Have you ever watched Pet Sematary? It is a classic horror movie. There was a new version recorded in 2019. But the classic is still amazing. It is mostly a zombie movie, but with the pets coming to life instead. What about the extinct animals coming to life? Of course not like zombies in the movie. But our planet has suffered mass extinctions during its eras.
The most famous was the dinosaurs and the big meteor that hit and altered the environment on most of the planet. We also had extinctions associated with our greed in conquering the environment and changing it. Should we bring any back to life?
I am a biologist and I would love to see some animals from the past alive, but for now only human and AI representation from what existed of the past we can see. Even other human species that we derived from would be amazing to see around. I collaborated once in a project that was trying to recover the genome of Homo Neandertalis. The DNA was so degraded that it was difficult to perform some genetic analysis.
Recently, a private company announced that it brought the Dire wolf back to life. The news was more what it really is the reality. They genetically modified the grey wolf with the traits that they knew this extinct species had.
So they are not a direct clone; it is just a regular wolf with its genetic material modified. But it brought back the discussion of bringing animals that we don't see around anymore. What are the impacts on the current ecosystem? The dire wolf existed at the same time that the Mammoth existed, known as the Great Ice Age, so we have different ecosystems compared to that era. I don't think that animals that lived in that era would be nice to have in the wild because of that.
What about the animals that are almost extinct or recently extinct? Maybe those could be more interesting to have a type of initiative that involves genetics. Especially those that were influenced directly by our hands touching their ecosystem.
Probably the Dodo bird would be awesome to see again in the wild. An endemic bird from Madagascar Island that had its population excitented due to the introduction of invasive species by humans on the Island. The Yangtze River Dolphin is another example of an affected animal due to human activities. So sad to see smart mammals like dolphins disappearing because of human activities in Rivers and Seas. many other species are also affected by pollution. I would love to see this Chinese Dolphin back, but first, we would need to improve the current state of our water bodies.
Extinction of species can be considered a natural process, but lately we have been affecting this process a lot in many of our "roommates" on this planet. I wouldn't want to see dinosaurs brought back to life, I don't want to live in a Jurassic Park movie in real life. However, if we at least try to save the animals that are recently extinct or even those that are almost in that status, that would be awesome and I would be happy to see them around.
