What if We Brought Back the Passenger Pigeon?

[@joanhoffman3702]

In the ‘80s, I met a man who was old enough to have seen Martha alive. I am all in favor of bringing back the passenger pigeon, and have been so since that time. Resurrecting the passenger pigeon would be a worthy endeavor.

[@fredeerickbays]

My Gda was born in 1680. He married a woman much 42 yr younger then he at age 59. He passed in 1958. Ya he was an old man. Bty way i was named after him and born in 1948. He told stories of taking 20,000 birds in nets in a day and that was with just 5 men. I was just a little kid but I remember them and all the stories he told. so many of them. I am getting them all written down as will as I remember them.

[@georgesly]

I agree, the Passenger Pigeon was not an invasive species. It was a native species that we exterminated.

[@Ancusohm]

Passenger pigeons only went extinct about a hundred years ago. It seems a lot more feasible to bring them back than mammoths.

[@johndoh5182]

Yeah but I'm not paying to see a passenger pigeon in a zoo.

[@ruthbaker5281]

I would. But I would rather see it in the wild.

[@veramae4098]

P.p. were incredibly destructive. Traveled in huge flocks. When they settled for the night thickly coated every tree, and they snipped twigs to be more comfortable. One night's poop would cover the ground. I just can't see that being possible with modern life.

[@mehere8038]

Tassy tiger is more viable still, also 100 odd years since extinction, but it actually has a habitat to return to. Can you honestly imagine farmers being happy with flocks of pigeons coming through & eating their entire crops? I mean do you honestly think these flocks are going to go to the forests & eat leaves when there's seeds growing in farms next to them? They'll be culled as fast as they're released if anyone tries to release them!

[@attemptedunkindness3632]

Having to shut down all airports city-wide for 14 hours straight in a 300km long line just because the passenger pidges be flyin. It would be the best time to commit crimes, unnatural darkness and 0 chance of police helicopters. Highrise buildings up and down the Eastcoast now require avian window strike insurances. Think of the property damage and anarchy from the poo alone. I'm for it.

[@Treeplanter73]

I fully support Passenger Pigeons coming back. They got the worst raw deal. Shot till the last one Martha was sitting in a small cage, sad and lonely. Eastren forests would benefit.

[@JC-wu4iw]

Passenger Re-pigeons is a great idea. Count me in

[@hansolowe19]

Engineering species to fit what we need, feels very "Close encounters of the third kind".

[@deinsilverdrac8695]

I want to see them too but thats impossible for now or near future. We can't clone bird. It's simply too complicated. Much more than mammals or reptiles

[@falcolf]

@@deinsilverdrac8695we already have cloned many animals.

[@deinsilverdrac8695]

@@falcolf Not really. 1 telomere. When we clone an animal they have dammaged telomere except if the dna came from a very young specimen. With dammaged telomere the lifespan is really short. 2 we barely cloned anything and often they have health issue 3 we practically never cloned any bird at all, that's just to hard 4 you CAN'T make a viable population out of clones we need genetic diversity and for that we need dozen of dna sample from dozen of individuals, not just 1-5 specimens

[@MrCalagon]

Another North American flocking bird we made extinct around the same time was the Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis). I hope they can try and bring this species back as well. For all the criticisms people from the U.S. have for other country's treatment of the environment, the U.S. has had an outsized contribution to the extinction of species and destruction of ecosystems.

[@rridderbusch518]

I agree. The Carolina parakeet even lived in Wisconsin in the past.

[@elyzsabethahne2116]

The closest-related living species is the sun conure. Also, I'd love to see the extinct subspecies to the Carolina parakeet brought back--the Louisiana parakeet.

[@KayentaRojo]

This one pisses me off the most. I WANT TO SEE A LIVING CAROLINA PARAKEET SO BAD.

[@Sushi33312]

Passenger pigeons were "flock breeders...they would only breed when there was the critical mass of them to stimulate breeding behavior. (Parakeets are similar, but in a smaller scale. That's why, if you have a small flock, you can put a large mirror in with them to make them think there are a larger number of parakeets, and you'll have more success in breeding.)

