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Should We Bring Back Extinct Animals?
- Thread starter Gaf Zombie
- Start date
I say rebuild rainforests and natural wonders. Fill whatever areas with various animals. This world is ours just as much as these animals. You obviously cannot bring many of them back because of climate and such but the ones that could thrive and without any repercussion in this day and age should come back without question.
Sure, under two conditions in each case:
- the conditions that made them extinct in the first place no longer prevail (i.e. we aren't bringing back species just to have them go extinct again a few generations down the line)
and more importantly
- the impact of their reintroduction can be modelled beforehand with sufficient accuracy that we can be confident that they will not collapse ecosystems or unbalance them enough to cause more than an expected rate of extinction
Those conditions would apply regardless of the original reason for extinction, which (clearly contrary to many other people in this topic) I see as utterly irrelevant. If it's good to bring them back, do it regardless of the reason they went extinct. If it's bad to bring them back, they stay extinct, even if it was entirely a human-caused extinction. If we can't tell with confidence whether it's a good or bad decision (and this is the most likely scenario for the foreseeable future), then we don't bring anything back.
Concerns about "playing god" are misfounded. Humanity having the ability to determine whether a species goes (or stays) extinct axiomatically means humanity has power at least as godlike as anything in most pantheons. Exercising that power by making a choice about bring back a species or not is "playing god" either way.
- the conditions that made them extinct in the first place no longer prevail (i.e. we aren't bringing back species just to have them go extinct again a few generations down the line)
and more importantly
- the impact of their reintroduction can be modelled beforehand with sufficient accuracy that we can be confident that they will not collapse ecosystems or unbalance them enough to cause more than an expected rate of extinction
Those conditions would apply regardless of the original reason for extinction, which (clearly contrary to many other people in this topic) I see as utterly irrelevant. If it's good to bring them back, do it regardless of the reason they went extinct. If it's bad to bring them back, they stay extinct, even if it was entirely a human-caused extinction. If we can't tell with confidence whether it's a good or bad decision (and this is the most likely scenario for the foreseeable future), then we don't bring anything back.
Concerns about "playing god" are misfounded. Humanity having the ability to determine whether a species goes (or stays) extinct axiomatically means humanity has power at least as godlike as anything in most pantheons. Exercising that power by making a choice about bring back a species or not is "playing god" either way.
these kinds of attempts at ecological engineering have ended very badly in the past so i voted no
Yes ,never agreed with "don't play God"
Do play god, make hybrids and while you're at it make humans with gills since we may need them soon.
Do play god, make hybrids and while you're at it make humans with gills since we may need them soon.
Let's re-introduce all the extinct megafauna insects like rideable millipedes and dragonflies the size of eagles and put them everywhere but Australia to level the playing field a bit
sure as long as it's the dodo
Lol
As a big fan of Jurassic Park, yes bring back extinct animals.
Boy do I have a story for you about eating unfamiliar animals!
Bringing back dinosaurs is the closest thing we'll get to another Dino Crisis game so I say go for it.
I hate to break it to some people here, but bringing back non-avian dinosaurs is impossible.
Even if we extracted blood from mosquitos found in amber, it would have to have exclusively fed on a single animal prior to getting trapped in tree sap, so as to prevent contamination. It would also have to have been trapped instanteously, as the DNA would've started breaking down in the digestive process. Furthermore, the DNA would've been contaminated with the mosquito's own DNA. And if you managed to somehow extract uncontaminated DNA, the half life of DNA is about 521 years. The bonds in the DNA would've been completely broken down on its own after 6.8 million years.
Even if we extracted blood from mosquitos found in amber, it would have to have exclusively fed on a single animal prior to getting trapped in tree sap, so as to prevent contamination. It would also have to have been trapped instanteously, as the DNA would've started breaking down in the digestive process. Furthermore, the DNA would've been contaminated with the mosquito's own DNA. And if you managed to somehow extract uncontaminated DNA, the half life of DNA is about 521 years. The bonds in the DNA would've been completely broken down on its own after 6.8 million years.
We can't clone people full stop, this is just a fun hypothetical.
Dodo were apparently not good eating according to the journals of explorers.
Chicken wings were considered worthless in the early 1960s… and now everybody loves them.
Deep fry Dodo legs, add some sriracha, and a new Super Bowl snack is born.
Bringing back the some of the megafauna that mysteriously went extinct in North America could be cool.
I don't like the poll options. Animals that went extinct before humans did so for a reason. I don't think we should because we "play god" but because it would be a waste of resources.
Sounds like a terribly irresponsible idea. Either the conditions that made then extinct still exist and they'd live on the brink of extinction again it they'd completely wreck the local ecosystems of wherever they were placed
Jurassic Park - Lunch - Great Scenes
One of the greatest scenes in film history.Disclaimer: I don't own any of the footage presented here, this video was made merely to pay homage to this film a...
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I bet he could keep down the rabbit population.
Bring him back.
We had parakeets in America, bears in Morocco, manatees in the Bering Sea, river dolphins in China and seals in the Mediterranean. Oh and pigeons so numerous that they blot out the sun.
I'm fine with bringing them back as long as people put in the work to bring back the environment they came from.
I'm fine with bringing them back as long as people put in the work to bring back the environment they came from.
I think we should start treating the animals that already live on this planet humanely before we even think of doing something like that
The ecosystem impact is the reason you shouldnt bring them back, not some moral ground but the survey sucks in choices. Where you introduce these extinct animals will potentially wipe out other species, and us dumb humans are terrible at understanding how small changes in animal population can have huge effects on the environment.
Bring him back.
Wasn't like a family group of these spotted in the wild earlier this year? I remember a thread about it where the wildlife seekers were submitting some video they captured for official identification.
Unless it was debunked later on and I didn't see that.
Aww. Too bad.
On topic - Society will need to clone animals to bring them back if only because manmade climate change is going to wipe out so many that would have otherwise been fine.
I am pro bringing them back, but against the idea of releasing them into the wild, if it is at all possible they could break out of confinement. So, having a herd of mammoth in a forest somwhere seems sensible, as long as we can ensure they stay in a "small " confined region, so can be sure it doesn't cause havoc with other natural species.
