Scientists make major breakthrough in bringing back iconic animal from extinction

Scientists could bring back a bird synonymous with human impact on the planet. The dodo, a flightless bird native to Mauritius, was driven to extinction after Dutch sailors hunted it and introduced invasive new species to the island.

Colossal Biosciences said yesterday (September 17) that they have successfully grown pigeon primordial germ cells, the precursor to sperm and eggs, for the first time. They said this is a “pivotal step” in bringing back the dodo after over 350 years. The Texas-based company has made similar headlines for their plans to bring back woolly mammoths and dire wolves. Gene-edited chickens will be injected with the germ cells from Nicobar pigeons, the closest living relative of the dodo, and scientists will do more gene-editing to determine the right body and shape for the bird. Ben Lamm, Colossal’s chief executive, said: “Rough ballpark, we think it’s still five to seven years out, but it’s not 20 years out.”

“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. So we’re not looking to make two dodos, we’re looking to make thousands.”

Colossal is working with wildlife teams in Mauritius to find safe sites on the island where the new species could thrive once it is created. The company is confident its CRISPR gene-editing technology can return dodos to their former home.

Beth Shapiro, Colossal’s scientific chief who has a dodo tattoo on her arm, said the “super exciting” breakthrough came after a year of gene-editing birds. “This isn’t a process where we’re going to one day just throw thousands of dodos into Mauritius. Obviously, it will be a slow and careful and deliberate process,” said Shapiro.

“If we can put back a large ground-dwelling fruit-eating bird, we don’t know all of the consequences of putting them back on this landscape, but we anticipate that we will have some happy surprises.”

However, some scientists still have reservations about the project. Rich Grenyer, a biologist at the University of Oxford, said de-extinction is a “dangerous” distraction. He said that gene-edited animals are “at best a sort of simulation, rather like those unnerving animated AI portraits of dead relatives sometimes see people create”.

“Labelling genetically engineered modern species as extinct ones brought back from the dead is a huge moral hazard; a massive enabler for the activities that cause species to go extinct in the first place – habitat destruction, mass killing and anthropogenic climate change,” Greyner said.

“There’s also, of course, the question of where you’re going to put your newly engineered hybrids, if they’re not just going to be curiosities in a zoo, because it’s generally the lack of habitat that caused the problem in the first place.”

About two million species are currently at risk of extinction, threatened by habitat destruction, rising temperatures, pollution, invasive species, and hunting. Scientists estimate that the current extinction rate is hundreds of times faster than the historic norm due to humanity's impact.