[@jeanettemarkley7299]

I had 2 Parakeets who mated and an egg was laid. It didn't hatch, but the birds were definitely mating.

[@mehere8038]

So how did the Indian ringneck parakeets get established in London then huh? That was from a handful of escaped pets but they are now a major colony there, much as they & other parakeet species are throughout much of the world. Various conure parakeet species being another that are now naturalised all over the world in a major way That's honestly a pretty silly comment to make anyway though tbh, that would be like saying "all great apes are promiscuous" Parakeets consist of a HUGE range of different species with a HUGE range of different behaviours, ranging from Indian Ringnecks to Australian budgerigars to the conures from their stronghold of South America, where the majority of parakeet species come from. Species living in the Amazon certainly don't behave the same way as those living in the Australian desert! They're as diverse in behaviours as their larger "parrot" groupings are

[@attemptedunkindness3632]

My keeters take turns having sex with their own reflections in the mirrors and completely ignore the female. The female, for her own part, just seems to enjoy the show. My bedroom has become a house of avian sin.

[@prettypic444]

Honestly, part of my problem with the jurassic park series (especially the last one) is that they never really explored the social/economic/ecological impact of bringing things back. super, dinosuar theme parks are cool and all, but there would be A TON of other impacts, from environmentalists trying to get funding for less popular animals to celebrities and other elites having de-extinct/engineered pets (ala the current exotic animal trade)

[@k.jsparks6918]

Honestly if it was like, “hey heres this cool island where we brought back dinosaurs, watch this helicopter footage of them.” Not a fucking amusement park

[@thefolder69]

I mean Hammond does bring it up when defending his vision during the luncheon scene, where he says that Malcolm and Grant wouldn't have a problem if he were breeding condors. so the usage of Jurassic Park technology for conservation was touched on in the movie.

[@Daralexen]

@prettypic444 I think that the narrative would not work if they based it around social and ecological factors. Dinosaurs would get themselves killed in the wild due to starvation or exhaustion.

[@pjk9225]

I say go for it with the Passenger Pigeon. Eastern forests are in a dire situation with an unbelievable amount of invasive species devastating local species. We're going to have to learn how to manage our ecosystems so that we can survive and the system can continue on indefinitely. I'm sure there will be some mistakes along the way, but the only way to learn the do's and don'ts is to experiment. Given how recently (ecologically speaking) the pigeons disappeared, and how bad the situation is already, I think the benefits of knowledge gained attempting this project outweigh any risks. Take that with a grain of salt because I'm no expert, just a slightly jaded New Englander who loves to learn about my local forests, marshes, and swamps and watches way to much youtube

[@MM-jf1me]

At least for the south east we need to have more controlled burns -- many of our native species depend upon first fires to propagate and since we have pretty much stopped those.... Hopefully it would help kill off huge amounts of kudzu as well. Would controlled fires benefit New England as well? If so, controlled burns seem like a much simpler, less expensive way to get the desired effect that the passenger pigeons used to play.

[@johnnyearp52]

Controlled burns aren't always controlled. But at least in the East and the South it is wetter than the West where controlled burns have gone wild.

[@8zw]

One massive problem with the passenger pigeon however would be that using the method in the video they would most likely be able to breed with the band tailed pigeon causing further hybrids and if so would ruin the band tailed pigeon species in the long run. It would just be stupid. Ruining one species to create a new one would just be very bad. Mammoths, Tasmanian tigers or dodos would be safer as they would be placed in areas where they got no relative species to interbreed with and wont be able to travel away as easily as a flying bird.

[@DarkPesco]

@@8zw without restoring balance to the world we ruin ALL species....or at least us and many crucial to us. This doesn't sound smarter. And who's to say they couldn't be genetically engineered to NOT cross breed? After all...they didn't prior. When they did the chicken and the duck thing....the eggs were ARTIFICIALLY inseminated with male duck seed. That wasn't a sex event between the chicken and the duck. Did you not get that?

