Slashdot Mirror
Cloning Endangered Species
JackMonkey writes "As SFGate.com reports, scientists have successfully cloned an endangered species. "The clone -- a cattlelike creature known as a Javan banteng, native to Asian jungles -- was grown from a single skin cell taken from a captive banteng before it died in 1980." Maybe Jurassic Park isn't too far away after all." See our previous cloning story also.
Somebody clone a record company executive before they die out!
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Now that we have the ability to clone animals who are endangered whilst destroyoing the habitat they live in, we can let our consciences be at ease, because even though they have no place left to live, they exist.
Next month's manager special: the McBateng (with special sauce, of course).
Several friends have picked up on this story and are all excited that now we can bring back extinct species. The dodo, ivory-billed woodpecker, etc etc and so on. I had to explain to them that for any species to survive, IN THE WILD, there must be a population of sufficient size and more importantly sufficient genetic diversity. We can clone 1000 dodo's (insert politician joke here) but it will still only be ONE dodo. Not to mention that pretty much all the dodo's natural habitat is gone gone gone .. where will they live? The suburbs?
If all we want is to have a couple of living specimens around to look at, cloning will be fine. Anyone expecting to use cloning to re-introduce extinct species to the wild is fooling themselves.