![]() ![]() “This made their nests easy access for potential predators and consumers of eggs. Because dodos didn’t fly, they nested on the ground. After that, one would have to solve all of the normal problems associated with captive breeding and husbandry of a species that no longer exists.” Would the dodo survive today?Įven if it were possible to recreate the dodo, that wouldn’t solve the problems that caused the bird to go extinct in the first place, as Beth explains: “We believe that dodos became extinct because introduced species including rats, cats and pigs consumed their eggs. In birds, this would mean using gene-editing tools on what are known as ‘primordial germ cells’, which are the cells that will eventually become sperm or eggs. One would also need to figure out how to make those genetic changes, which are surely more than a few, in the types of cells that are destined to become a living animal. “First, one needs to be able to figure out what genetic differences in the dodo genome make the dodo look and act like a dodo. “There are a tonne of existing technical challenges that would need to be solved in order to bring a dodo back to life,” she told us. So is this icon of extinction poised to return from the dead? It was sequenced from a DNA sample taken from a specimen held at Copenhagen’s Natural History Museum. In 2022, Beth Shapiro from the Genomics Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz, announced the sequencing of the dodo’s genome. © Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Can the dodo be brought back from extinction? But with the advance of genetic engineering technologies, would it be possible one day to bring the dodo back from extinction? Dodo and guinea pig, 1750, from A Natural History of Uncommon Birds by George Edwards. ![]() Its brutal eradication from its only home has seen the dodo become almost a byword for extinction. But the sailors and their animals hunted it for food, raided its nests for eggs, and destroyed its habitat. Before they arrived, the dodo lived a charmed life on an island where food was plentiful and predators absent. When Europeans began to settle on Mauritius in the 16th century, the sailors and the invasive species they brought with them sealed the dodo’s fate. But what exactly caused the dodo to go extinct? And could it ever be brought back to life? Why did the dodo go extinct? Could the dodo come back from extinction?Įndemic to the small island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, the dodo was a large, flightless bird that went extinct some time in the 17 th century following the arrival of European settlers in the previous century.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |