Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know. “Preventing species from going extinct in the first place should be our priority, and in most cases, it's a lot cheaper,” said Worm. It helps if they can learn from other wild animals of their kind - an advantage that potential dodos and mammoths won't have, said Boris Worm, a biologist at the University of Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who has no connection to Colossal. “And where on Earth would you put a woolly mammoth, other than in a cage?” asked Pimm, who noted that the ecosystems where mammoths lived disappeared long ago.Ĭonservation biologists familiar with captive breeding programs say that it can be tricky for zoo-bred animals to ever adapt to the wild. Dodo Bird (Extinct) by English artist Frederick William Frohawk (1861-1946) This is a faithful representation of the impressive 1905 image as created by the. “There's a real hazard in saying that if we destroy nature, we can just put it back together again - because we can't,” said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who has no connection to Colossal. Native to Mauritius, this once-thriving bird fell victim to the usual threats. In the vast tapestry of avian evolution, the pink pigeon weaves a tale as complex and vulnerable as that of its dodo relatives. The US company is trying to bring the extinct Dodo bird back to life. The story of evolution is one of continuous change, adaptation and survival against all odds. The arrival of humans in the dodos' habitat also brought the introduction of many other species -including rats, goats, pigs, deer and macaque- that took a liking to dodo eggs, and ultimately decimated the birds' numbers. How they arrived on the secluded paradise is unclear, but the cause of the dodo's decline is plainer.Īfter thriving without a natural predator till the arrival of settlers in the 1500s, the birds maintained a steady population - despite only laying one egg each a year. If man had never encountered a dodo bird, the island of Mauritius may still serve as their home. Together, Colossal and the scientific community at large are committed to our efforts to de-extinct those we’ve lost.” It’s not just important for their continued existence. Because it was flightless, those who saw the bird often thought it had no real wings at all, describing them as 'little winglets. It had small wings that were far too weak to ever lift the dodo off the ground. The company Colossal Biosciences announced in November 2023 it would attempt to de-extinct the iconic bird and return the species to Mauritius. Sailors who stopped at the island did hunt dodos for food. The dodo was a large, plump bird covered in soft, grey feathers, with a plume of white at its tail. The islands, unexplored until this time, were used as a stopover point en-route through the Indian Ocean for spice traders and later became a Dutch penal colony. Credit: Colossal Biosciencesĭr Beth Shapiro, lead palaeogeneticist at Colossal explained: "There has never been more urgency to preserve species than there is today. Dutch sailors first spotted the dodo at the end of the 1500s, with the first recorded observations made in 1598.
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