Which three of these Ten Animals would yu restore from Extinction?

[That Guy 11200]

Whichever one would 1) have the best chance of survival, given modern conditions (i.e. invasive species in their natural habitat, human activities, etc.) and 2) was the most essential for the health of its particular ecosystem.

 

[Radrook]

Whichever one would 1) have the best chance of survival, given modern conditions (i.e. invasive species in their natural habitat, human activities, etc.) and 2) was the most essential for the health of its particular ecosystem.

Good reasons which should be taken into consideration whenever and if ever we have the means of bringing any of these back. The only one of these an attempt has been made that I am aware of ids he Auroch. not sure if they have totally succeeded or if the results have just been mere approximations.

BTW
If they restore the Dodo they better make sure that it is placed in a very safe place since it is an animal that seems to walk around with a sign on its back saying "I'm here! Eat me!"

 

[Shemjaza]

You know, considering all the slaughtering that we did during WWI and WWII I often wonder whether indeed the past was far more barbarous than our more recent times considered modern. Mankind seems just as capable and as willing to commit atrocities as it did back then albeit with far more technical ability than before. The scary thing about us now is that we are able to terminate all life on Earth if we wanted to or if we are stupid enough to try to cut each others throats and don't really care about the global consequences.

I agree to an extent. I also consider the first half of the twentieth century to be a darker and more barbarous time.

While the world of today has its share of evil, I think we tend to limit ourselves, rather then using our full strength.

As awful as the suffering of the wars in the Middle East are, their death tolls could be captured in a few days off the meat grinders of world war II.

 

[PsychoSarah]

What disadvantage do the other ones have that these choices don't?

A lot of them have a disadvantage in their large size, their environments being encroached on, and possible poaching. Dodos only ever lived on one small island, to which they could easily be reintroduced and protected. That, or to similar controlled environments. Humans have no real reason to hunt them for sport, as the birds were notorious for not trying to avoid humans or hide very much, and they tasted horrible. They died out thanks to the rats introduce on their native island eating their eggs, and the fact that their normal population was very large. Not only that, but the interest in this species would grant it the attention and all the human intervention it could ever need to reestablish itself.

The Great Auk died out in the mid-1800s due to European demand for the feathers, as well as killing for food and fish bait. However, the islands they nested on are still relatively isolated and few in number, so it would be easy to monitor their breeding and limit poaching. The demand for feathers from this species also wouldn't be as high, since making comfortable pillows and beds is far easier in modern times, and the feathers themselves aren't hugely attractive or distinct.

The Passenger pigeon again has the benefit of having its natural habitat in areas controlled by countries that care if species go extinct and have the means to effectively protect them if they were reintroduced. It's natural habitat is far larger than the others, but we use tags to keep track of such animals all the time. This species went extinct because we killed them for food, but no modern restaurant in the US or Canada would dare serve it now, given how much public backlash there would be.

Most of the other animals on your list need huge territories in ecosystems already shrunken significantly, made their homes in areas prone to poaching, and/or would face severe competition from invasive species. If the black rhino was brought back, poachers would quickly make it extinct again. The demand for rhino horn is still huge. Among those I did not pick, the Giant moa would also have a good chance of recovery, I just didn't like it as much as the ones I picked.

 

[Radrook]

I agree to an extent. I also consider the first half of the twentieth century to be a darker and more barbarous time.

While the world of today has its share of evil, I think we tend to limit ourselves, rather then using our full strength.

As awful as the suffering of the wars in the Middle East are, their death tolls could be captured in a few days off the meat grinders of world war II.

Good point. I can't imagine carpet bombing cities in order to kill civilians in the way they did during WWII to Dresden Germany and Tokyo Japan. We are also far more conscious of how animals are treated and even have laws protecting the ones considered endangered. Had it not been for those laws the list of extinct animals would have been far longer than what it is today.

 

[Radrook]

A lot of them have a disadvantage in their large size, their environments being encroached on, and possible poaching. Dodos only ever lived on one small island, to which they could easily be reintroduced and protected. That, or to similar controlled environments. Humans have no real reason to hunt them for sport, as the birds were notorious for not trying to avoid humans or hide very much, and they tasted horrible. They died out thanks to the rats introduce on their native island eating their eggs, and the fact that their normal population was very large. Not only that, but the interest in this species would grant it the attention and all the human intervention it could ever need to reestablish itself.

The Great Auk died out in the mid-1800s due to European demand for the feathers, as well as killing for food and fish bait. However, the islands they nested on are still relatively isolated and few in number, so it would be easy to monitor their breeding and limit poaching. The demand for feathers from this species also wouldn't be as high, since making comfortable pillows and beds is far easier in modern times, and the feathers themselves aren't hugely attractive or distinct.

