{"id":54192,"date":"2025-07-10T13:20:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T13:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/54192\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T13:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T13:20:11","slug":"why-real-de-extinction-is-unlikely-to-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/54192\/","title":{"rendered":"why real \u2018de-extinction\u2019 is unlikely to fly"},"content":{"rendered":"

The announcement<\/a> that New Zealand\u2019s moa nunui (giant moa<\/a>) is the next \u201cde-extinction\u201d target for Colossal Biosciences, in partnership with Canterbury Museum<\/a>, the Ng\u0101i Tahu Research Centre<\/a> and filmmaker Peter Jackson, caused widespread alarm among scientists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This follows the US company\u2019s recreation of a \u201cdire wolf\u201d, which was essentially a genetically engineered grey wolf<\/a>. But that project was probably easy compared to the latest plan to resurrect the moa. <\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s a pipe dream and there are several reasons why. <\/p>\n

Firstly, birds are harder to \u201cde-extinct\u201d than placental mammals. One would need a surrogate egg to bring chicks to term, and for many moa species there are no eggs from living birds big enough to house a developing chick. In this case, artificial eggs would need to be developed. <\/p>\n

Then there is evolutionary history. From my own work<\/a> and the research of others<\/a>, we know the moa is most closely related to the tinamou<\/a>, a small flying bird in South America. <\/p>\n

To get to the common ancestor of the moa and tinamou, you\u2019d have to go back some 60 million years of evolution. That\u2019s a lot of time for mutations to evolve in genes controlling how moa look, that would need to be re-engineered to bring back moa traits.<\/p>\n

The evolutionary history of the palaeognath group<\/a> is even deeper. Formerly known as ratites, this group includes the tinamou and lineages of living flightless birds (emu, kiwi, cassowary, rhea, ostrich) and extinct ones (New Zealand\u2019s moa and Madagascar\u2019s elephant birds). <\/p>\n

Genetically engineering a tinamou or any other birds in this group to create a moa hybrid would be challenging given this deep evolutionary timescale \u2013 certainly much harder than genetically engineering a grey wolf. And in any case, this would not recreate a moa, but merely something that may look like a moa. As one critic put it, it would not have the mauri (life force) of a moa.<\/p>\n

There are no living analogues of moa<\/a> within the palaeongath group. We don\u2019t know whether birds created through de-extinction methods would function like a moa in the ecosystem. <\/p>\n

Moa are unique, even among other flightless birds, in that they had no wings \u2013 all other flightless birds still have remnant wings. As a start, any genetic engineering would need to target regions of the genome that control the expression of genes for wing formation. This could have unintended consequences.<\/p>\n

Working with moa ethically<\/p>\n

I\u2019m involved in an ongoing project<\/a> to sequence high-quality genomes of several species of moa in New Zealand to study their evolutionary history. <\/p>\n

In our conversations with tangata whenua around the country, there has been no support for de-extinction<\/a>. Iwi (tribes) also want moa bone samples and all DNA extracts and sequence data to stay in New Zealand. <\/p>\n

A major question is whether Colossal has undertaken wider engagement. Ng\u0101i Tahu<\/a> is a very large iwi with lots of individual r\u016bnanga<\/a> (tribal councils) throughout the South Island.<\/p>\n

My research team has engaged with individual r\u016bnanga, and we know they are opposed to de-extinction. I would like Colossal, Canterbury Museum and the Ng\u0101i Tahu Research Center to disclose how widely they consulted across Ng\u0101i Tahu. <\/p>\n

The numerous iwi<\/a> at the top of the South Island are also against the de-extinction of the giant moa (or any moa) which also lived in their rohe (region). De-extinction of a giant moa would really need a South Island-wide or even national consensus before going ahead. <\/p>\n

Ecological concerns with de-extinction<\/p>\n

M\u0101ori have expressed longstanding concerns<\/a> about not being involved in discussions about genetic engineering and the potential of bone samples or genetic material going offshore. <\/p>\n

With this announcement, it\u2019s encouraging to see the Ng\u0101i Tahu Research Centre is driving the project and that there are discussions around the need to restore habitat that would be suitable for moa. <\/p>\n

This is a challenge in its own right as there is little left. Parts of the eastern South Island were once covered in mosaics of open forest shrubland that were dominated by kowhai and lancewood<\/a>, which have no analogue today.<\/p>\n

Even if we were to bring back an extinct species and kept individuals in a game reserve, we would need to produce enough (at least 500) to avoid inbreeding and genetic drift (random loss or retention of genes in a population). <\/p>\n

The birds would require sufficient funding for their ongoing conservation. This raises worries that money could be pulled from efforts to save living endangered species, pushing them closer to extinction. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s undeniable the genetic engineering technology Colossal is developing could have real benefits to the conservation of New Zealand\u2019s endangered species. Let\u2019s say we could genetically engineer a k\u0101k\u0101p\u014d<\/a> so it becomes resistant to a disease. That\u2019s perhaps a project worth doing if there was widespread community support<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Investing the money that goes into this project in the conservation of New Zealand\u2019s currently endangered biodiversity would, in my view, be better than bringing back moa as an ecotourism venture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The announcement that New Zealand\u2019s moa nunui (giant moa) is the next \u201cde-extinction\u201d target for Colossal Biosciences, in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":54193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-54192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114829146474919597","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}