The Thylacine Films

[phantom power]

The thing about this that I found gut wrenching was, I had never heard of a thylacine. That's how quickly we're forgetting what's being lost.

http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/films/java/thylacine_films_java.htm

[Village Idiot]

1. They were (are?) the coolest looking predator on the planet!

And MARSUPIAL, yet!!!

[phantom power]

2. They're gone.

[NNadir]

4. Every once in a while there's talk of cloning some from old tissue samples

I think this "Jurassic Park" deal is actually as practical as most Michael Critchon fantasies though.

Chriton's poor apprehension of science aside though, I think the matter was seriously evaluated but found to be impractical.

It's terrible, but all these extinction events are terrible - unless one is referring to the smallpox polio viruses.

[phantom power]

8. I don't write off the possibility of cloning extinct species, but...

there are many pragmatic difficulties. A genome isn't self-contained. Any genome is optimized to develop starting from the fertilized egg-cell of the species it came from, in the womb (or egg, or pouch) of a member of the species it came from.

I'm of the opinion that developmental biology may eventually progress to the point that we can reverse-engineer enough knowledge about the requirements for egg-cells, wombs, etc, for an extinct species, to revive those species. But it's far from a sure thing, and we clearly can't do it yet.

And, it's like all other schemes for (re)terraforming our planet after we've screwed it up. Wouldn't it be a hell of a lot easier, and more ethical, to just not fuck it all up in the first place, instead of relying on various iffy scenarios for restoring it later?

As for "good" extinctions, I'd like to tentatively add mosquitos to the list containing polio and smallpox. They spread all kinds of deadly diseases, and even the ones that don't are annoying little bloodsucking motherfuckers. If the food-chain can do without them, I say let's spend our enormous species-extinguishing energies on wiping them out.

[NNadir]

10. Even if it could be done, there's the matter of changing what caused

the extinction in the first place.

I'm not sure how I feel about mosquitos. I suspect that their niche is not wholly without benefit. It's difficult with the lower animals and it's easy to focus on particularly noxious varieties of non human species like mosquitos and Republicans, but I'm sure they're good for something, well at least the mosquitos are.

I note that the near extinction of the wolf in North America was once regarded mostly as a good thing.

[kestrel91316]

11. If you wipe out mosquitos, you may very well take a whole lot of

birds and fish and bats out with them. Wiping out an entire species of life, for whatever reason, is most unwise. The fabric of our ecosystems has few enough threads left as it is.

[Boomer]

12. Cloning is just the first hurdle

Anyone who has tried to raise a nestling of even the most common bird soon learns how fragile they are and how easily they die without exactly the right conditions of temperature and food.

Other larger species are equally difficult to foster -- such as pandas. They may look sturdy, but raising them in captivity is an art that few zoos have mastered.

So I can't imagine how difficult it would be to raise an infant of an extinct species without any knowledge of the specific conditions it would need to thrive. What kind of food? What temperature? What humidity? How much light? What kind of stimulation?

[Maraya1969]

3. I never heard of it either. The dictionary said they were extinct

I wonder why they did not breed them in captivity.

[Caoimhe]

6. Easier said than done I guess n/t

[blindpig]

9. Nobody gave a fuck back then.

Not that much different from today. Tasmanian sheep ranchers were no different than our ranchers who would be happy if all predators larger than a house cat were exterminated.

[Caoimhe]

5. Thanks for that

Now I know something I didn't know before. Another example of how thoughtless we humans are.

They look like a cross between a dog and a cat. Very cool. I hope they eventually make clones.

[Gildor Inglorion]

7. Whole species of small marsupials are being wiped out in Australia

by feral cats and foxes introduced for sport. Many, if not most, of Madagascar's unique species are severely endangered.