{"id":16080,"date":"2013-03-06T13:48:31","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T19:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=16080"},"modified":"2013-03-06T13:48:31","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T19:48:31","slug":"so-what-do-you-think-about-de-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/06\/so-what-do-you-think-about-de-extinction\/","title":{"rendered":"So, what do you think about de-extinction?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John Platt has <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scientificamerican.com\/extinction-countdown\/2013\/03\/06\/de-extinction-cloning-extinct-species\/\">a nice summary of recent activity in the are of de-extinction<\/a>.  This is where you use modern genetic techniques to bring species that are extinct back into existence.<\/p>\n<p>I find it interesting that casual talk about this sort of thing almost always starts out with things like de-extinction very large and very long extinct, and I&#8217;m sure, very expensive to take care of creatures like dinosaurs or wooly mammoths.  People in the de-extinction business (and there are some, and there have even been some efforts carried out) are more realistic, of course.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always said we should start by cloning something that is not extinct, from its remains.  Start with the dumpster behind a KFC and see if we can get a chicken.  (If it turns out to not be a chicken, that&#8217;s another matter.)  After doing that a few times, try cloning something that has a living ecological analog: The Quagga, for instance. They went extinct recently and are basically a variant of a zebra (though a different species).  Then if that works look into endemic recently extinct animals such as the dodo.<\/p>\n<p>After that, we can sit down and talk mammoths and passenger pigeons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Platt has a nice summary of recent activity in the are of de-extinction. This is where you use modern genetic techniques to bring species that are extinct back into existence. I find it interesting that casual talk about this sort of thing almost always starts out with things like de-extinction very large and very &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/06\/so-what-do-you-think-about-de-extinction\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">So, what do you think about de-extinction?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-4bm","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}