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This might be old news, this one kind of caught my eye.

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I don't even think it's really news.

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It's just something I found on Vice.

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We love Vice, so I thought why not read this one?

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Taito, we asked the math tutor who posts his lessons on Pornhub.

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Why?

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And I was like, yeah, I'd like to know as well.

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Is it because he wants to make sure everybody is sane?

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People should be doing math all the time, even while on Pornhub.

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Exactly, it's because everybody should be doing math constantly.

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And among the trove of wild roleplay and bizarre COVID porn, a bespectacled man clad in a sick

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gray hoodie is an unlikely hit on Pornhub.

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He's a hit, hey?

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Scribbling the mathematical equations on a chalkboard and explaining them in the utmost

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seriousness, the unassuming tutor has carved a niche for himself in the corner of one of

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the world's largest porn sites without even being remotely sexual.

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I'm looking at him right now.

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He is not.

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This isn't some next level take on professor roleplay or the nerdy side of rule 34.

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I don't know what that is.

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No, we've just stumbled upon a tutor's extremely.

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Rule 34 is if it exists, somebody has made porn about it.

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Oh, okay.

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So like somebody teaching math, somebody probably has made porn.

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Okay, yeah, that's a good rule.

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Which they have definitely made porn of a math teacher before.

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Yeah, no, they definitely have.

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That's no question.

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I didn't know that that was a rule and I didn't know it was definite.

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I did not know the actual name of it, but one second, I'm going to look at the actual

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wording to it really quick.

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I didn't know it was the 34th rule.

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If it exists, there is porn of it.

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Rule 34.

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Okay, I mean, that was always just a given.

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I didn't know there's rule to it and I want to know the other rules, but I'll look that

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up on my own time.

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So no, we've just stumbled upon a tutor's extremely earnest attempt to teach math.

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Chun-Yi Chang, 34, who also goes by the stage name Chang-Su is a type of math tutor.

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I'm sorry, I just for Pornhub and having a stage name, you would have to, I guess, but

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we also just got his name.

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So I don't know.

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At Taiwanese math tutor who runs a porn hub account with over 7000 subscribers, his channel

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fronted by a cheeky quote, play hard, study hard, quote, slogan contains hundreds of videos

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of him explaining calculus.

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What a platform.

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His videos have racked up almost 2 million views in total, making him a successful fully

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closed content creator and a space dominated by nudity.

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The titles of his videos often carry porn related keywords such as naked, giant breasts,

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masturbation, 3-7 oral sex.

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A calculated move to make sure his videos would appear in as many keyword searches as

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possible, Chang told me.

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While he has been posting math tutorials on Pornhub for over a year, he went viral after

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catching the attention of a Taiwanese news outlet in October.

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Not sure why they are surfing on Pornhub.

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Since then, he had been interviewed by international publications and even appeared on a live stream

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event on Pornhub's official Instagram account earlier this month.

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Chelsea, to be fair, nobody is going to ask you why were you on Pornhub in the first

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year.

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Because nobody wants to answer that question themselves.

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So yeah, I think it's good.

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I think we can end that here.

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I thought it was interesting that there was someone uploading that there and he thought,

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how can I get the word of math out?

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Why Pornhub?

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It's probably more popular than Facebook, to be honest with you.

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It's probably not out to lunch on that.

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Yeah, and let's face it, people are not engaging with math on Facebook.

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They're engaging with extreme right-wing ideology on Facebook.

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It's true.

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Which seems to be the antithesis of math.

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So really it's more of a pure place to be posting math tutorials.

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The intellectuals are on Pornhub.

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It's true.

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Well, at least the people who yearn to be intellectuals.

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That's their fantasy if you will.

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And at the next place that you find yourself rubbing elbows with someone you might ask if

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they've ever heard of, where's the stage name again?

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And then when they say never heard of them, they say, wait, what are you doing on Pornhub?

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Yeah, James.

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I'm doing that.

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The only place I can find is lectures.

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And with that, I think we can get on with this episode.

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Okay, we can.

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From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe.

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Hello, and welcome to Journey to the Fringe.

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You're welcome.

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I assume at some point one of you at least has said thank you for making this.

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Not necessarily to us, but somebody probably has.

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So it just needs to be said at some point.

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We are your humble and clearly thanked hosts, Taylor and Chelsea.

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And today we are going to actually answer a viewer email.

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Now we received an email from a viewer by the name of Nikola who had questions about,

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I wouldn't say questions.

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She was talking about an article that she has seen recently about the cloning of a woolly

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mammoth and that we are very close to actually having woolly mammoths back in the wild.

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She thought we should cover this.

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And I said, well, this is not back to her, but in my mind, I said this and it led me

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to making an entire episode about.

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So technically you are saying it back to her.

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So I am kind of saying it back to her.

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You're welcome.

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You can listen.

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Yes.

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What I am saying is that although that part of the story might in fact be too mainstream

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to be considered a fringe topic.

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The overarching theme of what you're talking about, the idea of de-extincting an animal

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may in fact be fringe enough for us to do a topic on.

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So today I bring you the episode of de-extincting.

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I'm going to talk about what it is, specifically what it's not, and then pros and cons and

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theorized animals that we would bring back from extinction.

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I'll love them, right?

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All of them, yes.

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Every single one.

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Specifically the dinosaurs.

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First, we're going to put them on an island.

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Oh shit, I forgot about those guys.

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Boy was I wrong.

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And surprisingly that is going to come up because de-extincting is actually a lot like

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what actually happens in Jurassic Park.

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I think people have a wrong idea of what happens in Jurassic Park.

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But we're going to start with de-extincting.

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What is it not?

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Well, there's something that actually happens quite a lot out in the world and it's called

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rewilding.

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Chelsea, have you ever heard of rewilding?

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No, I could guess about it, but let's not do that.

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What do you think rewilding is?

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I would think that it would be like rescuing a herd animal and then putting it back into

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the environment.

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Okay, well you're not that far off.

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Rewilding is reintroducing a species to an environment where it no longer exists, but

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did at some point and still exists somewhere else in the world.

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Is that not dangerous to do though?

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Because you see all this stuff about like Japanese beetle, specifically in this area.

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Yes, in those specific scenarios, Chelsea, those species never existed in that area,

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nor did we think, oh, we just need to put this here and we're going to be okay.

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So it's like back into an area that it used to be.

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That it used to exist.

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That it has been.

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Okay.

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It's not an invasive species.

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No, it's not an invasive species at all.

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The two most common and historical examples of this that you can see out in the world,

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we'll talk about this one a ton, the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in

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California, which reestablished the ecosystem and it did a huge amount to make it a more

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healthy ecosystem.

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And then closer to home for us, the reintroduction of bison to North America through Elk Island

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National Park.

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Oh, I had no idea.

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So bison completely extinct in North America.

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They reintroduced Siberian or Russian bisons to North America through Elk Island National

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Park in the early 1900s with Elk Island National Park actually being also the first national

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parking.

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I had no idea about any of this and I grew up in my backyard.

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So when we're talking about de-extincting, that would not be considered de-extincting

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because that is taking an animal that does exist and putting it back in somewhere where

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it did exist, but we're not bringing something back from extinction.

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We're just reintroducing what is not either.

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Well surprisingly enough, when I'm talking about bringing a species back from extinction,

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it's not cloning either because when we're talking about cloning, there are actually

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a lot of negatives about it, specifically that DNA only has a half life of about 500

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years and it breaks down incredibly fast and it's actually really hard to get in whole

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DNA.

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Generally, when we're looking at a genome of a species, you're taking many different chunks

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of DNA that you found and trying to put a puzzle together like finding bones to a dinosaur,

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trying to build a structure to it.

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That sounds hard.

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Yeah, it's even harder than building a dinosaur from bones.

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And this is actually a lot like Jurassic Park because in Jurassic Park, they weren't cloning

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fucking dinosaurs either.

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Go rewatch the movie.

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The reason they brought paleontologists in is because they were genetically re-engineering

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dinosaurs from existing animals and they wanted to be able to say paleontologists agreed

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these were dinosaurs.

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So they brought paleontologists in to trick them into thinking they were dinosaurs.

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They just wanted that agreement.

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But they were mixing it with something else.

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They are saying that they get the DNA from mosquitoes for millions of years ago, but

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that DNA would be too decayed to actually use.

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But I'm sure they were mixing it with something or maybe I would just be.

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No, they were using the embryos of frogs.

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But what they actually did was genetically back engineer animals that already existed

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to look like dinosaurs.

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And he brought in paleontologists because he wanted somebody to sound off on it and say,

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yes, these are tried and true dinosaurs without telling them that they were back engineered.

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Oh, I missed that part.

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Yeah, it's a behind the scenes kind of story to it all.

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Rewatch it.

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It makes sense when you know that DNA cannot survive millions of years.

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But much like those fake dinosaurs, these also would not be clones or any actual relation

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to the species that they would be coming from.

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If we're trying to de-extinct an animal, what we would actually be using is CRISPR or gene

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editing technology from the closest genetic relation surviving to an extinct animal and

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then implanting an embryo with these genetically altered DNA to be born as that species.

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And as I found from somebody who actually explained this, there are four steps to de-extinct.

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First in silico, you need to sequence the full genome of extinct animal into digital

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data.

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Then you need to go to in vitro editing the important genes of extinct animals into a

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living reproductive cell of its nearest living relative.

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And then three, you need to edit reproductive cells to create living proxies of the extinct

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animal and four, put it into the wild, grow the proxy animal population with captive breeding

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and eventually release them to take up their old ecological role in the wild.

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So that's at the end of the day, what the extinction is, literally bring a species back

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from extinction by creating a freak baby that you can throw back into its spot.

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Okay.

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That makes sense, Chelsea.

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I mean, not naturally, but I can grasp what you're saying.

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Freak babies always make sense.

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About the freak babies.

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I'm sure you have questions about this, specifically when you're talking about the beetle, like

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why the hell would we want to introduce species back into an environment that they don't exist

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in, right?

