Many species of this planet have become extinct (thanks to a plethora of circumstances that all fall under the banner of “human activity”), but none has become more synonymous with the act of becoming obsolete than our gone but never forgotten fine-feathered friends, Raphus cucullatus. I refer, of course, to the dodo, those eccentric birds who used to lead happy, fruit-eating lives on Mauritius, an island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Then humans showed up, and invariably all dodos died out. If it wasn’t direct hunting that killed them, it was the destruction of habitat or predatory animals humans brought along with them that caused dodos to go the way of the dodo. But hey, remember two months ago when filmmaker Peter Jackson announced he was donating money and part of his ancient bone collection to help Texas biotech company Colossal bring back New Zealand’s long-extinct moa bird? Yeah, well guess which flightless bird those franken-scientists are turning to next…

First you take pigeon primordial ooze: Colossal Biosciences said on Wednesday it has succeeded in growing pigeon primordial germ cells, precursor cells to sperm and eggs, for the first time. This is a “pivotal step” in bringing back the dodo, which was a type of pigeon, for the first time in more than 300 years, according to Colossal. The Texas-based company, which has made splashy headlines for its plans to reestablish wooly mammoths and dire wolves, said it has also developed gene-edited chickens that will act as surrogates for the dodos. The chickens will be injected with primordial germ cells from Nicobar pigeons, the closest living relatives of dodos, which will in time, after gene edits to recreate the desired body and head shape, allow them to breed dodos.

Resurrected dodos in 5-7 years? “Rough ballpark, we think it’s still five to seven years out, but it’s not 20 years out,” Ben Lamm, Colossal’s chief executive, said about the timeline for the dodo’s return. Colossal is working with wildlife groups to identify safe, rat-free sites in Mauritius where the species could once again roam. “Our goal is to make enough dodos with enough genetic diversity engineered into them that we can put them back into the wild where they can truly thrive,” he said. “So we’re not looking to make two dodos, we’re looking to make thousands.”

Last seen in 1662: Dodos once plodded the forests of Mauritius, located in the Indian Ocean, without predators until humans started killing them in earnest, a process accelerated by European exploration and expansion. Habitat loss and introduced invasive species, such as macaques, pigs and rats that raided dodo nests, sealed the fate of the largely defenseless, fruit-eating bird. The last reliable sighting of a dodo came from a Dutch sailor, who described it as a “kind of very big goose” in 1662.

A scientific dissent: Rich Grenyer, a biologist at the University of Oxford, said de-extinction is a “dangerous” distraction and that gene-edited animals are “at best a sort of simulation, rather like those unnerving animated AI portraits of dead relatives we sometimes see people create”. “By labelling genetically engineered modern species as extinct ones brought back from the dead, if it takes off, it’s a huge moral hazard; a massive enabler for the activities that causes species to go extinct in the first place — habitat destruction, mass killing and anthropogenic climate change,” he said.

I really don’t care, do u? “These are dodos, and I’m sure there will be some people who say, ‘Oh, well, we don’t like them. We’re not going to call them dodos,’” Lamm said of the latest Colossal project. “Then don’t. We just don’t care, and the more you don’t call them a dodo, the more controversy you drive, the more my numbers go up. So that’s great. So whatever you want to call them, as long as you’re calling them something.”

[From The Guardian]

Chief executive Ben Lamm sounds like a real peach, doesn’t he? I also feel compelled to report that elsewhere in the article, the company’s scientific chief Beth Shapiro was noted for having a dodo tattoo on her arm. Yet together they’ve raised $555 million in four years specifically for Project Dodo. My reactions to this are largely in line with what I said about Project Moa back in July: is this the very best use of funding for scientific research (particularly when budgets are being decimated for initiatives related to non-extinct species), and for the love of Crichton, have these people never heard of Jurassic Park?? And now with this endeavor, Colossal may be de-extincting the dodo, but at the cost of killing the centuries-old idiom “go the way of the dodo.” The whole ethos of this company sounds bird-brained to me, but then I’m not currently valued at $10.3 billion. Who knows, maybe their efforts will set in motion a timeline in which the phrase evolves into “go the way of the human.”

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Photos credit: McGill Library, The New York Public Library and Phil Hearing on Unsplash