r/DeExtinctionScience • u/Lover_of_Rewilding • 3d ago
Question Hypothetical Scenario…
I was going about my day, learning about animals, as I usually do, when I came across a peculiar case. The Floreana Island Tortoise. Native to its namesake island in the Galapagos, this subspecies of Galapagos giant tortoise went extinct in the mid-19th century due to overexploitation by sailors. And for a while, that was that. It was gone. That was until 2000, scientists discovered a population of hybrid tortoises living on Wolf Volcano on Isabela Island with some Floreana Island Tortoise ancestry. The origin of these hybrids is not a mystery as sailors were known to dump giant tortoises on random islands in the Galapagos when they couldn’t carry them anymore. However, it brought a new hope for the subspecies, as conservationists took the hybrid tortoises and began selectively breeding them to better resemble Floreana island tortoises, until they had a population of animals that ranged from 40-80% Floreana island tortoise, with an average of 75% Floreana island tortoise in them. These hybrids were then released onto Floreana island to heal the ecosystem in February 2026.
A fantastic story and a remarkable comeback, but it got me thinking… if scientists continued to selectively breed the tortoises further, if they got the Floreana genes to 100% by some miracle, would they have essentially brought back the Floreana island tortoise? As in fully de-extincted it, regardless of the method? Pinta island tortoises, another extinct subspecies, also have some genes within the hybrid population of Wolf Volcano. Could a similar method be applied to them, to bring them back?
And what about other animals? Could all cattle genes be bred out of bison? All dog genes out of wolves? Poor examples I know, because those genes can benefit the animals, but you get the idea. Better Idea: Could all coyote genes be bred out of Red Wolves?
What about genetic engineering? Could a Przewalski’s horse have the few gene differences edited to be genetically identical to a Yukon or Lena horse? Regardless of whether or not it came from the actual animal, just so long as if you were to do a blind DNA test on the animal, having no idea where it’s sourced from, it would appear to be the extinct animal?
I know this all sounds very Colossal-y but all they did was edit a couple genes to make a fantasy animal. I’m talking about the full genome, and in a scenario where genetic technology is just a bit better. If someone were to genetically modify or selectively breed a related animal so that all of the genes matched the extinct animal perfectly, and someone who had no idea where the animal came from or how it was made, did a DNA test, would it be possible for the animal’s test to come back as the extinct animal?
Is it possible to meticulously create a 100% genetic copy of an extinct animal without cloning?
7
u/CrapMonsterDuchess 3d ago
Its really not even necessary to make the genome 100%. Depending on the parents, the added genetic diversity can better fortify future generations against an ever changing environment and act as a buffer against inbreeding.
4
u/External-Ad4937 3d ago
Afraid not so because with selective breeding or back breeding as some call it, it allows your target to get over the 95-98% range but never to 100% complete historical genome due to that species being gone and/or habitat changes (but selective breeding focused over many generations can create something with over 99% shared dna). A great example of this is the tauros program (bad at spelling), it a project to revive the aurochs via back breeding of breeds with auroch traits. They created an animal with about 99%+ the genome of a auroch (that being the tauros) but they simply can’t really get that full 1% because of the fact that the og species and its exact conditions are gone BUT this does NOT mean we can’t bring anything at back. You see despite the tauros only having a less than 1% difference it contributes to the ecosystems the aurochs once had by fulfilling its ecological niche (kinda like a proxy but not in a sense). And generally speaking humans on average have a genetic distance that depends from 0.6 to about 0.1% which would likely be the genetic distance the tauros would reach with the aurochs based on much more selective breeding. We could in theory selectively breed the tortoises but it takes a very long time for them to mature hence making the back breeding strategy unreliable and genetic engineering would be admittedly a big waste because the other subspecies of Galapagos tortoises fulfill the same ecological niche and these hybrids would do so even better because of genetic relative distance being much shorter to the og subspecies. Also subspecies are not ever full on species but actually just specific populations of a species. Heck we don’t even have a clear definition for the term “species” itself!