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Yes and no.

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I'm sure you're asking that question.

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I mean, when we're extincting something, I mean, things do come and go naturally.

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When you're looking at what humans have done to speed up that part, a big part of a natural

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process is missing and it kind of has a domino effect on other species.

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So yes, I would say I could see why you would want to reintroduce it to introduce that balance

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back in, but why must we do it with the giant man eating spiders?

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There's plenty of smaller spiders that we could reintroduce.

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And also we shouldn't talk too much about spiders because I know there's an arachnophobe

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that listens to us a lot.

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We should at least allow them to listen to most of our episodes.

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So that's the last time I will mention spiders in this episode.

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I can't guarantee Chelsea won't, but they don't come up on my end and I'm the one reading

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this script.

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I'll try my best, okay?

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One of the big pros to de-extincting species is the fact that a lot of the species that

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we kill, whether accidental or intentionally or have gone extinct in the last 500 years,

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are what we call keystone species.

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What's a keystone species?

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Well, I found a kind of an explanation to that from a website, rewildingeurope.com.

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I'm just going to go through this description.

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Every species plays a role in nature and all species are part of the web of life.

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But just as in the theater or in film, some species play more important roles punching

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above their weight when it comes to natural functions, structures and processes.

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Keystone species have low functional redundancies, explains Raquel Figuera, rewilding Europe's

239
00:13:29,680 --> 00:13:31,160
head of rewilding.

240
00:13:31,160 --> 00:13:35,600
Quote, this means that when populations of these species decline or disappear, there

241
00:13:35,600 --> 00:13:40,160
are very few or no other species that can fulfill their role.

242
00:13:40,160 --> 00:13:42,960
Ecosystems then degrade and sometimes completely collapse.

243
00:13:42,960 --> 00:13:43,960
End quote.

244
00:13:43,960 --> 00:13:47,760
Animals like the sea otter along the Pacific coast of North America and the wolf in Yellowstone

245
00:13:47,760 --> 00:13:51,760
National Park are classic examples of keystone species.

246
00:13:51,760 --> 00:13:56,880
By restoring a trophic cascade, the reintroduction of the wolf in Yellowstone in 1995 resulted

247
00:13:56,880 --> 00:14:02,320
in the return of certain animals and plant species, the restraint of others and stimulated

248
00:14:02,320 --> 00:14:05,720
the recovery of a richer, more balanced ecosystem.

249
00:14:05,720 --> 00:14:09,840
Keystone species not only exert their benefit and affects downward from the top of the food

250
00:14:09,840 --> 00:14:14,200
chain, such as with wolves and lynx, but upwards or in the bottom, such as with beavers and

251
00:14:14,200 --> 00:14:15,200
rabbits.

252
00:14:15,200 --> 00:14:19,760
A wide range of organisms, including plants and fungi, can actually be considered keystone

253
00:14:19,760 --> 00:14:22,600
species as well, although the majority are animals.

254
00:14:22,600 --> 00:14:27,760
Raquel Figuera is keen to stress that restoring or encouraging the comeback of keystone species

255
00:14:27,760 --> 00:14:30,320
isn't just about boosting the natural diversity.

256
00:14:30,320 --> 00:14:35,480
Quote, fully intact, complex ecosystems perform many essential functions, purifying air and

257
00:14:35,480 --> 00:14:40,400
water, turning decaying matter into nutrients, preventing erosion and flooding, mitigating

258
00:14:40,400 --> 00:14:43,400
climate change and enhancing people's well-being.

259
00:14:43,400 --> 00:14:48,440
She explains, quote, humans need keystone species to maintain the health and resilience

260
00:14:48,440 --> 00:14:50,240
of the ecosystem that support us.

261
00:14:50,240 --> 00:14:55,800
And that's why a lot of the species that we're going to look at are keystone species, or

262
00:14:55,800 --> 00:15:00,840
at least have some sort of function that cannot be met by other animals in the environment.

263
00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:05,080
And that's why we're looking at actually just bringing straight back this animal and

264
00:15:05,080 --> 00:15:10,800
not looking to say another animal that fills that role in another ecosystem, which as we

265
00:15:10,800 --> 00:15:14,600
talked about, might end up being an invasive species and completely fucking everything

266
00:15:14,600 --> 00:15:15,600
over.

267
00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:16,600
Makes sense.

268
00:15:16,600 --> 00:15:18,760
And an example of this that will come up eventually, well, you know what?

269
00:15:18,760 --> 00:15:23,040
I'll bring it up when it comes up, but it is an example of the keystone doing its work.

270
00:15:23,040 --> 00:15:29,560
Part of the work is, like they said, filtering water, making sure decaying masses are decomposing,

271
00:15:29,560 --> 00:15:34,440
and also making sure that species that they would hunt or be their prey stay healthy or

272
00:15:34,440 --> 00:15:36,160
can maintain their health.

273
00:15:36,160 --> 00:15:39,120
Other thing that this will do, it would be really fucking cool.

274
00:15:39,120 --> 00:15:42,440
Like I don't know about you, but I want to see a fucking movie now.

275
00:15:42,440 --> 00:15:46,520
I don't know about you, but personally, they're like one of the coolest animal that has existed

276
00:15:46,520 --> 00:15:47,840
since dinosaurs.

277
00:15:47,840 --> 00:15:49,720
Yeah, that'd be cool.

278
00:15:49,720 --> 00:15:54,160
But I feel like wouldn't that have implications for this day and age?

279
00:15:54,160 --> 00:15:55,840
Well, don't worry, we're going to talk more.

280
00:15:55,840 --> 00:15:59,040
It will also help with biodiversity.

281
00:15:59,040 --> 00:16:03,480
Seeing as how we are currently going through a mass extinction event, we are going through

282
00:16:03,480 --> 00:16:08,600
the six mass extinction event, at least according to most biologists, where we are losing at

283
00:16:08,600 --> 00:16:13,240
least like 60% of species over 100 years or so.

284
00:16:13,240 --> 00:16:15,400
It's just happening as shitty as hell.

285
00:16:15,400 --> 00:16:18,520
And hey, maybe we can fix that a little bit by bringing some stuff back.

286
00:16:18,520 --> 00:16:19,520
It's true.

287
00:16:19,520 --> 00:16:21,800
I mean, that's not a wrong point to me.

288
00:16:21,800 --> 00:16:24,320
We also have a lot of human guilt.

289
00:16:24,320 --> 00:16:25,880
Like talk about the dodo.

290
00:16:25,880 --> 00:16:27,400
The dodo didn't do shit.

291
00:16:27,400 --> 00:16:29,600
It was happy to see this new friend.

292
00:16:29,600 --> 00:16:32,280
It wanted to give hugs and we shot them all.

293
00:16:32,280 --> 00:16:36,840
They don't even taste good, at least according to the historical records of the time.

294
00:16:36,840 --> 00:16:38,240
We literally just shot them all.

295
00:16:38,240 --> 00:16:40,760
It's not like the turtles from the Galapagos.

296
00:16:40,760 --> 00:16:41,760
They're not fucking turtles.

297
00:16:41,760 --> 00:16:42,760
No, we're near turtles.

298
00:16:42,760 --> 00:16:46,040
We're near turtles, yes, where you couldn't even get a sample back because they were

299
00:16:46,040 --> 00:16:47,520
too damn delicious.

300
00:16:47,520 --> 00:16:48,720
Yeah, that's part of it.

301
00:16:48,720 --> 00:16:50,360
It's just the guilt.

302
00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:56,480
People feel bad and it's weird that we can attach this whole thing to the last of a species

303
00:16:56,480 --> 00:17:02,280
being in existence or the fact that we had a hand solely in something no longer existing

304
00:17:02,280 --> 00:17:03,280
on Earth.

305
00:17:03,280 --> 00:17:04,280
It does happen.

306
00:17:04,280 --> 00:17:08,240
You see these go extinct all the time, but the fact that we played a role in some of these

307
00:17:08,240 --> 00:17:10,280
really makes us want to bring them back.

308
00:17:10,280 --> 00:17:11,440
Well, I have guilt as well.

309
00:17:11,440 --> 00:17:12,440
I have guilt.

310
00:17:12,440 --> 00:17:13,440
I feel bad for the world, yeah.

311
00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:14,440
We did it.

312
00:17:14,440 --> 00:17:17,040
I don't feel particularly responsible for it.

313
00:17:17,040 --> 00:17:19,480
I do have some guilt about it, yes.

314
00:17:19,480 --> 00:17:21,720
But there are also cons about this.

315
00:17:21,720 --> 00:17:23,320
It might fix ecosystems.

316
00:17:23,320 --> 00:17:25,280
It might increase biodiversity.

317
00:17:25,280 --> 00:17:27,760
But again, like I said, these are freak babies.

318
00:17:27,760 --> 00:17:30,520
We're not actually bringing species back.

319
00:17:30,520 --> 00:17:33,960
We're giving an iteration of something that we think is close to it.

320
00:17:33,960 --> 00:17:38,000
We would never actually be able to bring these non-freak babies back.

321
00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:39,840
I have a feeling about it.

322
00:17:39,840 --> 00:17:42,120
I can't prove it or anything.

323
00:17:42,120 --> 00:17:45,960
But I just feel like it would go wrong because it's not nature.

324
00:17:45,960 --> 00:17:47,680
It's because you watch Jurassic Park.

325
00:17:47,680 --> 00:17:48,680
Don't lie to yourself.

326
00:17:48,680 --> 00:17:52,120
It very well could be because I watched Jurassic Park.

327
00:17:52,120 --> 00:17:56,080
Those electric fences won't last.

328
00:17:56,080 --> 00:17:59,120
Newman is going to be put in charge and Newman can't be trusted.

329
00:17:59,120 --> 00:18:00,120
We know that.

330
00:18:00,120 --> 00:18:02,000
It's one thing I know about Newman.

331
00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:03,360
It might be from Jurassic Park.