[@johndoh5182]

@@MM-jf1me Uhhhh, the East is not the West. I don't think there are good records showing a continual sequence of fires along with showing a benefit from them. The Western US is VERY different than the East. Like about 40" of rain a year different. It would be a rare plant in the East, if any, need fire for propagation, and it's very much like what was talked about in this video that allows different plant species to grow and compete with taller species, and that's the disturbance of the canopy allowing seedlings to grow. In Canada you have cycles of oaks or maples being the dominant tree in different forests and it's not fire that takes one out, although with as hot and dry as different areas have become it's happening NOW thanks to humans, but it was not the natural pattern.

[@veggieboyultimate]

If it’s more like a hybrid species, wouldn’t we just be creating more invasive species?

[@jonathanroberts-bj7yl]

Giant ground Sloth would be a good one.

[@Daralexen]

@jonathanroberts-bj7yl Considering that Manny needs his friends back once he is back on Earth in 2027.

[@ThecrazyJH96]

As someone said, the “Carolina parakeet” would be awesome to bring back!

[@Garbimba1900]

1:44 Yes, we can undo some of the damage, but wouldn't reimagining our land use, our expansion into animal habitats, be a better way of rewilding? I'm thinking about how the exclusion zone in Chernobyl has been beneficial to wildlife. How can we bring back biodiversity if space is not used in a way that benefits both of us?

[@ThecrazyJH96]

It’s crazy to think how much the passenger pigeon did for our forests and the possible reasons for all the diversity

[@cherylmarcuri5506]

Whole they're at it, the North Carolina parrot should be done as well.

[@Daralexen]

@cherylmarcuri5506 They could be a candidate once the Passenger Pigeon and Northern White Rhino projects show success in a few more months.

[@enigmavariations3809]

Fun fact: It was originally called the Passager Pigeon.

[@stephen7862]

If we ever actually enact de-extinction, I hope we won’t classify the new hybrids with the same nomenclature of the originally extinct species, that would be intellectually dishonest, blatantly false, and, in my personal opinion, a disservice to all involved.

[@marjoriegoodwin2993]

Fascinating and well presented for we the public to understand and thus approve of, moving forward. Thank you for this well thought out video.

[@jeanettemarkley7299]

The "public" are on board with a lot more than you think.

[@marjoriegoodwin2993]

That is a happy thing to hear.@@jeanettemarkley7299

[@himanbam]

This idea reminds me of what happened in Australia where humans brought species from other parts of the world, often to fix previous damage caused by humans, only to end up hurting the local wildlife even more. Like when there were too many invasive rabbits (that humans brought there) eating all the native plants, so they brought over European foxes (the natural predator of rabbits in Europe) to kill the rabbits, but the foxes just ended up killing more native fauna. Or when they introduced cane toads to eat the cane beetles, but cane toads can't reach high enough to eat cane beetles and they're poisonous so there's millions of them and they kill tons of native predators every year. The field of ecology has likely improved since then, but things don't always go how people expect, and there's no undo button for invasive species. Some caution is required when de-extincting, because after enough time, the ecosystem has changed and you're essentially introducing an invasive species. More recent creatures or introducing them on small scales is probably best to start with.

[@hummingbird3771]

Do you think we really have that kind of time before the world spontaneously erupts? The religious right will shut this down the minute it interferes with corporate pillage.

