In a move that no one seems to think the world needs, a Dallas, Texas biotech company with funding from the CIA is attempting to resurrect several extinct species, including the wooly mammoth and dodo bird. What could go wrong? In case you haven’t seen any of the Jurassic Park movies, the answer is a lot. At least according to the movies. Check out the wild and wooly details.
The biotech company Colossal is actively working to bring back the woolly mammoth and thylacine from extinction. Now, the company has its sights set on the dodo bird.
The flightless bird went extinct in the 17th century from the island of Mauritius.
Colossal has already successfully sequenced the bird’s genome.
The CIA Is Funding a Mission to Reincarnate the Dodo Bird https://t.co/gezB6L0uLI
— Rob Mattox (@RobMattox2) February 7, 2023
The dodo bird had a reputation for not being very smart, hence “dodo” being a commonly used put down. Since no one is still alive from the 17th century to vouch for that (not even Joe Biden), it is just assumed that since it was a large, flightless bird that laid one egg a year in a nest on the ground that it wasn’t very smart. The plan is to bring the bird back and let it repopulate its native island. Of course, as usually is the case with extinct species there’s a reason it went extinct, and it wasn’t suicide.
The dodo, which lived on the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius, was taken out after Dutch settlers introduced predators to the island. The flightless bird, which grew up to 3 feet tall and weighed as much as 50 pounds, was unable to ward off black rats, wild pigs, macaque, and others in the 1600s due to laying only one egg per year. Predators were able to easily wipe out the dodo, feasting upon the eggs laid in nests located on the ground.
Those damn Dutch, always screwing stuff up with their wooden shoes and windmills. It’s unclear how the Dutch introduced wild pigs and black rats, though it was likely by accident, not knowing those critters would upset the natural ecology. The macaque was probably intentional. The Dutch are very proud of their macaques. Sometimes species just go extinct. The dodo wasn’t able to adapt to a changing ecosystem so will the new and improved dodo 2.0 be able to? How are they constructing the new dodo?
The process for bringing the dodo back includes genome understanding, tissue cultures, and interspecies surrogacy. Here’s how it will work: The dodo recreation includes “interspecies germline transfer of pigeon PGCs into a surrogate chicken host.” The Nicobar pigeon, the dodo’s closest living relative, provides the host cells for genome engineering while the Rodrigues solitaire, the dodo’s closest genetic relative, adds additional insights. The chicken offers a foundation of avian genomics and editing.
That is quite a combination. To be honest, it sounds like a couple of pigeons and a chicken are going to make a transgender dodo bird. Chickens are delicious in just about every form, so stands to reason they would mix well with pigeon. Considering the CIA is involved in funding, would it be surprising to see weaponized dodo birds? Perhaps an army of dodo birds with lasers on their heads, flanked by US Army issue wooly mammoths? Hey, it’s 2023. men can be pregnant, ladies can be gents, don’t tell me we can’t have chicken-pigeon-dodo-birds with lasers on their heads. That’s just not acceptable.
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