Dear reader,
did you ever see a quagga
or heard of them? Of course not seen it „for real“. They've been
extinct since about 1883. Quaggas have been relatives of plain zebras
today. Although the quagga wasn't white with black stripes, but light
brown with almost no white stripes except on the head and neck. They
have lived in South Africa and have been hunted mostly, because they
were seen by the Dutch settlers as natural competitors of the cows.
Only much later, after the last quagga had died August, 12, 1883 in
the Artis-Zoo in Amsterdam, it was realised just how far the hunt had
gone. By the way, the quagga (Equus quagga quagga) was not a separate
species of zebras, but a subspecies of the plain zebra (equus
quagga).
In 1987 The
Quagga Project was started. The idea is pretty simple: when two
plain zebras with few stripes mate, they (hopefully) get a child with
few stripes and eventually the zebras of the project will then have
so few stripes that they resemble the quagga. These could then be
settled back in South Africa. So a mistake once made over 100 years
ago would, at least in part, be put right. One could argue that a
zebra, which looks like a quagga, because it has few stripes, doesn't
make a real quagga. The people of the Quagga Project actually thought
about that, too, and argue against that on the subpage Criticism
of the Quagga Project. They say that because the quagga is
extinct now, no other specifics other than the reduction of stripes
can be made out. Also the grasses the plain zebras eat today are very
close to those that existed in quagga times and would. So really it
isn't a very strong argument to say that the reduction of stripes
alone will not make a real quagga. You are free give your thoughts on
that in the comments.
The
Quagga Project has a whole bunch of photos with zebras, which
already have visibly fewer stripes already. You can check out the
photos at the following link:
http://www.quaggaproject.org/Quagga-Graphic-Elements/PhotoGallery/PhotoGallery/slide.html
Woolly mammoths were
pretty common in America as well as Eurasia before they went extinct.
Because they have been living and gone extinct in a cold stage, many
remains have been mummified because of the ice and remained
relatively preserved. Maybe you can imagine what some scientists
think of or are actually more or less working on. Correct, the
mammoth would raise from the dead. Similarly to the quagga one
attempt is get close to a mammoth through selection of existing
elephants. Another thought is to use available DNA from mammoths and
use them or even creating the necessary DNA, that is the sperm, to
plant it into a living elephant. The cow elephant then would idially
give birth to a mammoth baby. The anatomy of elephants and other
aspects such as the suspected long gestation period like living
elephants today (which is about 21 to 22 months) would make this very
difficult and would make this a really long and time-consuming
project. To create an artificial egg cell, the chromosome science
isn't quite ready yet and the needed specimens of existing cells of
mammoth findings are too fragmented.
I could sort of understand
to create a quagga. This zebra-quagga would at least live Africa in
an environment close to that of the actual quagga. A mammoth
however... Where should the mammoth live and what from?
Surely it's an exciting
thing, whether it can be possible to recreate animals again. But what
for? To have again what isn't anymore and existed once before? To be
able to say and show that we could and die make it happen? It would
certainly be a sensation and impressive. But I think, it shouldn't be
forgotten that the real natural environment of the animals doesn't
exist anymore. The so called civilised humans will destroy the world
more and more and with it the animals that (still) exist today.
Wouldn't it make more sense, instead of recreating extinct animals,
to make it so that endangered and critically endangered animals live
can live on?
Until next blog,
sarah
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