John Russell adapted it for VOA Learning English. “Preventing species from going extinct in the first place should be our priority, and in most cases, it’s a lot cheaper,” he said.Ĭhristina Larson reported on this story for the Associated Press. He said animals need to learn from other wild animals of their kind - something that dodos and mammoths would not be able to do. He is also not linked to Colossal Biosciences. He also said that the environment where mammoths lived disappeared long ago.īiologists who know about captive breeding programs say that it can be difficult for zoo-bred animals to live in the wild.īoris Worm is a biologist with the University of Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “And where on Earth would you put a woolly mammoth, other than in a cage?” Pimm said. There is a real risk “in saying that if we destroy nature, we can just put it back together again - because we can’t,” said Duke University’s Stuart Pimm, who has no connection with the company. They question whether such efforts take attention and money away from attempts to save living species. Other scientists wonder if it is even a good idea to attempt to recreate species that have died off. She added, “it’s not possible to recreate a 100% identical copy of something that’s gone.” Shapiro said animals are a product of both their genetics and their environment - which has changed a lot since the 1600s. Then the birds might create young that could naturally produce dodo eggs, said Shapiro. It may be possible to put the changed cells into developing eggs of other birds, such as pigeons or chickens. The team may then attempt to change Nicobar pigeon cells to make them seem like dodo cells. Shapiro’s team plans to study DNA differences between the Nicobar pigeon and the dodo to understand “what are the genes that really make a dodo a dodo,” she said. The organization also supports The Associated Press’ Health and Science Department. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and receives financial support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). She has been studying the dodo for 20 years.

The dodo’s closest living relative is the Nicobar pigeon, said Beth Shapiro, a scientific advisor with the bioscience company. It is also working on technologies for what is sometimes called an “artificial womb,” he said. (REUTERS)įor example, Colossal Biosciences is now testing tools to change several parts of the genome at the same time. But the genetic tools and equipment that the company develops to try to do it may have other uses, including for human health care, he said.įILE - A skeleton of a Mauritius Dodo bird which was found in a cave at the foot of Le Pouce Mountain at Pailles, in 1900, stands at an exhibition in the Mauritius Institute Museum in Port Louis, Dec.

The possibility of bringing the dodo back is not expected to directly make money, said Lamm. To date, it has raised $225 million from many investors that include United States Innovative Technology Fund, Breyer Capital and In-Q-Tel, an organization supporting national security agencies. Recently, the company announced it had raised an additional $150 million in financing. The last dodo was killed in 1681 on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.Ĭolossal Biosciences is based in the city of Dallas, Texas. The company has formed a special group that works on bird-related genetic technologies. “The dodo is a symbol of man-made extinction,” said Ben Lamm of Colossal Biosciences. Recently, the company said it wanted to bring back the dodo bird: a large, flightless bird. Some scientists, however, are doubtful such research efforts are possible - or even a good idea.Ĭolossal Biosciences first announced its plan to bring back a hairy ancestor of today’s elephants, known as the woolly mammoth, two years ago.

More investors are supporting a biotechnology company working on ways to bring back animals that have died off.

Dodo bird extinct