332
00:18:03,360 --> 00:18:06,440
I can't pinpoint the exact reason.

333
00:18:06,440 --> 00:18:08,440
But yeah.

334
00:18:08,440 --> 00:18:12,240
Who knows for sure what Jurassic Park says.

335
00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:13,240
It's true.

336
00:18:13,240 --> 00:18:14,240
Yeah.

337
00:18:14,240 --> 00:18:19,760
It seems like, especially like to fix ecosystems, having a keystone species back in there would

338
00:18:19,760 --> 00:18:22,960
fix them or at least slowly go in the right direction.

339
00:18:22,960 --> 00:18:29,080
However, there are much better ways to spend money to fix the environment because you got

340
00:18:29,080 --> 00:18:34,920
to remember this would be putting into a lab and guessing and checking, doing experiments

341
00:18:34,920 --> 00:18:40,520
with things like say a woolly mammoth that has a two year minimum gestational period is

342
00:18:40,520 --> 00:18:44,280
going to be a long ass time before you see anything come out of this.

343
00:18:44,280 --> 00:18:45,800
I mean the logic is there.

344
00:18:45,800 --> 00:18:47,000
I can't argue with that.

345
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:48,000
I would prefer it.

346
00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:49,000
Yeah.

347
00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:52,120
So if you're really doing this for an environmental standpoint, there might be a better place

348
00:18:52,120 --> 00:18:54,840
to spend your hundreds of millions of dollars.

349
00:18:54,840 --> 00:18:58,400
Next up there may actually be a negative impact on the ecosystem.

350
00:18:58,400 --> 00:18:59,400
Yes.

351
00:18:59,400 --> 00:19:01,760
These would be keystone species that we're trying to reintroduce.

352
00:19:01,760 --> 00:19:07,160
But you got to remember they went extinct and these ecosystems continued on without them.

353
00:19:07,160 --> 00:19:09,880
Sometimes for hundreds, maybe even a thousand years.

354
00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:14,400
And probably made up for them at that point and made new keystone creatures.

355
00:19:14,400 --> 00:19:15,400
Exactly.

356
00:19:15,400 --> 00:19:21,320
Either new keystones came up or the prey that they fed on have new predators against them

357
00:19:21,320 --> 00:19:25,000
or just the environment has grown since then.

358
00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:30,400
So how are we supposed to know that this would actually fix it or just cause problems in

359
00:19:30,400 --> 00:19:33,000
the long term by adding a species back?

360
00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:37,880
Also these freak babies, I don't exactly know how they plan on just reintroducing them into

361
00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:38,880
the environment.

362
00:19:38,880 --> 00:19:43,600
You can't just put a baby into the environment and say, look, you're top of the food chain.

363
00:19:43,600 --> 00:19:44,600
Go do shit.

364
00:19:44,600 --> 00:19:46,760
Isn't necessarily going to work.

365
00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:47,760
Yeah.

366
00:19:47,760 --> 00:19:48,760
Would they know?

367
00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:52,480
These things don't necessarily know how to do what they were doing or wouldn't have

368
00:19:52,480 --> 00:19:58,520
the parental training or the instincts to be able to necessarily take on that role again.

369
00:19:58,520 --> 00:20:00,000
That could be a comedy.

370
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:01,000
Yeah.

371
00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:02,000
A fish out of water mammoth.

372
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:03,000
Yeah.

373
00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:09,000
Like a human trying to teach like a alpha predator how to be an alpha predator.

374
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:14,800
These freak babies are likely destined for generations of cages while we try to make

375
00:20:14,800 --> 00:20:17,720
sure that they're ready to go back into the wild.

376
00:20:17,720 --> 00:20:19,080
Oh, that sounds awful.

377
00:20:19,080 --> 00:20:24,680
And then the last thing, this is more of like a philosophical thing, but like by being able

378
00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:30,760
to de-expink species or at least bring this up as a topic, it might actually dampen the

379
00:20:30,760 --> 00:20:33,320
perception of extinction.

380
00:20:33,320 --> 00:20:38,880
Whereas if a species actually is gone forever, people might not see that necessarily as a

381
00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:43,200
negative thing with us being able to de-extinct it in the future at some time.

382
00:20:43,200 --> 00:20:44,560
Oh, that's true.

383
00:20:44,560 --> 00:20:50,080
So the actual cause of preservation might lose traction, especially if you have the option

384
00:20:50,080 --> 00:20:52,360
of de-extincting or preserving a species.

385
00:20:52,360 --> 00:20:53,680
Probably the best point of all yet.

386
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:56,680
Especially with one sounding way fucking cooler than the other.

387
00:20:56,680 --> 00:20:57,680
Yeah.

388
00:20:57,680 --> 00:21:02,520
And it's a dangerous thought having people be like, it's okay, we'll just bring it back.

389
00:21:02,520 --> 00:21:04,840
But those are the pros and cons that I've seen.

390
00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:06,840
There is a case to be made either way.

391
00:21:06,840 --> 00:21:11,360
I definitely see more pros on the con side.

392
00:21:11,360 --> 00:21:12,360
What?

393
00:21:12,360 --> 00:21:13,800
There's a better way to say that.

394
00:21:13,800 --> 00:21:16,600
I see more cons than pros to this.

395
00:21:16,600 --> 00:21:20,440
With that said, I do want to make a few points that we'll move forward with because I'm going

396
00:21:20,440 --> 00:21:24,920
to talk about the species now that we're at least looking at de-extincting.

397
00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:30,160
And I want you to remember that when we're looking at this, you need a close relative

398
00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:34,560
that's still alive so that we can de-extinct through that.

399
00:21:34,560 --> 00:21:40,080
So not everything is actually a good candidate for de-extinction, particularly if it went

400
00:21:40,080 --> 00:21:45,960
extinct too long ago, either because we don't have any DNA around it or two, we don't have

401
00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:49,600
any close relatives that would be able to support the gestational period.

402
00:21:49,600 --> 00:21:51,160
I'm making sense.

403
00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:56,160
Because gestation is a very weird thing that is super finicky between species, and that's

404
00:21:56,160 --> 00:21:59,120
why we can't mate with everything.

405
00:21:59,120 --> 00:22:00,120
Just kind of a simple.

406
00:22:00,120 --> 00:22:01,120
I wouldn't want to.

407
00:22:01,120 --> 00:22:02,120
That's...

408
00:22:02,120 --> 00:22:03,120
Yeah, fair enough.

409
00:22:03,120 --> 00:22:06,120
But we're all 34.

410
00:22:06,120 --> 00:22:09,360
What about the thylacine?

411
00:22:09,360 --> 00:22:11,160
Don't worry, we'll talk about the thylacine.

412
00:22:11,160 --> 00:22:17,960
So without further ado, we shall go through the proposed candidates for de-extinction.

413
00:22:17,960 --> 00:22:20,080
This is not an exhaustive list.

414
00:22:20,080 --> 00:22:21,960
There are definitely more out there.

415
00:22:21,960 --> 00:22:27,120
These however are the most common or things that have at least had plans already put in

416
00:22:27,120 --> 00:22:32,040
action or at least have money being raised for their de-extinction.

417
00:22:32,040 --> 00:22:36,320
Keep in mind, we are now going to learn that there are different kinds of de-extinction

418
00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:38,000
as we go through these.

419
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:41,680
So to start it off, we have the Pyrenean ibics.

420
00:22:41,680 --> 00:22:45,480
So the Pyrenean ibics is a goat in Spain.

421
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:49,520
It was a subspecies of the Spanish ibics that lived in the Iberian Peninsula.

422
00:22:49,520 --> 00:22:53,560
While it was abundant through medieval times, overhunting in the 19th and 20th century led

423
00:22:53,560 --> 00:22:54,960
to its demise.

424
00:22:54,960 --> 00:23:01,400
In 1999, only a single female named Celia was left alive in Ordessa National Park.

425
00:23:01,400 --> 00:23:05,240
Scientists capture her, took a tissue sample from her ear, collared her, and then released

426
00:23:05,240 --> 00:23:09,720
her back into the wild where she lived until she was found dead in 2000.

427
00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:12,480
Having been crushed by a fallen tree.

428
00:23:12,480 --> 00:23:15,480
No!

429
00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:18,480
Anyone can imagine being the last to see her.

430
00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:20,480
That was the sadest thing ever.

431
00:23:20,480 --> 00:23:21,480
And that's how it was.

432
00:23:21,480 --> 00:23:22,480
I didn't even move out of the way of the tree.

433
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:24,480
And that was the same ear they captured her.

434
00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:25,480
Okay, can't fuck this up.

435
00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:27,480
I'm the last of my species.

436
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:28,480
Oh no.

437
00:23:28,480 --> 00:23:35,400
In 2003, scientists used the tissue sample to attempt to clone Celia and resurrect extinct

438
00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:36,400
subspecies.

439
00:23:36,400 --> 00:23:41,800
Despite having successfully transferred nuclei from her cells into domestic goat egg cells

440
00:23:41,800 --> 00:23:45,360
and impregnating 208 female goats, only one came to term.

441
00:23:45,360 --> 00:23:51,000
The ibex baby that was born had a lung defect and lived for only 7 minutes before suffocating.

442
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:54,000
I was glad you didn't say it was a bio tree though.

443
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:57,000
It was also killed by a tree.

444
00:23:57,000 --> 00:23:58,000
It's genetic.

445
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:02,000
Nevertheless, this is considered a triumph in de-extinction.

446
00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:04,920
It is considered the first in de-extinction attempt.

447
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:08,960
A problem to be faced in addition to the main challenges of reproduction of a mammal by

448
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:15,160
cloning is that only females now can be reproduced by cloning the female individual Celia and

449
00:24:15,160 --> 00:24:18,560
no males exist for those females to reproduce with.

450
00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:23,040
This could potentially be addressed by breeding male female clones with the closely related

451
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:27,600
southeastern Spanish ibex and gradually creating a hybrid animal that will eventually bear

452
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:32,560
more resemblance to the Pyrenean ibex than the southeastern Spanish ibex.