The Passenger pigeon again has the benefit of having its natural habitat in areas controlled by countries that care if species go extinct and have the means to effectively protect them if they were reintroduced. It's natural habitat is far larger than the others, but we use tags to keep track of such animals all the time. This species went extinct because we killed them for food, but no modern restaurant in the US or Canada would dare serve it now, given how much public backlash there would be.

Most of the other animals on your list need huge territories in ecosystems already shrunken significantly, made their homes in areas prone to poaching, and/or would face severe competition from invasive species. If the black rhino was brought back, poachers would quickly make it extinct again. The demand for rhino horn is still huge. Among those I did not pick, the Giant moa would also have a good chance of recovery, I just didn't like it as much as the ones I picked.

I totally agree. It would be useless to bring them back only to have ravenously materialistic poachers descend on them again or to place them in an environment where they will once more succumb to predation as the Dodo did. Bringing them back just to keep them locked up in zoos is of course unacceptable. It even grates on the conscience of many who visit zoos today and observe the unnatural life that such free-roaming creatures live. Doesn't matter how much we rationalize that it is for their own good it still seems ironic that such animals should be paying for our environmental mistakes in that way.

 

[Radrook]

Ha ha, brilliant! I imagined they'd be much bigger than that though, like Dinornis robustus in your diagram above.

Had that man been on foot he would have been in very serious trouble. Those talons can easily rip a person open and their kick is extremely powerful. The Moas' back was six feet six inches off the ground! So you would indeed be perched much higher than on an ostrich.

South Island giant moa - Wikipedia

An early 20th century reconstruction of a moa hunt.
By Augustus Hamilton - Page 1 of 1000 | Items | National Library of New Zealand, Public Domain, File:Moa mock hunt.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

 

[Radrook]

Most of the other animals on your list need huge territories in ecosystems already shrunken significantly, made their homes in areas prone to poaching, and/or would face severe competition from invasive species. .

Do you consider Stellar's Sea Cow among those unsuitable to be reintroduced?

Steller's sea cow - Wikipedia

 

[Bungle_Bear]

If you're going to bring back the Giant moa you should really bring back Haast's eagle with it. Haast's eagle preyed on Giant moa, so they went extinct as a result of the moa being eaten to extinction by the Maori.

 

[Radrook]

h

If you're going to bring back the Giant moa you should really bring back Haast's eagle with it. Haast's eagle preyed on Giant moa, so they went extinct as a result of the moa being eaten to extinction by the Maori.

So for every animal I restore I should restore it's main predator as well in order to keep it's population in balance?

Haast's eagle - Wikipedia

Haast's eagle

Aerial man-killer
Monsters We Met

....Haast's eagle struck fear into the hearts of the Maori. Haast’s eagle was the largest eagle ever to have lived and the top predator of the time in its ecosystem. Its relatively short wings were designed for flapping flight and not for soaring, allowing for fast, manoeuvrable flight in dense forest. Because of its large size, Haast’s eagle was approaching the upper limit of size for flapping flight – if it had been any bigger it would have had to rely on gliding. It preyed upon the large flightless birds of the time, including various species of moa. Haast's eagle relied upon these flightless birds for food, once they were hunted to extinction then Haast's eagle became extinct soon after.

Scientific name: Harpagornis moorei
BBC Nature - Haast's eagle videos, news and facts

BTW
We got two extinctions for the price of one that time since by taking out the Moa we also managed to take out the largest Eagle ever to exist as well. We unceremoniously put it out of its magnificent misery by 1400! We are very efficient in that area! As long as there is a steady supply of animals we can keep this up indefinitely I guess. If we run out of animals here we might find another supply on another planet where we can enthusiastically start again from where we left off. Otherwise I guess our entertainment will be over.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Do you consider Stellar's Sea Cow among those unsuitable to be reintroduced?

Steller's sea cow - Wikipedia

It would depend on if poachers would be interested in it, which is hard to say. It might be mistaken for whales as well, due to the size.

 

[Bungle_Bear]

So for every animal I restore I should restore it's main predator as well in order to keep it's population in balance?

I didn't say that. I said we should bring it back because it went extinct due to it's food source going extinct. Consider this: if you replace the Giant Moa on your list with Haast's eagle you run into the problem that without its food source it would go extinct again. So you'd have to restore the Giant Moa too. Humans are responsible for both extinctions, you could say they killed two birds with one stone

So it seems reasonable that if you restore one you restore the other.

 

[Radrook]

It would depend on if poachers would be interested in it, which is hard to say. It might be mistaken for whales as well, due to the size.

Strange how the Manatee which is so similar was never decimated in that way.
I mean, look at all that cheddar! Sizzling fat on a grille immediately comes to mind.




