Slashdot Mirror
Cloning Another Extinct Species
Tekmage sent us a wired article about scientists cloning cloning an extinct tiger. We mentioned a similiar
case involving a bird awhile back, but its getting more common.
I knew that triceretops DNA I've been keeping in my fridge all summer would come in handy. It'll be on E-Bay next week.
So, let me asked this: If a bird like the Dodo was hunted to extiction by ANY other animal, would we consider it to be natural selection? I mean, obviously the Dodo was incapable of defending itself againt human hunters, but just how is that different than defending itself against another predator like an alligator or something? Did the Dodo die out because we were *unfair* in hunting it so much, or did it die out because it was just a really dumb bird? I'm serious - maybe it was just time for the Dodo to check out. If not from us, than from something else.
This is old tech now. It's been done with Quaggas (no, not the beasts from rogue that start appearing after the 6th level or so and killing you, I mean the strange mix-of-horse-and-zebra things that used to live in S. Africa.) They now have a breeding population of about 60 (IIRC) and with selective breeding they're getting more Quagga-like every generation. They reckon purestrain Quaggas are maybe 5 years away (also IIRC).
There is unnatural extinction. it's called deforestation. try that perspective. Why? read the fine-print...
Huh? Let's try this line of thinking, wonder boy:
1. Human beings evolved naturally on this planet.
2. Therefore, human beings are part of nature.
If people cut down forests, it's no different from deer eating every plant in sight and leaving an area barren of vegetation (and killing off other animals thar are dependant on those selfsame plants). If this happens, the deer eventually starve, and there are fewer deer. If humanity destroys too many resources short-sightedly, then we'll face a similar fate. But it's perfectly natural.
In fact, how can ANYTHING that people do not be part of "the natural order?" Because we are sentient? Bah. Monkeys are sentient. Dolphins probably are. Are those cute (and endangered) species also unnatural, oh he who knows nature?
Are human actions "unnatural" because we build stuff? How about bever dams? Bee hives?
because mankind are all a bunch of whining idiots. Humans are not the dominant species on this planet. Does your so-called "intelligence" make you feel you're dominant? Sorry buddy, you are inferior (just as I am).
It sounds to me like you hate yourself, and by extension, humanity. Since you find yourself an unworthy being, please stop wasting precious resources for those of us who like being humans and terminate your current existence. With any luck, the Hindus are right and you can be reincarnated as an animal. In your case, I'd suggest a dung beetle.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
...would be to re-create the dodo. It became extinct because we ate them all. They must have tasted great! Bring them back, I want to eat some.
The original Doctor Dark.
The Tasmanian "tiger" is actually a marsupial, not a feline of any sort. It's more closely related to the kangaroo than a cat.
Still a major achievement if they can pull it off
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Oooops, sorry. They never existed.
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
I don't see any mention in the article that they have infant/embryo DNA samples to clone from, however. I was under the impression that one of the lessons learnt from Dolly the Sheep and similar is that if you clone from adult DNA, you have problems caused by the fact the DNA is already "aged", and is no long the information required to create an individual from the normal starting point (ie, shortly after fertilization).
But I do wish that the media would stop pushing the idea that a clone might be created with an intact set of memories, a complete person! That sort of information simply isn't stored in DNA.
Cloning of extinct species seems like potentially a really dangerous idea. The reason most things go extinct is because their ecological niche is complete destroyed. This also means that their predators have gone away or adapted to eat something else. The cane toads in Australia are the classic example of putting a species into an ecosystem that really is not expected them. What a disaster that has been.
There is no silver bullet. Plus, werewolves make better neighbors than zombies or vampires anyway.
That's an interesting point, I guess the difference between humans and other predators is that we have the capability to understand the difference between excessively hunting a species to extinction and just catching the next meal.
If a pack of hungry aligators jumped on a boat and went to the habitat of the dodo and just gorged themselves on the easy prey, no - I don't think I'd judge them as harshly as humans who did the same thing, because the humans _should_ have the ability to understand the consequences.
You could argue that the dodo was ill-suited for survival and that their time was over. You could also argue that the dodo (like any living thing) existed in an ecological system where their continued presence was the result of some self-sustaining cycle and that their presence was beneficial. In other words, even though they were flightless and had no evolutionary developed skill for evasion of predators because there had been no predatious pressure, they still were a part of a balanced eco-system where their presence was beneficial (eating overgrowth, producing fertilizer, etc).
Also - going back to the first post, I think it was funny. Tasteless, but funny.
"Even though they described the bird as 'walchvogel' meaning
'disguting to eat' they certainly must have had fun
clobbering the clumsy creatures that waddled up to them
only to be hit on the head with a stout staff. In fact the
name Dodo comes from the Dutch 'Dodars' or 'Dodoor',
meaning a sluggard or a stupid fool. "
- This is from http://www.mauritius-canada.com/dodo/
Hmmm, I find myself getting increasingly fascinated by the Dodo and am reading all about it now.
L.
PS - That web site says:
"You are the 6,439th person visiting this page since March 1st, 1999". It will be fun to watch the slashdot effect. Hehehe. They won't know what hit them. Literally.