453
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:37,000
So that's kind of a bit of the problem that you run into when you only have certain genetics

454
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:38,000
to work with.

455
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:42,240
I think they'll want to reintroduce it in at least a more arid or desert area with less

456
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:45,360
trees just for the safety of the species.

457
00:24:45,360 --> 00:24:46,360
But I mean they do what they need to.

458
00:24:46,360 --> 00:24:50,800
It was just the bad luck of the one that was left not the entire species.

459
00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:55,440
I know but that's the only sample you have to work with so who's to say?

460
00:24:55,440 --> 00:24:56,440
Who's to say?

461
00:24:56,440 --> 00:24:59,240
We don't know that they weren't all waved out that way.

462
00:24:59,240 --> 00:25:03,240
Next up, Chelsea this is one of my favorite animals that went extinct, the oryx.

463
00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:04,600
The protocow.

464
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:09,520
It was widespread across Eurasia, North Africa and the Indian subcontinent during the Pleistocene

465
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:13,080
but only the European oryx survived in historical times.

466
00:25:13,080 --> 00:25:18,200
The species is heavily featured in European cave paintings such as Lescou and Cheveux

467
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:22,040
in France and was still widespread during the Roman era.

468
00:25:22,040 --> 00:25:26,760
Following the fall of the Roman Empire over hunting of the oryx by nobility causes population

469
00:25:26,760 --> 00:25:32,200
to dwindle to a single population in Jack-de-Roe forests in Poland where the last wild one

470
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:34,160
died in 1627.

471
00:25:34,160 --> 00:25:36,400
For this I actually blame on the Caesars.

472
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:41,240
Julie Caesar's actually quoted as saying like only the strongest and worthiest warriors

473
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:42,920
can take down an oryx.

474
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:46,560
So like the nobility always want to prove themselves by taking one down.

475
00:25:46,560 --> 00:25:50,760
That just became common with the nobility in the later years and that's why they're all

476
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:51,760
gone.

477
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:52,760
Okay.

478
00:25:52,760 --> 00:25:57,960
However, because the oryx is ancestral to most modern cattle breeds like we bred animal

479
00:25:57,960 --> 00:25:59,840
husbandry down from the oryx.

480
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:02,880
It's just a giant cow that is really hard to handle.

481
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:05,920
That's why we tried to like calm it down through cows.

482
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:12,040
And also that's probably why the Romans chose to show that animal whose boss become noble.

483
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:16,920
Yeah, but because it is ancestral to cattle breeds, it is possible for it to be brought

484
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:20,160
back through selective back breeding to de-extinct.

485
00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:25,080
So instead of it being done through cloning, this would actually be because we have its

486
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:27,200
children through a different species.

487
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:33,080
We can back breed trying to get the genetic traits to show an oryx and reintroduce it into

488
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:34,080
the wild.

489
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:35,080
I mean, isn't that good enough?

490
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:37,560
And that at the end of the day is a much more natural way.

491
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:42,840
And I think would actually show a more proper oryx being reintroduced to the wild.

492
00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:45,080
I don't know if you feel that way as well.

493
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:47,520
Natural breeding seems like a more right way to do it.

494
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:51,720
Now that it's come up, of course that seems more natural because then it's going to happen

495
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:52,720
more gradually.

496
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:54,560
It's not reintroducing something.

497
00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:59,120
It's breeding something that's already here, so it's going to be more successful, I would

498
00:26:59,120 --> 00:27:00,120
say.

499
00:27:00,120 --> 00:27:01,120
That's what we do with Todd.

500
00:27:01,120 --> 00:27:02,120
Exactly.

501
00:27:02,120 --> 00:27:03,120
And this has been attempted.

502
00:27:03,120 --> 00:27:07,880
The first attempt at this was by Heinz and Lutz Heck using modern cattle breeds, which

503
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:15,320
resulted in the creation of probably the P.G.ist of evil villain animalry, the Heck cattle.

504
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:18,360
This breed has been introduced in nature for serfs across Europe.

505
00:27:18,360 --> 00:27:21,600
However, it differs strongly from oryx and physical characteristics.

506
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:25,240
And some modern attempts claim to try to create an animal that is nearly identical to the

507
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:28,000
oryx and morphology behavior and even genetics.

508
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:31,680
There are several projects that aim to create a cattle breed similar to the oryx through

509
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:36,480
selectively breeding primitive cattle breeds over a course of 20 years create a self-sufficient

510
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:42,440
bovine grazer in herds of at least 150 animals in rewilded nature areas across Europe.

511
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:46,000
For example, the Taurus program and the Taurus project.

512
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:49,040
And Taurus in the sky is based on the oryx.

513
00:27:49,040 --> 00:27:52,720
So there are actually several different projects to bring them back.

514
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:56,680
This organization is partnered with the organization of rewilding Europe to help restore balance

515
00:27:56,680 --> 00:27:57,760
to European nature.

516
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:02,880
A competing project to recreate the oryx is the Oryx project by the True Nature Foundation,

517
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:07,360
which aims to recreate the oryx through a more efficient breeding strategy and through

518
00:28:07,360 --> 00:28:08,640
genome editing.

519
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:12,760
So there is another one that's saying like we can do this faster by editing back to what

520
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:17,320
the oryx will be in order to decrease the number of generations of breeding needed and

521
00:28:17,320 --> 00:28:21,760
the ability to quickly eliminate undesired traits from the oryx like cattle population.

522
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:27,480
It is hoped that oryx like cattle will re-invigorate European nature by restoring its ecological

523
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:31,800
role as a keystone species and bring back biodiversity that disappeared following the

524
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:37,720
decline of European megafauna as well as helping to bring new economic opportunities related

525
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:39,480
to European wildlife viewing.

526
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:41,920
See that whole statement kind of worries me.

527
00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:44,760
I liked how it started out with the head cattle.

528
00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:47,880
Although that one might turn into an evil villain plot.

529
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:51,280
The genetic engineering and the second half of that don't work.

530
00:28:51,280 --> 00:28:57,040
Yeah and it just seems like someone not having patience to not see it in their lifetime potentially.

531
00:28:57,040 --> 00:28:59,360
See like reap the what they're.

532
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:02,040
Or you know investors want to see bang for their life.

533
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:04,560
Yeah they want to see progress happening.

534
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:09,800
Yeah so there's no way to know that that's what's gonna happen if you bring the oryx

535
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:10,800
back anyway.

536
00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:13,200
Yeah at the end of the day because they've been gone for 400 years.

537
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:17,720
They could wreak havoc on the ecosystem because it's not been there and it might wipe everything

538
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:18,720
else out.

539
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:22,480
That's the state with everything else that we're talking about the extinct in general.

540
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:26,120
The other thing that we didn't even talk about beforehand but we probably should at

541
00:29:26,120 --> 00:29:30,240
this point it will have to actually deal with modern day humans.

542
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,760
Like we don't like things being on our property when they're small.

543
00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:37,760
Yeah and maybe it comes back and wipes us out.

544
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:38,760
We don't know.

545
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:39,760
We don't know for sure.

546
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:40,760
That's true.

547
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:41,760
Why did we give it laser eyes?

548
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:43,480
The genes were just there.

549
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:44,480
It seemed convenient.

550
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:49,960
The new ones come with laser eyes specifically to kill humans.

551
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:50,960
Modern day humans.

552
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:52,840
They don't want to go extinct again.

553
00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:54,600
Okay next up the quagga.

554
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:56,960
It's a subspecies of the plain zebra.

555
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:01,200
This one is a actually quite literally much more of a plain zebra because only half of

556
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:02,800
it actually has stripes on it.

557
00:30:02,800 --> 00:30:05,640
The other half is like donkey-ish.

558
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:06,640
Like no stripes.

559
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:08,640
What the fuck is wrong with this animal?

560
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:12,400
The printer ran out of toner, they just went all black down the back.

561
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:14,000
Why do we want to bring this one back?

562
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:15,000
We'll get to that.

563
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:16,000
That's weird.

564
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:17,000
I don't like this.

565
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:21,440
The quagga is distinct from the plain zebra in that it was striped on its face and up

566
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:25,160
to torso but its rear abdomen was solid brown and its legs were white.

567
00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:29,680
It was native to South Africa but was wiped out in the wild due to over hunting for sport

568
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:33,320
and the last individual died in 1883 in the Amsterdam Zoo.

569
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:38,840
However, since it's technically the same species as the surviving plain zebra, it has been argued

570
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:41,880
that the quagga could be revived through artificial selection.

571
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:42,880
Yeah.

572
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:45,720
Again, this is one where we could take the exact same plan as the oryx.

573
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:49,040
I was just gonna say, just like we were just talking about, quite easy.

574
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:54,400
But this one's a little harder though because we don't farm zebras.

575
00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:56,680
Zebras are actually very shitty animal husbandry.

576
00:30:56,680 --> 00:30:57,680
Right, yes.

577
00:30:57,680 --> 00:30:58,680
I did know that.

578
00:30:58,680 --> 00:30:59,680
So the breeding would be a little harder.

579
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:01,000
No one can control the zebra.

580
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:02,000
Yeah, exactly.

581
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:03,480
We can control horses, we can't control zebras.

582
00:31:03,480 --> 00:31:08,840
I just find this animal fucking weird because it's a zebra but not quite.

583
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:10,920
I know.

584
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:15,960
I also am confused why it's not like a zebra or a zibron or something like that.

585
00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:16,960
Like why a quagga?

586
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:17,960
Like you just off.

587
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:18,960
Just off.

588
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:19,960
Just off.

589
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:20,960
The zebra.

590
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:21,960
This is a zebra.

591
00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:23,440
Just like it came out wrong.

592
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:25,000
Didn't have the right print.

593
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:26,000
It's clearly a zebra.

594
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:28,000
Yeah, a zebra or something.

595
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:30,000
It has to be.

596
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:31,000
A zebra.