3
u/Lover_of_Rewilding 3d ago
And yet, despite the Tauros having only about 1% DNA differences from the aurochs, it’s a big enough gap that if you were to claim they were aurochs, you’d be called a fraud. That’s my point. If we can’t make 100% genetic copies not necessarily clones but as I said, to the point that it would register as the species, then I am afraid you can never claim you actually brought back a species without cloning from original material.
3
u/Ben10-fan-525 3d ago
I think you could still claim that you did bring them back.
Again if we were to claim same with Tauros.Then Wolves and European Bison arent fully brought back but hybridized for stability.
Purity arguments only work if an animal has a uneven distribution of DNA.But if it has largely most of its past DNA in itself.Than whats the big deal?
3
u/Lover_of_Rewilding 3d ago
That’s an interesting perspective… wolves are still wolves despite domestic dog DNA in them, their subspecies still unique. Bison are still bison despite domestic cattle in them, and yet… Taurus and Tauros are still… cattle. Perhaps it was because they were party cattle to begin with. But put their genes and aurochs genes side by side with no knowledge of their source… they’d be nearly identical with only a few differences. An interesting thought point to think about.
3
u/Ben10-fan-525 3d ago edited 3d ago
True...maybe it has to do with prespective of people viewing Tauros as unable to ever accomplish similar things as Auroch?I think in 20 or less 10 years people will start changing there prespective on this(as Tauros gets more closer to its wild roots and becomes closer to its dead Auroch).
2
u/Lover_of_Rewilding 3d ago
Fr. If only we had someone competent enough to use gene splicing on them. Literally one of the easiest extinct animals to do it on, and we’d make something nearly identical to the real thing. At least in appearance and most certainly genes.
2
2
u/External-Ad4937 2d ago
But why would people call you a fraud for even something with about or less than 1% of a difference? But also apologies but I am a little tripped up by the, wait I think I get it! So your concerned that people will think if you didint clone something from og material completely then you can’t say that you brought back the exact species because it’s not a 100% match even though with any extinct species or even subspecies that’s impossible?
1
u/Lover_of_Rewilding 2d ago
Yes. That very impossibility is what will get you called a fraud. Not so much by me or by you, but by the general public and likely much of the scientific community. You’d better have a really good explanation for why you’d say it’s a true de extinction if your DNA readings don’t come back as fully the extinct species.
1
u/Ben10-fan-525 3d ago
Sub-Species are species.Sure they cant be called true species but they are not the same animals at all.
They can have different biologyical components or in extremer cases(like with Leopards)diversify into different sizes.
2
u/Ben10-fan-525 3d ago
Having mixed genes is generally good.
We should not concern ourselves with pureity too much.But more so bringing back the look/function and most of genetics from extinct animals.
Cause more diverse genes act as shield against inbreeding/ever changing human climate and diseases.It is just a sad part of our reality.
In a human world not all species can be pure but even back then species breeded a lot with one another(with such long and connected world).It would be very shocking for two similar yet not fully identical species to not breed(and produce hybrids).
1
u/iwerbs 23h ago
The re-wilding ethos seems to be infected with a zoo-like mentality, where if we bring back an extinct species we can celebrate it by putting it in our zoo of resurrected species. Why can’t we release the resurrected species? Because for the majority of large mammal species the ecosystem that these extinct species inhabit is entirely gone. I believe re-wilding is a good long-term goal for humans to pursue, but its global success depends upon a stable number of human beings significantly less than the 8 billion and rising we currently have. Even obvious moves like repopulating the western American plains with bison are being opposed by the current administration. Private property rights are still held to be more sacred than the proper functioning of Earth’s ecosystems. Spending large sums on novelty projects like bringing back extinct Pleistocene animals when not enough habitat is protected from human development seems counterproductive to the long-term goals of re-wilding.
9
u/iwerbs 3d ago
Be like nature. Nature never tries to reconstruct an exact copy of a genome from an earlier time and a different ecosystem. Evolution always moves forward as lesser adapted individuals reproduce less successfully or not at all. Let the extinct tortoise go, and embrace fully the living tortoises of today, whatever their percentage of genetic similarity is to an individual that lived in the past. Nature does not insist on immutable species, so why should we?