Advancements in science have led to many possibilities to become a reality and the recent declaration of Colossal Biosciences to revive the dodo bird is the next big thing that is close to becoming a reality. Colossal Biosciences, founded in 2021 by tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard University geneticist George Church, have already made plans to re-extinct the mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger. On January 31, 2023, Colossal Biosciences also revealed plans to bring back the dodo bird. While it is a very fascinating initiative, the de-extinction of a species raises a lot of questions on whether or not it is even possible and the ethics of doing so.
The dodo bird was native to Mauritius and went extinct during the 17th century after humans arrived on the island. The dodo bird was considered the pinnacle of extinction for several reasons. It was never afraid of humans and continued to approach them even after many of its own kind were killed by them. The species also only laid one egg a year which meant that it would reproduce in small numbers and still had several predators which it would have to outrun. Despite this, efforts to bring back the dodo bird are underway as lead paleogeneticist and a scientific advisory board member at Colossal Biosciences, Beth Shapiro and her team extracted a piece of the bird’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and reconstructed the bird’s entire genome.
While it is extraordinary that they have access to the mtDNA, it is not possible to directly clone it. Instead, most de-extinction programs try to use genetic engineering by editing the genome of a live closely related organism, which in this case would be the Nicobar pigeon. However, a concern with birds is that they require access to a bird egg that has yet to be fertilized. Colossal Biosciences is exploring an alternative of primordial germ cells (PGCs) from existing pigeon eggs. They then can be manipulated into developing a dodo-like bird. Shapiro adds, “the final version of dodo will emerge from a pigeon that has been engineered to be the size of a dodo. So the size of eggs will be consistent.”
Even after the dodo is brought back to life, questions about its survival and behavior still arise. The environment the dodos lived in has changed a lot over the last 400 years and there’s not much record of how they lived. Additionally, if the dodo bird is brought back, how will it “learn” how to behave like a dodo? Mikkel Sinding, a postdoctoral researcher in paleogenomics explains, “There is nobody around to teach the dodo how to be a dodo.”
Outside of the process of birthing and raising a dodo bird, there are still many questions about the ethics of bringing back a once-dead species. The way it will change the ecosystem is still unclear and there is no guarantee that once reborn, the species will successfully survive. Sinding also adds how there is debate on whether or not it would be more beneficial to spend all this time, money, and research on currently existing species that are on the brink of extinction instead of bringing back a species that has been gone for centuries.
Regardless, bringing back the dodo bird will certainly take a great deal of time and hopefully, many of the uncertainties will be addressed along the way. For now, de-extinction continues to remain a possibility.