597
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:37,320
A quagga project aims to breed a similar form of zebra through selective breeding with plain

598
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:38,320
zebras.

599
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:42,320
It also aims to release these animals onto the western cape once an animal that fully

600
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:47,440
resembles the quagga is achieved, which could have beneficial impact on the ecosystem by

601
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:52,560
eradicating introduced species of trees such as the Brazilian pepper tree, the Tupuana

602
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:59,240
Tipu, the Acacia saligna, bugweed, camphor tree, stone pine, cluster pine, weeping willow

603
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:01,240
and the Acacia Myronse.

604
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:03,600
Why we introduce so many of these fucking things that are terrible.

605
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:04,600
I don't know.

606
00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:07,920
But apparently we did and only the quagga can save us.

607
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:13,000
I was just going to say, like, what's why these guys like what have they done that the

608
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:14,000
zebras can't?

609
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:15,000
I don't know.

610
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:17,360
But the zebras ain't doing it.

611
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:18,360
Apparently.

612
00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:19,560
Yeah, they're just not.

613
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:21,520
I didn't actually look into the why.

614
00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:24,120
I just saw that and I was like, huh, okay, sure.

615
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:28,680
This guy needs some sort of superpower because he's the lame cousin of the zebra.

616
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:30,080
Maybe they just felt bad for him.

617
00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:31,840
They're like, poor guy.

618
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:36,040
Next up is the thylacine, which we have talked about before he was coming.

619
00:32:36,040 --> 00:32:38,600
He went commonly called the Tasmanian Tiger.

620
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:43,000
It was native to Australia's mainland Tasmania and the New Guinea area.

621
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:47,960
We have done further explanations on the thylacine or the Tasmanian Tiger way back in the day.

622
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:49,600
Is that Cryptid 101?

623
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:51,040
It's somewhere way back.

624
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:52,040
It's way back.

625
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:53,040
Yeah.

626
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:54,440
I can't remember where that would have been.

627
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:55,440
I'll find it.

628
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:56,440
Well, we don't.

629
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:57,520
But yeah, just school listen to the backlogs.

630
00:32:57,520 --> 00:33:02,120
We'll take our first three episodes and go from there because yeah, we don't like those.

631
00:33:02,120 --> 00:33:04,960
And don't listen to them because we said don't listen to them.

632
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:06,800
Like actually don't listen to them.

633
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:08,880
We've got much better content now.

634
00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:11,640
Remember, we usually say that was a good episode.

635
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:14,040
No, don't listen to the first three episodes.

636
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:16,040
They're not good episodes.

637
00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:19,640
Yeah, we still have them up.

638
00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:20,640
Yeah.

639
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:23,960
It is believed to have become extinct in the 20th century.

640
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:28,800
Some people heavily dispute this, but we're going to have to put those views on the back burner

641
00:33:28,800 --> 00:33:31,880
for now because we're talking about de-extinction.

642
00:33:31,880 --> 00:33:36,000
The thylacine had become extremely rare or extinct on the Australian mainland before

643
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:37,560
British settlement of the continent.

644
00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:42,120
The last known thylacine named Benjamin, which is a very Australian name, died at the Hobart

645
00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:44,600
Zoo on September 7th, 1936.

646
00:33:44,600 --> 00:33:48,280
He's believed to have died as a result of neglect of all things, apparently.

647
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:49,760
I didn't know this before.

648
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:54,040
He was locked out of his sheltered sleeping quarters and he was exposed to a rare occurrence

649
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:57,960
of extreme Tasmanian weather, extreme heat, and then freezing temperatures at night.

650
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:02,600
I just remember feeling so sorry for Benjamin and I'm sure it's because of mistreatment.

651
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:04,360
That and being the only one of your species.

652
00:34:04,360 --> 00:34:05,360
That was also sad.

653
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:06,360
Yeah, that was sad.

654
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:07,360
Yeah.

655
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:11,680
Official protection of the species by the Tasmanian government was introduced on July 10th, 1936,

656
00:34:11,680 --> 00:34:15,760
59 days before the last known specimen died in activity.

657
00:34:15,760 --> 00:34:17,440
So good on them.

658
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:20,240
Go Australia.

659
00:34:20,240 --> 00:34:24,960
Over in December of 2017, it was announced in Nature Ecology and Evolution that the full

660
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:29,800
nuclear genome of the thylacine had successfully been sequenced, marking the completion of

661
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:34,080
the critical first step towards the extension that began in 2008.

662
00:34:34,080 --> 00:34:38,080
With the extraction of the DNA samples from the preserved pouch specimen, the thylacine

663
00:34:38,080 --> 00:34:43,680
genome was reconstructed by using genome editing methods and the Tasmanian devil was used as

664
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:46,640
a reference for the assembly of the full nuclear genome.

665
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:51,480
Andrew J. Paske from the University of Melbourne has stated that the next step towards the

666
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:56,200
extension will be to create a functional genome which will require extensive research and

667
00:34:56,200 --> 00:35:00,800
development, estimating that a full attempt to resurrect the species may be possible as

668
00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:02,360
early as 2027.

669
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:06,920
And in August of 2022, the University of Melbourne and Colossal Biosciences, which will come

670
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:10,920
up again, announced a partnership to accelerate the extinction of the biosec.

671
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:13,040
So there's been millions of dollars pumped into this.

672
00:35:13,040 --> 00:35:17,480
We'll see if they can jump that date ahead from 2027.

673
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:19,760
One of the biggest problems they're going to run into.

674
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:23,880
Chelsea, I want you to type into Google, closest living relative thylacine.

675
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:25,960
It's not going to be like a shurikus.

676
00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:26,960
No.

677
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:30,000
And the episode is the less charismatic cryptids.

678
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:31,000
Fucking squirrel.

679
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:32,000
Basically.

680
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:33,000
A marsupial squirrel.

681
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:36,000
Okay, this guy has the stripes from the fucking...

682
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:40,000
Yeah, he stole the quaggast.

683
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:41,280
The Zofra.

684
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:42,920
You can tell he knows it too.

685
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:48,000
You're calling him out and he says, okay.

686
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:50,480
This is why the Zofra went extinct.

687
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:54,280
This guy, this cannot be his closest living relative.

688
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:57,080
And the big problem here is their squirrel sized.

689
00:35:57,080 --> 00:36:01,080
I don't know what you know about the thylacine, but it's called the Tasmanian tiger.

690
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:04,480
Not because it is squirrel size.

691
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:08,440
So you know, the gestational problem is going to be the big one with this one.

692
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:12,160
You're going to have to take many generations to get slightly bigger to get to the actual

693
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:13,640
size of the thylacine.

694
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:16,040
Yeah, yeah, which seems to be a problem.

695
00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:17,040
People are impatient.

696
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:19,760
No, they're not even going to like genetically breed it.

697
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:24,640
They're going to genetically engineer it slowly one generation at a time.

698
00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:28,520
They do have shorter gestational times and lifespans that are much shorter.

699
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:29,520
Yeah.

700
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:31,720
So it would be easier, but still you are going to run into that problem.

701
00:36:31,720 --> 00:36:34,320
You need multiple generations to get to the point where you want it.

702
00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:35,320
Yeah, that's weird.

703
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:36,320
Okay.

704
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:39,880
And one of the added benefits that I actually heard for specifically the thylacine, Chelsea,

705
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:42,760
you know all the problems with the Tasmanian devil, right?

706
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:45,880
They're basically going extinct because of face tumors.

707
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:46,880
No.

708
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:47,880
Oh yeah.

709
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:51,120
The Tasmanian devil is basically going extinct because they have face tumors in like all of

710
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:52,120
them.

711
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:53,120
What's wrong with that?

712
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:55,400
Is it because they're in Australia and there's the whole in the Ozone?

713
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:57,440
I don't think so.

714
00:36:57,440 --> 00:36:59,760
Basically all Tasmanian devils have this.

715
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:02,320
Oh no, don't Google it guys.

716
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:03,760
Don't Google it.

717
00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:09,160
Some people have proposed that reintroducing its natural predator into the environment

718
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:14,040
because thylacines live off Tasmanian devils might actually pick off the weaker ones who

719
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:19,840
spread it to the others and actually make for a healthier Tasmanian devil ecosystem.

720
00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:23,400
That's not a bad theory, but that's I'm not saying.

721
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:28,400
But like, like we said, that's a keystone species feature is it can shape its ecosystem.

722
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:30,320
I can't believe I Googled that.

723
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:36,160
Not as exciting, but a kind of big one is the passenger pigeon, which used to absolutely

724
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:38,040
engulf North America.

725
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:41,160
Like they had flying packs of millions.

726
00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:45,640
We have the first travelers of North America that wrote in English that we know about.

727
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:48,200
They would talk about passenger pigeon packs.

728
00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:49,560
Flock is probably a better word.

729
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:51,060
Pack sounds wrong.

730
00:37:51,060 --> 00:37:52,060
So many of them fly.

731
00:37:52,060 --> 00:37:55,760
It seems like night when they fly through the sky because they block out the sun.

732
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:57,000
Oh my God.

733
00:37:57,000 --> 00:37:58,800
I didn't want to look at that either.

734
00:37:58,800 --> 00:37:59,800
They're disgusting.

735
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:01,280
I mean, they're just pigeons.

736
00:38:01,280 --> 00:38:02,280
Yeah, they're gross.

737
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:03,280
Oh, Google it.

738
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:04,280
Okay.

739
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:08,040
So they used to number in the billions before being wiped out due to commercial hunting

740
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:10,080
and habitat loss during the 20th century.

741
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:15,680
The nonprofit revive and restore obtained DNA to the passenger pigeon from museum specimens

742
00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:16,680
and skins.

743
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:18,960
However, this DNA is degraded because it's so old.

744
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:23,200
For this reason, simple cloning would not be an effective way to perform de extinction

745
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:26,200
for the species because part of the genome would be missing.

