wombats mentioned at the end of the article.
how in the hell is this considered controversial? even the sternest luddite would agree that we wiped them out and it is our moral obligation.. NO survival emperitive to replace the species. We wipe out species left and right and expect to not suffer greiviosly as a result? Even if we could wipe out something as terrible as, say influenza, there would be drastic consequences. Even if the only result was longer lifspan for the 6 billion people on the earth ready to procreate 12 billion more. Humans can not live on human biomass alone.... Humans must have other species.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I am very excited about this development.
Being part of generation-X. I was not born early enough to have participated in the *first* exctinction of the thylacine!
This way we get to bring it back to life, raise about 1000 of them, and then hunt them into extinction again! YAY!
And. Since we have moore's law, 18 months from now we will be able to make twice as many tigers for 1/2 the cost!
Man I love this stuff.
I want to get one as a pet! I will be getting laid BIG TIME at that point!
Imagine if you had a beowolf cluster of these things!
Kevin
We would be literally playing god. The species died off because nature intended it to( even if it was hunted to death we are still a part of a larger cycle)
Huh? If we kill off a species, we're just a part of the nature. If we try to revive it (by whatever means), we're suddenly playing god. Where's the logic? I can't see any difference between killing and reviving in this respect. In either case we're stirring the balance in the ecosystem, which is bad for our own survival as a species.
We're a part of the nature, and the nature does not intend anything. Our actions cannot be justified simply as "evolution in action".
Heh, and all you guys laughed at Jurassic Park
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Just a thought: More than 90% of the species that ever lived on this planet are dead.
We didn't kill them. . .
In this case, we made the species go extinct, so perhaps we have some responsibility to recreate the species, but I'd rather see resources spent on something else like curing diseases, etc.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Wouldn't "literally" playing god involve things like creating solar systems? Now that would kick ass. Then we could start breeding a planet of beautiful blonde chicks. THEN, because they'd think us geeks and nerds were the only males, we could like, you know, do stuff.
-Kevin
Bring back something useful, instead of a pest.
Should they really do this ?
The tasmanian tiger was not fit enough to survive the treat of another more dangerous species.
This species was the infamous Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
It is the usual ecologist point of view that men is an evil intruder in the eco system and should stay apart of it whereever possible.
But this is utter nonsense.
We are a part of nature. And, yes, we are predators that means that we KILL species. And species which aren't fit enough to avoid this treat will be annihilated.
But this IS nature. This is not "artificial" or even "bad".
Some people will no rant "Behold we'll destroy the whole world, the wikked evil ones we are !!!"
But this is nonsense, too. It's not so easy to destroy the nature. There were worse catastrophes in the history of the world which didn't. These eco-freaks are overrating human power exactly the same way as these tech-gonzo dreaming of terraforming liveless planets etc. do.
I think this species should be kept dead.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
This Tour of Tasmania: Tasmania Tiger Web page shows the last photograph of this tiger in captivity and a video clip. Both picture and video clip are black and white though. The wide mouth shot amazes me. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
So, it may be that even in Tasmania there still lurks that striped tiger.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
It will be a vain attempt at restoring something we destroyed, in a futile struggle to erase our poor decisions. We will feel good and proud because we have cleared our bad name with mother nature. Tazmania will never again become a suitable place for tigers to live: We want to live there, and it's a proven fact that there isn't room for the both of us! And we will achieve nothing but a warm fuzzy feeling for those willing to believe that something useful has been accomplished.
What's in a Sig?
- Tasmania has a long history of electing Greens so in 1998 our "major parties" put aside their pretentions of difference and attempted to send the Greens extinct by reducing the number of state poiticians.
- More than fifty years before the last thylacine died in captivity, the last full blood Tasmanian aborigine died, a race that had been isolated from the rest of humanity for more than ten thousand years.
- Thirty years ago, the Tasmanian environmental movement was galvanised by the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to stop the then all-powerful Hydro Electic Commission from building a dam which would drown the remote and ultimately iconic original Lake Pedder. Proposals to drain the dam and restore the original lake persist.
- A decade later, a similar campaign against the proposed Gordon below Franklin dam was successful and South West Tasmania gained World Heritage recognition, including the aboriginal art in Fraser Cave named for our then Prime Minister in an attempt to enhance his environmental awareness.