Manatee - Wikipedia

By U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey - Photo from U.S. Geological Fact Sheet 010-99; FS-010-99, Public Domain, File:FL fig04.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

 

[Radrook]

I didn't say that. I said we should bring it back because it went extinct due to it's food source going extinct. Consider this: if you replace the Giant Moa on your list with Haast's eagle you run into the problem that without its food source it would go extinct again. So you'd have to restore the Giant Moa too. Humans are responsible for both extinctions, you could say they killed two birds with one stone

So it seems reasonable that if you restore one you restore the other.

Otherwise we might be forced to bring it back just to place them in a zoo which would come across as a kind of selfish cruelty.

BTW
I recently spoke to this woman who told me how she searched all over for her escaped parakeet. She saw it several times among some sparrows and despite her best efforts, it managed to escaped her clutches, fleeing from her as if it had caught sight of Lucifer himself.

She spoke proudly about how she continued trying to snare it in order to place it back in its aviary. It was as if she felt that calling it an aviary made its captivity OK. Seems she felt she was doing the parakeet some kind of compassionate favor.

 

[Radrook]

I only recognize the dodo - I'd pick them just for the cute name alone.

It was also a beautiful animal if the way it was portrayed in that painting is accurate.




By Roelant Savery - http://julianhume.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/History-of-the-dodo-Hume.pdf, Public Domain, File:Edwards' Dodo.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

 

[Radrook]

Like Airpo I am not prepared to view the video just to get the list. So here is my own list:

Homo neanderthalensis
Homo erectus
Australopithecus afarensis
Homo floresiensis
Homo ergaster
Homo antecessor
Homo heidelbergensis
Homo habilis
Homo georgicus
Paranthropus bosei

This would serve two functions. First it would go some way towards atoning for any of these we might have wiped out. Secondly they could explain to the YECs just how wrong they were.

I don't think that YEC would have any trouble with Homo erectus or Neanderthals since they would see them as just different varieties of humans. What they would have trouble with would be the tagging of a whole bunch of monkeys who might be tagged as our ancestors merely because of their ability to bipedal.

 

[Ophiolite]

I don't think that YEC would have any trouble with Homo erectus or Neanderthals since they would see them as just different varieties of humans. What they would have trouble with would be the tagging of a whole bunch of monkeys who might be tagged as our ancestors merely because of their ability to bipedal.

I am pretty certain I only included apes in that list - no monkeys, but I wouldn't be surprised if a YEC did not know the difference between one kind of primate and another kind.

 

[Radrook]

I am pretty certain I only included apes in that list - no monkeys, but I wouldn't be surprised if a YEC did not know the difference between one kind of primate and another kind.

LOL! I used the term "monkey" in a humorous sense. Yes, I am aware of the difference between monkeys and apes.

 

[Ophiolite]

LOL! I used the term "monkey" in a humorous sense. Yes, I am aware of the difference between monkeys and apes.

No, I realise you are. I was referring to the generic, stereotypical YEC. I should also have put a after my comment.

 

[Radrook]

I'll add the Monk Seal, assuming it's the Caribbean Monk Seal.
And the Rino.

Yep, our overfishing its food supply and adding to its predation did the Monk Seal in. It already had the shark as its predator and then we joined forces with it.

Captive Caribbean monk seal, Monachus tropicalis, of unknown sex at the New York Aquarium in ca. 1910. Specimen originally captured from either Arrecife´s Tria´ngulos (Campeche) or Arrecife Alacra´n (Yucatan) in Mexico (Townsend 1909).…
By New York Zoological Society. - http://www.science.smith.edu/msi/pdf/747_Monachus_tropicalis.pdf and Zoological Society bulletin, Public Domain, File:Cms-newyorkzoologicalsociety1910.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

The Caribbean monk seal, West Indian seal or sea wolf (as early explorers referred to it), Neomonachus tropicalis, was a species of seal native to the Caribbean and is now believed to be extinct. The Caribbean monk seals' main predators were sharks and humans.[2] Overhunting of the seals for oil, and overfishing of their food sources, are the established reasons for the seals' extinction.[2] The last confirmed sighting of the Caribbean Monk Seal was in 1952 at Serranilla Bank, between Jamaica and Nicaragua.[3] In 2008 the species was officially declared extinct in the United States of America after an exhaustive search for the seals which lasted for about five years.
Caribbean monk seal - Wikipedia

Well, that's another animal we will never see alive again!


BTW
If we ever become a space faring species then I guess we will need a non-Earth Species Extinction List to help us keep tabs on the human provoked alien species extinction numbers.

After all, human nature isn't going to change just because we acquire more sophisticated technology. WWI and WWII provided ample evidence of that.