746
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:31,440
Instead, revive and restore focuses on identifying mutations in the DNA that would cause a phenotypic

747
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:36,080
difference between the extinct passenger pigeon and its closest living relative, the band

748
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:37,080
tailed pigeon.

749
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:41,800
In doing this, they can determine how to modify the DNA of the band tailed pigeon to change

750
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:45,000
the traits to mimic the traits of the passenger pigeon.

751
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:48,960
In this sense, the de extinct passenger pigeon would not be genetically identical to the

752
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:52,160
extinct passenger pigeon, but it would have the same traits.

753
00:38:52,160 --> 00:38:56,040
The de extinct passenger pigeon hybrid is expected to be ready for captive breeding

754
00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:59,080
by 2024 and release into the wild by 2030.

755
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:02,520
That's actually probably the first one of anything I've talked about that will be out

756
00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:05,120
in the wild as a de extinction proposal.

757
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:08,520
And we'll just see how it goes because they kind of seem like they might have been an

758
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:12,240
almost invasive species when the Europeans weren't in North America.

759
00:39:12,240 --> 00:39:16,920
Yeah, well with numbers like that and pigeons are pigeons, I mean, these ones are a little

760
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:20,760
different and actually pigeons, I believe they're considered the first farmed animals

761
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:22,120
by humans.

762
00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:23,640
We used to eat them a lot.

763
00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:26,720
And in parts of the world, we still eat them a lot.

764
00:39:26,720 --> 00:39:27,720
Yeah.

765
00:39:27,720 --> 00:39:31,040
And in the long call where you can get it is like a very delicious meal.

766
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:34,960
Next up, something along, you know, the winged rat idea.

767
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:37,720
Let's talk about actual rats, the Claire's rat.

768
00:39:37,720 --> 00:39:42,080
It is a large rat endemic to Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

769
00:39:42,080 --> 00:39:46,480
And it is believed that Mclare's rat might have been responsible for keeping the population

770
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:49,280
of Christmas Island red crab in check.

771
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:53,440
If you want to see something disgusting, Chelsea, look up Christmas Island crap.

772
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:55,400
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen this.

773
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:56,400
Okay, you know what?

774
00:39:56,400 --> 00:39:57,400
Nevermind.

775
00:39:57,400 --> 00:39:58,400
I've seen a different crap.

776
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:00,960
But yeah, these crabs litter the islands.

777
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:05,880
Yeah, there's like something I can't remember what it is, but they're abundant.

778
00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:06,880
Yeah.

779
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:11,100
So these are believed to have gone extinct accidentally through the introduction of black

780
00:40:11,100 --> 00:40:16,200
rats by the European expeditions that came to the lands and infected the Mclare's rats

781
00:40:16,200 --> 00:40:21,520
with diseases, possibly tryponosum, which resulted in the numbers of the species declining.

782
00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:25,400
The last recorded sighting of the Mclare's rat was in 1903.

783
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:30,880
And in March of 2022, researchers discovered that Mclare's rat shared about 95% of its

784
00:40:30,880 --> 00:40:36,040
genes with the living Norway brown rat, thus sparking hopes and bringing species back to

785
00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:37,040
life.

786
00:40:37,040 --> 00:40:41,680
Although scientists were mostly successful in using CRISPR technology to edit the DNA

787
00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:46,000
of the living species to match that to the extinct one, a few genes were missing, which

788
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:51,880
would mean resurrected rats would not be genetic pure replicas and again would be freaked babies.

789
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:53,440
I mean, they all are.

790
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:55,640
Not the scientific word, but our words.

791
00:40:55,640 --> 00:40:57,760
Yeah, they all would be freaked.

792
00:40:57,760 --> 00:40:59,480
None of these have actually always.

793
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:04,120
I mean, maybe the oryx would be considered close to because it's like naturally bred

794
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:06,560
back ways, but again, still a freak baby.

795
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:08,920
It seems like they weren't a fan of that though.

796
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:11,320
Next up, I'm just going to rattle off the birds.

797
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:15,480
Everybody considers the birds differently just because they don't have the same gestational

798
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:18,720
problem necessarily that mammals do.

799
00:41:18,720 --> 00:41:23,760
So egg gestation has always been considered kind of something slightly different from

800
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:27,280
inside gestation and that we don't have to worry as much about it.

801
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:30,600
So when you're looking at these, these close relatives, you don't have to worry as much

802
00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:32,640
about the differences between species.

803
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:35,240
Nonetheless, we still haven't really reintroduced anything.

804
00:41:35,240 --> 00:41:37,040
So I guess we'll get there when we get there.

805
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:40,800
Just a few that they're talking about the Heath hen, which is a subspecies of the prairie

806
00:41:40,800 --> 00:41:44,400
chicken, which became extinct on Martha's vineyard in 1932.

807
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:48,700
Despite conservation efforts, we got a ton of DNA from it in museum specimens and protected

808
00:41:48,700 --> 00:41:49,700
areas.

809
00:41:49,700 --> 00:41:53,200
So people have proposed reintroducing it to its former habitat.

810
00:41:53,200 --> 00:42:00,520
Next up, the dodo, which I think is the example of human guilt for extincting a species.

811
00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:04,440
They just wanted to love and we just wanted to eat and they weren't even that delicious

812
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:06,560
and we kept in YouTube it.

813
00:42:06,560 --> 00:42:10,880
Again, from historical records, they're not delicious.

814
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:14,120
This large, flightless, ground bird endemic to Mauritius.

815
00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:16,120
I actually had no idea how to say that.

816
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:22,240
Because last sighted, Marutius, Marutius, Marutius, Marutius, I think.

817
00:42:22,240 --> 00:42:23,240
Okay, Marutius.

818
00:42:23,240 --> 00:42:28,040
It was last sighted in the 1640s and most likely when extinct by 1700.

819
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:32,400
Due to the exploitation by humans and due to introduced species such as rats and pigs,

820
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:36,040
which ate their eggs, they only lay one egg per year.

821
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:39,680
So getting your egg eaten is a big fucking deal for your species.

822
00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:43,440
It has since become a single of extinction in popular culture and due to the wealth of

823
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:48,320
bones and some tissues, it is possible that this species may live again as a close relative

824
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:49,320
surviving.

825
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:52,640
Chelsea, I want you to look up closest surviving relative, dodo.

826
00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:53,640
It will surprise you.

827
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:54,640
Like a toucan?

828
00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:56,880
Isn't the dodo an idiot though?

829
00:42:56,880 --> 00:42:59,440
It just had no reason to fear us.

830
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:00,440
People say it's an idiot.

831
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:02,440
It had no reason to fear us.

832
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:03,440
What is that?

833
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:05,240
It's a pigeon.

834
00:43:05,240 --> 00:43:06,320
I don't like it.

835
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:07,320
It's a colorful pigeon.

836
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:08,320
Yeah.

837
00:43:08,320 --> 00:43:09,320
Don't like it.

838
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:11,120
Next up, the elephant bird.

839
00:43:11,120 --> 00:43:14,760
Probably the largest bird to have ever existed, the elephant bird was driven to extinction

840
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:17,760
by the early colonization of Madagascar.

841
00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:22,720
Ancient DNA has been obtained from egg shells, but may be too degraded to use for the extinction.

842
00:43:22,720 --> 00:43:24,080
We'll see how that one goes.

843
00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:29,080
And specifically like these things are over eight feet tall and oh lord, it has thighs.

844
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:31,920
I think it was called elephant bird just from its thighs.

845
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:33,280
I don't want to look at this.

846
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:36,720
Well, it looks like an emu, but it has like it is thick.

847
00:43:36,720 --> 00:43:38,280
Yeah, I don't want to look at it.

848
00:43:38,280 --> 00:43:40,400
From the thighs down.

849
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:44,200
But I do want you to look up closest living relative to the elephant bird, Chelsea.

850
00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:46,280
I don't feel like I want to look at that either.

851
00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:47,600
This one actually is not bad.

852
00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:48,600
Kiwi.

853
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:49,600
Yeah.

854
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:50,600
What?

855
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:51,600
Where do they get this thing?

856
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:55,920
They might run into trouble with the closest genetic relative because the closest genetic

857
00:43:55,920 --> 00:44:00,520
relative is the kiwi bird, which is absolutely minuscule compared to 80.

858
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:04,280
It's probably closer to an elephant than it is to the kiwi bird.

859
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:05,760
You would think.

860
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:06,760
Okay.

861
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:11,520
And then last up for the birds that we're going to talk about is the great awk, which

862
00:44:11,520 --> 00:44:15,520
is of course the giant ass puffin, a flightless bird similar to the penguin.

863
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:19,600
The great awk went extinct in the 1800s due to humans hunting them for food.

864
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:23,280
The last two known great awks lived on an island near Iceland and were clubbed to death

865
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:24,280
by sailors.

866
00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:29,120
I mean, slightly better than being hit by a tree, but not by much.

867
00:44:29,120 --> 00:44:33,080
There have been no known sightings since from the great awk has been identified as a good

868
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:37,280
candidate for de-extinction by reviving or store a nonprofit organization.

869
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:43,320
Its DNA can be used by altering a razor bills genome and breed the hybrids to create a species

870
00:44:43,320 --> 00:44:45,800
that will be very similar to the original great awks.

871
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:50,400
The plan is to reintroduce them back into their original habitat, which they would then share

872
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:54,600
with razor bills and puffins were also at risk of extinction, which actually kind of

873
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:56,080
worries me a little.

874
00:44:56,080 --> 00:45:01,040
If you're reintroducing a species to an area has two already almost extinct birds, aren't

875
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:03,280
they all going after the same food?

876
00:45:03,280 --> 00:45:06,800
That's fighting fire with fire or something similar to a-

877
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:10,960
They are saying that this would restore biodiversity and restore the part of the ecosystem, but

878
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:11,960
who knows for sure.

879
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:15,080
But the great awk is really fricking cool looking.

880
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:16,080
He is.

881
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:17,080
He looks like a penguin.

882
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:19,400
And he probably was delicious.