[@mehere8038]

foxes weren't introduced to deal with the rabbits, they were introduced for the same reason as the rabbits - so that the rich could engage in traditional English hunts! Cane toads were introduced in a naive attempt to control a bug they didn't even eat, but so too were dung beetles, as in introduced to control a pest, but dung beetles have been a HUGE success. There is no problem with reintroducing Tassy tigers, in fact it is now believed that the Tassy devil facial tumour may be another result of the Tassy tiger being missing from the ecosystem & therefor not taking out the sick & dead ones before they spread the disease further. Mainland introductions would be more controversial, as they would compete with dingos, which are considered "naturalised" but not actually natives, but in Tasmania, there is no conflict to reintroducing them. There's also of course the much easier & more sensible but less publicity attracting options, such as the gastric brooding frog

[@RP-ws8fl]

The introduction of dung beetles was an example of introducing species in a really successful way to Australia though! They just did significantly more research before adding them in

[@swordwhale1]

Not sure if we actually need hairy elephants... BUT thylacines are an amazing example of convergent evolution, looking more doglike than many dog breeds. They were top predators, balancing their ecosystems in the way wolves do, and their extinction was entirely due to human fears of such top predators. Bring them back.

[@Daralexen]

@swordwhale1 Colossal, the same company behind the Woolly Mammoth, Dodo, and Northern White Rhino revivals are also reviving the Thylacine in partner with the University of Melbourne.

[@beverlyness7954]

I'm really glad you have the foresight to take into account the whole life cycle picture.

[@adpirtle]

I think the money and effort would be better spent trying to preserve existing ecosystems.

[@MM-jf1me]

Agreed. What can the wooly mammoth do that the elephant can't, especially in warmer climates? They would need to use elephants to recreate wooly mammoths anyway, so wouldn't it be best to just focus on saving elephant populations?

[@davidmccarthy6061]

Yeah, let's maybe stopped causing extinction now and then we can work on the reversals that make the most sense.

[@infinitemonkey917]

@@MM-jf1me Mammoths were eco-engineers. They maintained the grassland of the tundra, which today is mostly moss. They might be able to create a hybrid version to fill that niche.

[@quailking8265]

Indeed

[@TT-ww8vv]

And nothing helps more to revitalize an ecosystem than to restore a keystone species to their niches. Ecological collapse is a slow crawl even if you stop habit destruction.

[@veggieboyultimate]

If you think about it, most of the extinctions caused by humans were either small or lived on islands

[@bartolomeothesatyr]

If you think about it and come to that conclusion, you're woefully uninformed. Wherever humans have appeared in the fossil record, their appearance has coincided with the localized extinction of megafaunal species. The aurochs was once the capstone herbivore species in most European habitats, but the last one known to have existed was shot by a hunter in a Polish forest in 1627. The Arabian ostrich, the North African forest elephant, the wooly mammoth, the wooly rhinoceros, the black rhinoceros, the white rhinoceros, North American camelids and native horse species, the North American eastern elk and Merriam's elk, the African quagga, the tarpans of the Eurasian steppe... the list of species driven to extinction by human activity goes on and on, stretching even to formerly-numerous insect species such as the Rocky Mountain locust. The entire extant population of American plains bison is descended from around 100 individuals scattered across a handful of tiny herds across the US, which by the end of the nineteenth century were all that remained of the once-vast herds of tens of millions that formerly ranged from Alaska to the Atlantic tidewater of North Carolina in numbers great enough to darken the horizon. The biomass of American plains bison we destroyed in the closing decades of the 19th century was truly shockingly vast. It's a small miracle we have any left at all, considering that for a time the U.S. federal government actively promoted their extirpation at an industrial scale in an effort to subdue the tribes of Native Americans that depended on them. Sure, in terms of the _number_ of different species we've killed off, the majority have been locally endemic island species with small populations, but some of the megafaunal species we've wiped out in continental habitats were capstone species in their ecosystem with unimaginably large impacts on their environment.

[@heavymetalbassist5]

What happens when those pigeons eat up whole farms like locusts

[@rridderbusch518]

Passenger pigeons ate invertebrates like snails & worms, plus small berries in the wild. They won't eat wheat, corn, apples or potatoes. Our ancestors' farms did fine living with them.

[@DarkPesco]

I love PBS Studios! Y'all bring brains to the table...

