Well, with neanderthals the possible benefits go beyond curiosity of how they would look.
It does appear that they would have had similar intelligence to humans, but with crucial differences in behaviour. Being able to study a mind similar to, but not the same as a human’s, could be enormously beneficial in understanding us, and consciousness in general.
Then again it could be useless and we just put some poor hairy guys through batteries of tests their whole lives to learn nothing. But who knows?
Based on the reference source Ecco the Dolphin, trilobites had two behaviours:
pursuing you indefinitely
freaking out – repeatedly flipping their body through one orientation and its mirror-image, in a fraction of a second
Surely for many/most of those species, behavior depends to a large extent on DNA and life experience. Few birds, for example, learn much from their parents.
Sure, it would be nice if we as a species were at a point where we would be willing to re-create the habitats for some extinct species. (In which case I’m sure we’d also be at a point where we’d be willing to do a lot more to preserve the habitats of the species that are still in the wild.) But we aren’t there yet, and won’t be there anytime soon.
But in the meantime, if we can bring back a few currently extinct animals for zoos and whatnot, why not? What’s the downside?
Parrots - a group to which the extinct Carolina Parakeet belongs - do learn from their parents and other birds, from communication calls to how and where to find food sources. There are other such groups as well - as a general rule, birds that are born naked and underdeveloped undergo more learning than birds born fluffy and able to walk, like waterfowl, which depend more on instinct. As a general rule, there are exceptions.
Here’s why : I know the short duration experiments do show that baby animals learn from their parents. However, what about information loss? One animal teaching another is a very lossy process. They don’t have phonetics, or as many layers of abstraction in their brains, or any form of writing. So if the “first colony of the species” has behavior state “S”, then generation 2 might only copy 0.9 * S, and the generation after that loses another 10%, and so on.
This argument also applies to animals spread across the globe geographically.
So if a given species of animals has consistent behavior even with this information loss, you have to conclude that a good chunk of the animals behavior is instinctual and it requires only minimal parental involvement to make it work.
I think you would learn quite a bit about extinct animals behavior with clones. I suspect that if they were placed in a realistic habitat, they would be able to perform a great deal of their wild type behaviors.
I once read in a scientific journal (paper, no cite) that DNA based behavior is limited to early survival actions, suckling, open mouth for momma to stuff food in, slither off and find something yourself. Further on that, the ‘higher’ the life form the less self sufficient it is. Other preprogrammed behavior includes basic fight/flight responses. And of course, basic procreation actions, insert tab A in slot B. The song and dance leading up to the act is learned by watching and imitating the existing adults.
Well, why that would be the case? Why, if it’s possible to encode behaviours, would such encoded behaviours be necessarily restricted to a particular domain/type of problems?
But yeah it’s pretty clearly not true. I was watching just last night a very elaborate mating ritual that a species of spider performs. If a spider were to get near enough to watch, it would likely be eaten by the female (as indeed the male is, when the dance is over).
Also, it occurs to me the claim is self-refuting. The kind of imitation you’re describing; patiently watching a complex sequence and recalling and performing it in the correct situation, would itself be a complex, unlearned behaviour.
Pioneers in the science of “de-extinction,” an American company has announced the births of three pups whose genes resemble those of a species that hasn’t roamed Earth for millennia
Fairly good article explaining the science in layman’s terms.
Definitely a possibility. I’d want a third party lab to compare the pup’s DNA to recovered DNA to get a percentage match before breaking out the champaign.
Well, that’s one of the points that favors “not dire wolf” - DNA has a shelf life.
The half-life of DNA is about half a millennium. So, if you had a 1000 year old sample of human DNA, you might be able to sequence 1/4 of it. After the 13000 years from one of the samples used for the wolves? You might sequence 1 part in over 60 million. So, at best, you can only “compare” a vanishingly small percentage to begin with.
For those “Dire Wolves” that supposedly used fragments of bone? They’d be lucky to get any genes from those at all. These are, instead, “designer” animals made to have features that superficially resemble what we know about the species - something the company itself admits. They’re GMO gray wolves with a catchy PR name.
But that goes back to the OP. The “We can” part is likely not going to happen.
For recent extinctions? It might be possible. The “should” part is still relevant, of course. Possibly we should for some of them, especially the ones most recently extinct.
ETA: Otzi the Iceman may be relevant. Died 5000 years ago and we actually are able to sequence much of his DNA. But he was frozen in ice and remarkably well preserved, slow the degradation of his genetic material, though still making it a real challenge to study. DNA from random bone fragments would not be so well preserved.
Jurassic Park didn’t really have dinosaurs either. InGen just cobbled together a bunch of genetically engineered theme park monsters from bits of random dinosaur & frog DNA and made them look like what people expected dinosaurs to look like.
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” - Dr. Ian Malcolm
I agree those are not dire wolves. The company even named them after characters in the movies, so their motive for this announcement is pretty clear.
But to the “Should we?” question, (checks forum) I am of the opinion we should not, generally. Another quote from Dr. Malcolm:
“This isn’t some species that was obliterated by deforestation or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs had their shot and nature selected them for extinction.”
Dire wolves, for an example, along with most ice-age fauna, died-off long before modern humans came along. However, I leave a little space for extinctions we have caused/are causing today, within the timeframe of modernity, say within the last 500 years (e.g. the dodo and Tasmanian wolf).