883
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:20,400
Like this.

884
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:21,400
Like just throwing that.

885
00:45:21,400 --> 00:45:22,680
He does look a little delicious.

886
00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:24,480
I'm going to admit it.

887
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:29,560
And then after this, I found a few articles for species that I found really fucking cool

888
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:32,600
that I was curious if people had ever proposed bringing them back to life.

889
00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:36,240
And apparently South Korea is like the leading edge of de-extincting animals.

890
00:45:36,240 --> 00:45:37,240
What?

891
00:45:37,240 --> 00:45:39,560
Because they're the ones who came up for these.

892
00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:43,720
So South Korean scientists wanted to genetically resurrect an extinct cave life.

893
00:45:43,720 --> 00:45:44,720
Yeah, okay.

894
00:45:44,720 --> 00:45:47,080
This is an article from 2016.

895
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:48,240
Someone's bold.

896
00:45:48,240 --> 00:45:49,240
Korea's bold.

897
00:45:49,240 --> 00:45:50,240
Yeah, exactly.

898
00:45:50,240 --> 00:45:54,320
The last panthera, Leospalia, known more commonly as the cave line, walked the earth

899
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:55,760
about 10,000 years ago.

900
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:58,480
And now a team of researchers in South Korea want to bring it back.

901
00:45:58,480 --> 00:45:59,720
This is in California.

902
00:45:59,720 --> 00:46:01,760
Just to let you know that the cave line existed.

903
00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:06,120
A pair of frozen, well-preserved cubs, estimated to be weeks old and the size of Chihuahua

904
00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:10,000
was when they died, triggered a flurry of interest when they uncovered in permafrost

905
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:12,520
in a remote region of Russia called Yakutia.

906
00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:15,520
Preservation meant learning about tissues and muscles.

907
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:18,600
Stuff the fossil record isn't so great about keeping on hand.

908
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:19,600
Wow, sorry.

909
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:22,520
Whoever wrote this article didn't have English as good.

910
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:23,520
Yeah.

911
00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:26,280
Blame it on them.

912
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:29,720
But there were other possibilities and more out there ideas.

913
00:46:29,720 --> 00:46:34,720
South Korean genesis, Hwang Woosuk, plans to de-extinct the lines using tissues from

914
00:46:34,720 --> 00:46:38,440
the cubs, basically mimicking his proposal to bring back the mammoth.

915
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:40,280
This guy also wanted to bring back the mammoth.

916
00:46:40,280 --> 00:46:44,280
And also, Russian and South Korean scientists are planning the world's first cloning of

917
00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:49,040
a Canadian wood bison before attempting to recreate the extinct steppe bison.

918
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:53,320
Remains of a tale of an ancient steppe bison was recovered from Siberian permafrost in

919
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:59,800
the Saka region, and the basin of a river known as Indurgikara, Indurgikai in August

920
00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:00,800
2016.

921
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:02,800
Thank you for affirming that.

922
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:05,320
Yeah, it sounded great.

923
00:47:05,320 --> 00:47:09,040
Scientists are now planning to use the tale in order to obtain DNA for use in the cloning

924
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:10,040
world.

925
00:47:10,040 --> 00:47:13,960
Dr. Semyon Grigoryev, the director of the mammoth museum at the Northeastern Federal

926
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:17,560
University, who leads the project, told the Siberian Times that the tale was probably

927
00:47:17,560 --> 00:47:21,920
over 8,000 years old, but that more tests are needed to date the discovery.

928
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:25,600
Scientists are currently working on cloning a Canadian wood bison for the first time using

929
00:47:25,600 --> 00:47:30,000
a cow as a surrogate mother, and if they succeed, they will show that interspecies cloning is

930
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:31,000
possible.

931
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:35,000
This is crucial to bringing ancient species back to life as scientists would have to use

932
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:37,920
surrogate mothers from modern-day species, as we talked about.

933
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:43,800
And interestingly enough, oryx and bisons have the exact same genetic closest relative

934
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:47,960
in cows, because they both actually evolved from the oryx.

935
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:52,480
So, my question here on this one is why aren't they just using a bison?

936
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:54,480
Because they're genetically different, apparently.

937
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:55,480
Really?

938
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:59,640
And my second question is, I mean, it seems like we already solved the problem.

939
00:47:59,640 --> 00:48:02,880
We just have different bison, and we seem to be doing okay.

940
00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:06,440
Yeah, but it's not as cool, because we didn't genetically engineer it.

941
00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:10,440
We just reintroduced from a different species, Chelsea.

942
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:13,040
And we decided to use a cow as a surrogate mother.

943
00:48:13,040 --> 00:48:17,160
Our Korean colleagues already have an experience of cloning cows, and it will not affect the

944
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:18,160
results much.

945
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:24,000
If the experiment will be successful, we will get 99.8% newborn bison, Dr. Gregorian, was

946
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:25,000
quoted as saying.

947
00:48:25,000 --> 00:48:28,160
That's a weird way of saying this, that he said it.

948
00:48:28,160 --> 00:48:29,160
Yeah.

949
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:32,640
Quote, it is very important for our project on cloning ancient animals who overcome the

950
00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:33,840
species barrier.

951
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:39,080
Our Korean peers have already done crossbreed cloning, but no one yet did cross species

952
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:40,080
cloning.

953
00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:44,240
The success of interspecies cloning can give us hope for the survival of extinct animals

954
00:48:44,240 --> 00:48:48,000
and preservation of endangered species, according to Dr. Gregorian.

955
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:53,800
So yeah, I think that is a super interesting point, and I don't really know what the difference

956
00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:58,800
would be genetically engineering a species to bring it back from extinction, to reintroduce

957
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:03,600
into an ecosystem, versus just taking something that is genetically more or less the same

958
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:06,880
thing and planting it into that same ecosystem.

959
00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:07,880
Yeah.

960
00:49:07,880 --> 00:49:12,280
And especially at this point, it doesn't have a space in that ecosystem, because we have

961
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:13,760
filled it with something else.

962
00:49:13,760 --> 00:49:14,880
Yeah, exactly.

963
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:15,880
This is a weird one.

964
00:49:15,880 --> 00:49:17,320
I don't even know what they're doing.

965
00:49:17,320 --> 00:49:19,840
Yeah, the Koreans, they don't read the English stuff.

966
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:20,840
That's true.

967
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:22,360
That could be why.

968
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:24,680
They're just trying to help.

969
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:28,320
And of course, the boy I say for last, the woolly mammoth himself, woolly teens.

970
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:29,880
Oh, I forgot about him.

971
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:35,080
The existence of preserved soft tissue remains and DNA from woolly mammoths has led to the

972
00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:38,840
idea that the species could be recreated by scientific means.

973
00:49:38,840 --> 00:49:41,120
Two methods have been proposed to achieve this.

974
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:43,760
The first would be to use the cloning process.

975
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:48,800
However, even the most intact mammoth samples have had little usable DNA because of their

976
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:50,640
condition of preservation.

977
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:53,640
There's not enough DNA intact to guide the production of an embryo.

978
00:49:53,640 --> 00:49:58,240
The second method would involve artificially inseminating an elephant egg cell with preserved

979
00:49:58,240 --> 00:50:01,160
sperm from the mammoth, from the mammoth, not the salmon.

980
00:50:01,160 --> 00:50:03,040
That's a different thing.

981
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:06,840
The resulting offspring would be a hybrid of a mammoth and its closest living relative.

982
00:50:06,840 --> 00:50:08,680
Do you know what that is, Chelsea?

983
00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:09,680
That's right.

984
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:10,680
The elephant bird.

985
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:12,160
No, the Asian elephant.

986
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:14,640
Okay, I just had to process that for a minute.

987
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:16,200
Kiwis, that's right.

988
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:17,200
Kiwis.

989
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:18,200
I'll accept that one.

990
00:50:18,200 --> 00:50:19,200
Okay.

991
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:22,320
After several generations of crossbreeding these hybrids and almost pure woolly mammoth

992
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:26,640
could be produced, however, sperm cells of modern mammals are typically potent for up

993
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:29,960
to 15 years after deep freezing, which could hinder this method.

994
00:50:29,960 --> 00:50:34,520
And in 2008, the Japanese team found usable DNA in the brains of mice that had been frozen

995
00:50:34,520 --> 00:50:35,840
for 16 years.

996
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:38,920
They hope to use similar methods to find usable mammoth DNA.

997
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:43,440
In 2011, Japanese scientists announced plans to clone mammoths within six years.

998
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:44,960
I don't think that happened.

999
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:46,800
That would be 2017.

1000
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:50,880
As far as I know, they didn't create mammoths and then tell the old people in Japan to kill

1001
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:51,880
them.

1002
00:50:51,880 --> 00:50:54,720
That just doesn't seem like a timeline in my mind.

1003
00:50:54,720 --> 00:50:56,520
No, it doesn't even make sense.

1004
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:58,920
In my mind, they weren't able to clone mammoths.

1005
00:50:58,920 --> 00:51:03,360
And then because of that, they said, old people, you should kill yourself.

1006
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:08,160
In March of 2014, the Russian Association of Medical Anthropologists reported that blood

1007
00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:12,960
recovered from a frozen mammoth carcass in 2013 would now provide a good opportunity for

1008
00:51:12,960 --> 00:51:14,320
cloning the woolly mammoth.

1009
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:18,320
Another way to create a living woolly mouth would be to migrate genes from the mammoth

1010
00:51:18,320 --> 00:51:22,520
genome into the genes of the sluice living relative, the Asian elephant, to create hybridized

1011
00:51:22,520 --> 00:51:27,560
animals with the notable adaptations that it had for living in such a cold environment

1012
00:51:27,560 --> 00:51:29,960
that modern elephants could not.

1013
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:34,440
This is currently being done by a team led by Harvard Genes as George Church.

1014
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:38,200
She is also the most likely one to come out in the next couple of years.