I--R--O--N--Y. S--A--T--I--R--E.
I suspect that the original poster *ARGEES* with you! His modest proposal is clearly a poke at the people who actually would think of such a thing (albiet probably not in so many words) -- if you don't get this, please go study a history of satire, starting with J. Swift.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
That isn't exactly a valid analogy, considering that with our technology we could hunt to extinction pretty much any large land animal we wanted to.
Besides, there really are good reasons for having large dumb docile animals: they're great for domestication. If you've read Guns, Germs, and Steel you'd know that a primary reason that native Austrailian and American cultures were so far behind their European invaders was that their ancestors had hunted to extinction most all the large herbivores native to their lands. We would all have a much greater variety of meat now if those ignorant hunters had the foresight that we now possess.
Read all about the Tasmanian Tiger here
2^5
If they want to reintroduce the species (in the long term even), I hope they froze cells of enough different exemplars (100? Anyone here have an idea of how many different DNA samples you would need to create a healthy population?) or they will have to clone the same animal again and again which doesnt seem too useful to me.
Yes folks, it's official, next month they are going to be even more adventurous, and bring back the ever dreaded Mac Clone.
After consulting with many MANY scientists, they decided it would be the ultimate test of science to Clone the Mac.
However, Apple seems to disagree...
(Note: this is a joke, all names and faces were left in tact because nobody is truly innocent.)
Whoever rated this as funny should have his moderator rights revoked for a month.
This is _NOT_ funny. We have destroyed so many species by either eating them or by declaring them as evil that even the top 10 list can make anyone sick.
Even if the australians do not succed it will still be great if they try. And hopefully be followed by someone else to reincarnate:
1. The dodo (Mauricius)
2. The travelling pigeon (USA)
3. The Berentz cow (Russia/USA)
And many many more
And what I hope is that some anti-cloning maniacs following/seeking divine guidance will not try to throw a couple of molotov cocktails in the lab that do this work.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
FIRST CLONE!!
I have taken the DNA from pickled slashdot columns and cloned them to create this scientifically advanced post.
P.S. I refuse to participate in any further tiger cloning unless the DNA is released under an Open Source licence.
(Score: -1, Thou Hast Lost an Eighth)
Okay, I agree that actually creating an animal from DNA salvaged from a dead-animal-in-a-jar is quite a feat, that will indeed do much for research in fertility and might well help preserve existing species. However, the Tasmanian Tiger will probably not be helped much, with only six DNA samples, the genepool is small to say the least. The first and second generations may do well, although chances are that there are already too many errors in the existing DNA. The DNA in the Jar does not preserve very well, as it is still subject to background radiation that will do damage.
All the information is probably still in there, as there are enough cells that all have a piece of correct DNA. To my knowledge there is no technique to combine all 'good' pieces and filter out the bad other than sequencing ALL of it several times. Then you can compare the sequences and try to synthesize the DNA. Which turns you back to yesterdays problem with the 'artificial bacterium', but then multiplied 10,000 times. Not to mention that at present we cannot even sequence one human in less than ten years, with several thousand of laboratories working together.
But okay, lets assume they have done it. When you breed them, you will have to inbreed them after the third generation, which is NOT a good idea with such a small genepool. Even lab mice, in which most bad traits have been out-bred long ago, don't respond well to that kind of inbreeding.
The technology might be useful, but not for resurecting long-dead animals, except if you're willing to keep doing it over and over again. At best you may be able to crossbreed it with a close relative again, but then it wouldn't be a tasmanian tiger anymore...
Whoever rated this as funny should have his moderator rights revoked for a month.
This is _NOT_ funny. We have destroyed so many computers by either eating them or by declaring them as evil that even the top 10 list can make anyone sick.
Even if the australians do not succed it will still be great if they try. And hopefully be followed by someone else to reincarnate:
1. The Compaq
2. CP/M
3. The Apple II
And many many more
And what I hope is that some anti-cloning maniacs following/seeking divine guidance will not try to throw a couple of molotov cocktails in the lab that do this work.
But what of all the animals whose sole source of food is mosquitos? Would you mourn the sparrow?
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Interesting point in the article about the cost of bringing back the tiger. However, it makes me think. Cloning is a technology that is very "sexy" right now. This means that scientists are going to be running around like headless chickens trying to get gramnts for bigger and better cloning projects.
This worries me a little. I'm worried, because it sounds like these scientists are trying to bite off more than they can chew. The more high price, but high risk projects that fail, the less likely that companies will stump up the money for further projects. Eventually, cloning whithers up and becomes a pariah science - like VR research did in the late 80's.
Of course, VR research still goes on, but if there hadn't been so much hype, bandwagon hopping and generally badly thought out, but highly publicised projects, a steady stream of investments into VR might by now have produced greater results.
Of course, the majority of experiments should go ahead, but when I hear of "cloning extinct Auzzie marsupials back to life", I just know that this is going to make it to all the tabloids around the world, with no mention of how astronomically difficult such a venture should be.
Perhaps we should try reviving something a little simpler first before issuing the press releases about mammoth steaks being reanimated!
A little planning goes a long way...