Monday, October 5, 2015

De-Extinction

Hello and welcome back! Today's post is about the concept of so-called "de-extinction", which is bringing extinct animals back to life. 

You may have heard about the recent woolly-mammoth-hybrid find (if not, click here for a link to the story), but how would you like it if that mammoth was still alive today? Given recent advances in biotechnology, that may be possible in a few years! Scientists have already successfully cloned an extinct animal, the bucardo (aka the Pyrenean ibex). The clone died after ten minutes of being born, but it marked a huge advancement in scientific research. Unfortunately, cloned animals have a higher risk of health problems, making it harder to succeed in cloning an organism.

That being said, it is not unlikely that an extinct species will be revived in the near future, such as the next two or three years. There are numerous candidates for de-extinction, but the most urgent ones to revive, in my opinion, are ones that we humans have hunted to extinction, such as the dodo and the passenger pigeon. I know that those are both birds, but some extinct non-bird candidates are the gastric-brooding frogs (Rheobatrachus silus and Rheobatrachus vitellinus), the quagga (plains zebra)(Equus quagga quagga), Tasmanian tiger(Thylacinus cynocephalus), and Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas).

Thank you for tuning in to this blog post about de-extinctionism, and I hope you all can't wait for the first truly successful cloning of an extinct animal, which will be posted about even if it's the last post on School Stories (Where School Is ALWAYS In Session)!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Go TRUMP

Anonymous said...

Goooooooooooooo Trump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!