1015
00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:42,520
The team has made changes in the elephant's genome with the genes that gave the woolly

1016
00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:47,400
mammoth its cold resistant blood, longer hair and an extra layer of fat, according to geneticist

1017
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:48,400
Henrik Poiner.

1018
00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:53,880
A revived woolly mammoth or mammoth elephant hybrid may find suitable habitat in the tendra

1019
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:56,200
and the taiga forest ecosystems.

1020
00:51:56,200 --> 00:52:00,760
George Church has hypothesized the positive effects of bringing back the extinct woolly

1021
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:05,520
mammoth would have on the environment, such as the potential for reversing some of the

1022
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:07,520
damage caused by global warming.

1023
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:11,800
He and his fellow researchers predict that mammoths would eat the dead grass allowing

1024
00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:13,840
the sun to reach the spring grass.

1025
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:18,640
Their weight would allow them to break down dense, insulating snow in order to let cold

1026
00:52:18,640 --> 00:52:22,880
air reach the soil, and their characteristics of felling trees would increase the absorption

1027
00:52:22,880 --> 00:52:24,000
of sunlight.

1028
00:52:24,000 --> 00:52:28,880
In an editorial condemning the extinction, Scientific America pointed out that the technologies

1029
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:33,040
involved could have secondary applications specifically to help species on the verge

1030
00:52:33,040 --> 00:52:36,240
of extinction to regain their genetic diversity.

1031
00:52:36,240 --> 00:52:40,880
So this is probably the one that has the most money thrown behind it right now is the woolly

1032
00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:41,880
mammoth.

1033
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:44,960
I don't buy necessarily that it would be great for global warming.

1034
00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:47,600
I feel like that's just they wanted those words thrown in there.

1035
00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:51,520
I was just gonna say that's totally a lot of buzzwords.

1036
00:52:51,520 --> 00:52:56,440
Elling trees to let more sun through would cool the planets.

1037
00:52:56,440 --> 00:52:58,000
That doesn't make any fucking sense.

1038
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:03,880
Yeah, no, a lot of that didn't make sense and it didn't seem like an argument that like

1039
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:05,720
it was just buzzwords that was.

1040
00:53:05,720 --> 00:53:07,000
I need to bring this up.

1041
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:09,160
This is the end of my episode.

1042
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:10,960
The real reason he's lying to us.

1043
00:53:10,960 --> 00:53:15,440
He just wants to know like the rest of us what mammoth tastes like.

1044
00:53:15,440 --> 00:53:20,960
And this has been something man has been plagued with the question of for eons.

1045
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:24,680
And this comes from a article from where is it?

1046
00:53:24,680 --> 00:53:26,040
I think it's the Atlantic.

1047
00:53:26,040 --> 00:53:30,480
I forgot to put that, but this is an article from the Atlantic all about what woolly mammoths

1048
00:53:30,480 --> 00:53:31,640
would taste like.

1049
00:53:31,640 --> 00:53:34,040
And my God, it was a wild ride.

1050
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:37,120
And this is how I wanted to finish this episode on.

1051
00:53:37,120 --> 00:53:43,160
In 1901, an expedition to the Ipresovka River in Siberia found a male mammoth so exquisitely

1052
00:53:43,160 --> 00:53:45,400
preserved that it still had grass in its mouth.

1053
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:49,560
The mammoth's bones and skin were put on display in St. Petersburg and its flesh was supposedly

1054
00:53:49,560 --> 00:53:52,120
served at a mammoth banquet.

1055
00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:53,120
The meal was a hit.

1056
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:57,200
According to one glowing account, particularly the course of mammoth steak, which all the

1057
00:53:57,200 --> 00:54:02,000
learned guests declared was agreeable to the taste and not much tougher than some of the

1058
00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:04,920
sirloin furnished by the butchers of today.

1059
00:54:04,920 --> 00:54:09,320
Half a century later, the explorers club put on its own exotic feast in New York.

1060
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:13,400
This time, the prehistoric flesh reportedly came from a carcass found in the Aleutian

1061
00:54:13,400 --> 00:54:17,640
Islands by a Jesuit turned geologist known as the Glacier Priest.

1062
00:54:17,640 --> 00:54:22,320
Each diner got mere slivers of meat, but those slivers made quite the impression.

1063
00:54:22,320 --> 00:54:25,960
That's what home bragging of their Ice Age dinner, but they later disagreed over whether

1064
00:54:25,960 --> 00:54:30,120
the meat was really supposed to be mammoth or mastodon or an extinct giant sloth called

1065
00:54:30,120 --> 00:54:31,120
Megatherium.

1066
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:36,800
And in any case, the DNA analysis of the meat from 1951 eventually proved it was none of

1067
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:37,800
the above.

1068
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:39,320
It wasn't even prehistoric.

1069
00:54:39,320 --> 00:54:44,120
It's likely DNA came from a green sea turtle, which still lives today.

1070
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:47,600
As for the 1901 banquet, it couldn't have been mammoth either.

1071
00:54:47,600 --> 00:54:52,520
Quote, all stories published in newspapers of this country, of a dinner in St. Petersburg

1072
00:54:52,520 --> 00:54:57,320
where the meat of the Berserkov mammoth was served are 100% invention.

1073
00:54:57,320 --> 00:55:02,520
The paleontologist IP Tomachev wrote in the transaction of the American Philosophical

1074
00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:04,600
Society back in 1929.

1075
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:09,840
As Tomachev also wrote, while a mammoth meat frozen for tens of thousands of years is absolutely

1076
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:15,680
unpaneled with an intolerable putrid smell, it is not something that belongs on a dinner

1077
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:16,680
table.

1078
00:55:16,680 --> 00:55:19,120
It's certainly not something that belongs in a human mouth.

1079
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:23,760
In the 18th and 19th century, explorers of Siberia wrote that the region's indigenous

1080
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:29,400
people, the Evenki, occasionally fed their dogs mammoth meat, but humans have generally

1081
00:55:29,400 --> 00:55:31,920
been less enthusiastic about eating it.

1082
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:36,720
Over tens of thousands of years, the things that make meat tasty turn quite foul.

1083
00:55:36,720 --> 00:55:41,760
That is one problem it turns to soap, specifically a substance called adipocere, also known as

1084
00:55:41,760 --> 00:55:46,520
corpse wax or grave wax when it's found in human bodies left in cool wet conditions.

1085
00:55:46,520 --> 00:55:50,840
Paleontologists have noticed it in the vat of woolly mammoths too, even though extremely

1086
00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:54,920
cold conditions are thought to inhibit microbes that turn that into adipocere.

1087
00:55:54,920 --> 00:56:00,200
The substance could have formed in Siberia, says Sherry Forbes, a forensic expert at the

1088
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:02,480
University of Quebec at Torreau-Rabère.

1089
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:07,320
If temperatures ever fluctuated over tens of thousands of years in adipocere, she adds

1090
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:10,720
can have the texture of cottage cheese and the smell is rancid.

1091
00:56:10,720 --> 00:56:14,000
I know why people would not want to eat it, she wrote in an email.

1092
00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:16,560
And the muscles of frozen mammoths change as well.

1093
00:56:16,560 --> 00:56:20,280
Like meat left in the freezer for too long, the formation of crystals would pierce the

1094
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:25,160
muscle fibers of the meat, says Matt Harding, a food chemist at American University.

1095
00:56:25,160 --> 00:56:30,200
Frozen the meat might still be reasonably solid and well meat-like, but once defrosted

1096
00:56:30,200 --> 00:56:32,200
he said it will be turned into goo.

1097
00:56:32,200 --> 00:56:38,600
In fact, Dmitry Arziotov, a historian of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, wrote earlier

1098
00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:42,520
this year that Russian paleontologists he interviewed about woolly mammoths had tried

1099
00:56:42,520 --> 00:56:46,560
to fry mammoth meat, but it turned to smelly liquid immediately.

1100
00:56:46,560 --> 00:56:50,600
Not that this has stopped certain mammoth hunters in recent woolly mammoth documentaries,

1101
00:56:50,600 --> 00:56:55,840
just as 2.0, one expeditioner even chose raw ice age meat on camera.

1102
00:56:55,840 --> 00:57:00,800
So people clearly want to eat woolly mammoth and I think it actually has driven some people

1103
00:57:00,800 --> 00:57:03,280
to study them and even get close to them.

1104
00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:07,360
And let's face it, I think that is the reason people want to bring that one back from extinction.

1105
00:57:07,360 --> 00:57:08,360
It has to be.

1106
00:57:08,360 --> 00:57:10,720
I mean, that was entirely too much.

1107
00:57:10,720 --> 00:57:15,480
That article was way too long about eating things that have been dead for thousands of

1108
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:16,480
years.

1109
00:57:16,480 --> 00:57:18,080
It's true.

1110
00:57:18,080 --> 00:57:23,480
That was way more than ever needed to be written about it.

1111
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:28,280
And yet here we are at the end of an episode, clearly taking a good chunk of it to talk

1112
00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:30,680
about how people really want to eat woolly mammoth.

1113
00:57:30,680 --> 00:57:36,760
So at the end of the day, shouldn't we all be able to eat extinct meats?

1114
00:57:36,760 --> 00:57:40,680
That is your new topic of conversation for your fancy dinner guests.

1115
00:57:40,680 --> 00:57:42,200
I have been Taylor here with Chelsea.

1116
00:57:42,200 --> 00:57:43,200
We are Journey to the Fringe.

1117
00:57:43,200 --> 00:57:47,680
Thank you all for listening and we will see you next week.

1118
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:48,680
Bye.

1119
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:50,920
Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe.

1120
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:56,960
If you have liked what you have listened to, please like, share, subscribe, or follow

1121
00:57:56,960 --> 00:58:00,280
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1122
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:06,440
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1123
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:11,240
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1124
00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:13,000
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1125
00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:17,440
And if you really want to communicate with us and give us ideas for new episodes or tell

1126
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:24,360
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1127
00:58:24,360 --> 00:58:38,760
For now, I'll see you in the next episode.