- In the last few months it looks as though another predator, the fox, might be trying to get established in Tasmania. I'm sure I heard a report of some more recent evidence that they may indeed have a breeding population which defies thinking about given today's level of environmental awareness.
- The Tasmanian government recently retreated from its undertaking to support the outcome of the Tasmania Together process with respect to the unpopular logging of old growth forests to support huge (by Tasmanian standards earnings from wood chip export.
- On the other side of Bass Strait, there is growing environmental opposition to the Basslink Project to connect the Tasmanian electrical grid to the Australian mainland grid.
Now I just have to wonder whether the foxes or the politicians will utilise cloning first? My own fondest memory of Tassie was diving with dolphins at Flinders Island, a day I would like to clone.-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
It might well prove possible to grow a viable tiger with mitochondria from the most nearly-related marsupial available. (Probably the Tasmanian Devil)
As for the Mammoths, since the specimens are frozen, I would expect the mitochondria to have remained at least as intact as the nucleii. It's not going to be easy, but then again, neither was cloning a sheep for the first time.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It was a stupid movie. Jeff Goldbloom spewing off about how chaos theory meant that they were all going to get eaten alive was a riot!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It should be sobering to realize that in the time span that this species might be "brought back", many thousands species will likely be going extinct. We could probably save a few of them with the money and media attention expended on this project. Of course, we could save a few of them with the money and attention expended on Harry Potter or Britney Spears.
That's not to say that this project isn't worthwhile. It is scientifically interesting, and it's a challenge. But if we want to do anything about extinctions, we have to start elsewhere: with ecology and conservation. In fact, bringing back a species without bringing back their habitat is only half the job anyway.
Thylacines were not hunted as food; they were deliberately exterminated by European immigrants because Thylacines killed domestic sheep.
For more information on Thylacines, check out this article by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service.
It wouldn't hurt the Slashdot editors to show a little maturity by researching their flippant comments before making bogus statements. Trying some professional journalism would do wonders for Slashdot's credibility.
All about me
I think we should bring back as many of these extinct animals as possible, if only to learn a little more about them. If we can't make a breeding pair, we'll at least have a much better idea of what they were like originally. Quality photos would be almost as priceless as the animals. I have no desire to see a bunch of dinasaurs running around eating cows and people, but more recent species would be very interesting.
All of this crap about "god" is really sad. Letting religion anywhere near science goes against the restraining order. Doesn't anyone watch the Simpsons anymore?
Yeah, the source I gave is not exactly a of sterling authority or depth, but there have been examples of animals previously thought extinct to be rediscovered and even large animals to be discovered for the first time in the last 20 years.
I also wonder how carefully the evidence has been studied of its possible existance. DNA tests are tricky and expensive.
The poor beast probably is extinct, but Tasmania is a big island.
evanchik.net
Check this sitec tr um1.html at the Sydney Saturday Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0111/24/spectrum/spe
for a better news article, and this website
http://www.austmus.gov.au/
at the Australian Museum (where the Thylacine research is taking place) for links on the project. Another factoid: even though the Tasmanians exterminated the Thylacine, its image graces their regional beer, Cascade. Go figure.
Greenies keep saying that the environment is changing too quickly for animals to adapt to it, and they're going extinct as a result. Whether this is true or false, why do they keep trying to fund preservation programs like this one, restoring dead species to the Earth.
I thought biodiversity was one of the things they like to promote. Why don't we spend a few decades splicing together some new animal species, more keenly adapted to the world as it is now. Frogs that love smog, for example, or insects with two heads. Anything the learning-disabled kids of the world can invent.
If we create as many animal species per day as we lose, then in a few hundred years things will be back to "normal," the ecosystem won't be quite so "damaged," and everyone will be happy.
Of course, by that point, greenies will most certainly find something else to complain about. Maybe earthshine makes the moon bleach faster. Who knows?
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
The Tasmanian Devil is one of the most effective natural garbage disposals on the face of the planet.
To quote from the above link:
With its powerful jaws and sharp sectorial teeth, it can consume every part of a dead kangaroo or sheep, including the skull.
Many people cite the lack of found dead Thylacine bodies (roadkill etc) as proof that they are not around any more. But when a carrion cleaner like the Devil is around, that makes that assumption a little presumptious. It can smell a lot better than we can see.
Not that this is proof that Thylacines are still around, but it is reason to question some "evidence" that they are not.