Scientists Plan to Clone Extinct Siberian Cave Lion

[Mana1]

Tbh the premise of using cloning to preserve extinct or endangered species just isn't viable. Sure, it's great to learn more about said extinct species and to learn more about its genetics, etc. but there's no way we can clone a viable population. It would just be a few individuals that would be destined to live out their lives in labs and/or zoos. There's no future for any cloned species, I'm afraid.

In that sense, the climate has no real influence either, as they'd be existing in an artificial environment anyway.

Saving species is the right way to go, but we're not very good at it. For example, wildlife funds are pouring huge money into saving the Panda, who are pretty much doomed to extinction anyway. We're just delaying the inevitable :c.

This topic made me smile, so many great and informative posts from Omi <3.

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

Saving species is the right way to go, but we're not very good at it. For example, wildlife funds are pouring huge money into saving the Panda, who are pretty much doomed to extinction anyway. We're just delaying the inevitable :c.

Glad you mentioned the pandas. They're undeniable proof that natural selection has chosen them to go extinct due to their convoluted breeding process. So why should this be any different from rhinos and tigers going extinct because of human influence and their lack of understanding of the species long ago? Because it is part of the natural process. These progresses are done by accidents, as mentioned by Omni, so anything that's done on purpose such as saving or cloning a species would considered as "unnatural," which has negative consequences.

 

[Her]

Are bulldozers and rifles considered part of natural selection now?

 

[Mana1]

Umm. Well, yes and no. For Panda to have become what they are in the first place, their system must have worked. To say it's natural that they'd go extinct is both true and false - every species is going to go extinct at some point, and in the case of Panda its highly likely that humans have intervened.

IMO adding human actions to any system renders natural selection pointless. It's not "natural" for Panda to run away from guns, or lose vast amounts of habitat, etc. Evolution and the general adaptation to an environment takes millions of years - human influence has caused vast amounts of change in a few thousand years at most.

And no, natural selection hasn't chosen anything :c.

 

[Omicron]

Glad you mentioned the pandas. They're undeniable proof that natural selection has chosen them to go extinct due to their convoluted breeding process. So why should this be any different from rhinos and tigers going extinct because of human influence and their lack of understanding of the species long ago? Because it is part of the natural process. These progresses are done by accidents, as mentioned by Omni, so anything that's done on purpose such as saving or cloning a species would considered as "unnatural," which has negative consequences.

The species disappearing would have negative consequences. Saving them does not.

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be rude, but you don't understand how natural selection/evolution works. Nothing is chosen. No one chose these animals to evolve and no one chose these animals to go extinct.

Natural selection disappears when humans intervene. Selective breeding is probably the most obvious example of this. Bulldogs shouldn't exist. They have a myriad of health problems and suffer a lot through their lifetimes for the mere fact of existing. Bulldogs wouldn't have occurred naturally, but we interfered and here they are.

A species disappearing because they no longer have a place to live because of human interference isn't natural selection. Being hunted to extinction isn't natural selection.