UNDATED (WKRC) – The last Tasmanian tiger died in captivity in 1936. Nearly 100 years later, scientists believe they are on the edge of reviving the species.
The Tasmanian tiger is a bit of a misnomer, since it’s actually a marsupial that visually resembles a dog. For reference, the average size of a Tasmanian tiger was similar to a modern golden retriever, but with a much longer tail.
It was incorrectly identified as the cause of dead livestock in Tasmania in the 1930’s, leading the government to pay hunters to kill Tasmanian tigers. By the time they realized their mistake, it was too late. The creature went extinct soon after.
Bringing back an entire species from the dead sounds like something from science fiction, so let’s break the science down into two parts: “How?” and “Why?”
How?
Similar to “Jurassic Park”, which warns against this exact type of de-extinction science, the scientists are combining well-preserved Tasmanian tiger DNA with that of a similar animal, the fat-tailed dunnart.
“’Jurassic Park’ is what people think of when they think of de-extinction. But that is not actually what we’re doing. What we’re doing is capitalizing on the fact that evolution is slow,” said Chief Science Officer of Colossal Biosciences, Dr. Beth Shapiro.
Scientists are pulling from various museum samples of Tasmanian tigers for their research, including the skull of a Tasmanian tiger that has been preserved in ethanol for 110 years.
Although the fat-tailed dunnart is much smaller than the Tasmanian tiger, both animals store fat in their tails and share sharp teeth for their carnivorous diet.
Using gene editing, the scientists are attempting to make the DNA code (genome) of the fat-tailed dunnart as similar to the code of the Tasmanian tiger as possible.
The scientists even said they tested some of the DNA replacements on mice, and found that their head shape changed in a way expected for the Tasmanian tiger DNA.
The researchers even believe they could be mere months away from fully completing the first revival.
Why?
In the words of Doctor Ian Malcolm, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
That doesn’t seem to be the case here. The scientists behind this project believe they have a pretty good reason for why they picked the Tasmanian tiger specifically.
While many revived species could throw their ecosystem entirely out of whack, the Tasmanian tiger could actually fix a rapidly spreading problem in the Tasmanian devil population.
A facial tumor disease has killed 80% of the modern Tasmanian devil population, and since “predators typically go after the young, the old and the sick,” Colossal Biosciences’ CEO Ben Lamm said that the presence of the Tasmanian tiger could have stopped the spread of the disease.
Even if it might be too late to save those Tasmanian devils, the reintroduction of another predator into the ecosystem (like the Tasmanian tiger) could prevent the next outbreak.
What’s next?
This is the closest scientists have ever come to actually reviving a dead species, according to the BBC, so there’s not much precedent about next steps.
“It is simply impossible to know what could happen if a species is to ‘come back’ to the wild,” said Dr. Adam Searle, a de-extinction scientist from the University of Nottingham. “The worst-case-scenario here is that the novel organism would directly compete with what little Tasmanian devils remain.”
If the animal’s reintroduction is successful, Colossal Biosciences is looking at reviving the dodo bird and woolly mammoth.
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