Should we try to bring back ice age creatures?

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

A little while ago, the Dire wolf was supposedly resurrected but this is misleading. The animals created didn't have the same genome as a dire wolf; they are grey wolves with some genes from the dire wolf inserted into their genome.

It was once thought it would be easy to reconstruct the whole dire wolf genome using that of the grey wolf as a reference. However, once we actually sequenced dire wolf DNA it was found that they were as closely related to grey wolves as we are to chimpanzees.

But this raises an interesting question: which ice age animals would be the easiest to bring back? Many have discussed mammoths but the most straightforward would be the cave lion. This is because we have found mummified cubs in Siberian permafrost which we could get good DNA from and it's very closely related to the modern lion meaning it would be easy to reconstruct the cave lion's genome using the modern lion as a reference. Once we've done that we could use the reconstructed cave lion genome to bring back the even more closely related American lion (that is if any of you back in the states are keen on having lions the size of brown bears running around).

I ran this idea by some of my buddies back in the states and one who was half Native American said that 11,000 years on, his people still tell horror stories of ice age predators.

[Gwendoline]

Think the idea is to bring back animals that have gone extinct due to human involvement like rhino's, elephants, dodos etc.

Ice age animals have gone extinct due to climate change. If another ice age came then animals similar to dire wolves and American lions would probably evolve fairly quickly. Seemingly when climate disasters happen the animals that are top of the food chain die out first.

If you look at the devastating effects invasive species can do maybe its important to make sure these animals aren't reintroduced to the wild. Like in those jurassic world movies. For instance in Ireland after a mink farm was shut down as the fur trade is ilegal there a group of activists rather than let 1000 minks be destroyed decided to release them into the wild, minks are non native to Ireland and now they are devastating local wildlife with no natural predators. In lough erne an Asian mussel that was released somehow by yachts sailing into it cleaning their water pumps has killed off all the native mussels that only grew in the lake. The effect of this on local fish and bird populations is huge, even changing the color of the water. More obvious cases are Burmese pythons in the florid everglades, rabbits in Australia etc.

[purplepoppy]

The Irish elk could an option. They preferred steppe woodland with open plains but after the iceage thick forests sprang up leading to their decline and extinction. We've cleared most of that woodland now and we're closer to its original iceage state. Genetically its close to the fallow deer which thrives in the UK.

[NaultD]

It looks like a duck quacks like a duck and so on.

They fill a local environmental hole left behind by human intervention so I think it's appropriate for human intervention to refill it.

My first thought to bring back is the amarican Buffalo or bison whatever.

https://images.app.goo.gl/t1eVdMUXJe58bGAR7

Fucking hell look at that. For everyone on the train they pass the time and shoot a dozen let it rot.

[Ad_Quid_Orator]

But the American bison wasn't hunted to extinction.

[NaultD]

Look at the photo vs alive today in commercial domestic farm setting. The difference is like caribou vs reindeer.

Same reason we brought back the dire wolf vs any other wolf.

[AviatorTom]

Only if we have another Ice Age for them to live in... and that doesn't look too likely for the near future.

[exitseven]

No, we should leave Joe Biden wherever he is.

[DrPepper12]

No. I saw pet cemetary

[OldBlu]

It's probably best to not mess with mother nature.

[Gaylordslav]

I already look like Sid