[@musicaismylovica]

Why would you bring back extinct animals that would just go extinct again? The planet is warming, pollution is getting worse, weather events more extreme, positive feedback loops etc. why would you do that to these poor animals? Unless we literally address human overshoot of the earth we ought not do anything.

[@joe42m13]

Thinking you can bring back some form of extinct animal, introduce it into a different ecosystem than it previously existed in, and for it to happen exactly as you intend, seems incredibly hubristic. While the science behind the project is interesting, preserving ecosystems would be better achieved by focus on limiting new land development and preserving targeted areas so that a natural equilibrium can be reached, without our human finger on the scale.

[@eleoptera]

I like this host. Very soothing voice and easy to follow.

[@BladeMasterz916]

All major cities are so happy about more pigeons.

[@kenj7153]

The Carolina Parakeet. Today we call a spices of birds Conures. We have Sun, Nanday, and various green colored Conures that all resemble the Carolina Parakeet in various color patterns and other physical looks. I fully support research on the Passenger Pigeons (Doves), however I would like to see equal intrest in bringing back Carolina Parakeet, the only native Parrot of the United States

[@tonyleukering8832]

From the Birds of North America/Birds of the World account: "Passenger Pigeons bred almost exclusively in huge colonies of at least hundreds of thousands of pairs. Aggregating in such immense numbers allowed the species to satiate any potential predators...." I don't see how to go from zero to 100,000 if they don't breed successfully with only small numbers of individuals.

[@mrrrrrr3116]

Sad as it is to see the environment destroyed, I just can't imagine the public supporting the passenger pigeon's return based on how much people enjoy not being pooped on. I read this account once: Ornithologist J.M. Wheaton described one flock as a rolling cylinder filled with leaves and grass. “The noise was deafening and the sight confusing to the mind,” he wrote in 1882. It was easy to tell where the pigeons had roosted: The trees were crippled, their branches cracked off and picked clean of nuts and acorns. For miles, the ground was coated with a layer of feces more than an inch thick. *an inch thick*

[@netgnostic1627]

We should de-extinct the Tazzy Tiger, but maybe we should try harder to save the Tasmanian Devil first. If we don't it will be extinct soon too. But we certainly need to be sure that we know what predator/prey situations we'll end up with.

[@mehere8038]

Devil is one animal that fortunately is getting good money & science put into saving it. They actually believe the Tassy Tiger would help it too, scavanging sick devils before they could infect others. It's theorised it's extinction may be a large part of the reason the devils are in trouble now

[@Daralexen]

@netgnostic1627 Thylacine is currently being revived by Colossal, the same company behind the Dodo, Woolly Mammoth, and Northern White Rhinoceros revivals. A major reason why is that it can help save the Tasmanian Devil due to it picking off the sick members like it did back then.

[@humbcker]

The key here is it is not possible to actually re-create the extinct species as it was but to integrate its genetic traits into a existing species so it can imitate its desirable behavior for the environment.

[@Sowhat300]

I can just imagine a 3 day long flock of pigeons flying over Manhattan

[@Petch85]

So this leaves me with a question. How much of a species behavior is in the DNA and how much is learned? Do there langrage/calls stil work, can they find a mate, can the start migrating, do they know how to make a nest, how to escape predictors, how to find food and on and on.

[@kellydalstok8900]

Migration might be the biggest problem. In The Netherlands they started breeding storks some decades ago. Nowadays there are several breeding pairs, and although the birds are doing really well, they don’t migrate. Luckily (?j due to climate change we haven’t had proper winters, so the birds are doing okay.

[@lerualnaej5917]

Especially for the pigeons. It's widely believed that part of why their population collapsed was because they were so social and could not maintain themselves when they dropped below a certain number.

[@rridderbusch518]

@@lerualnaej5917Passenger pigeons loved being in flocks, yes, but it was men with guns who brought them to extinction. It was like a macho contest. It's easier to shoot them in groups, and that's what they did.

[@mehere8038]

Have a look at the Serengeti. The animals there live in mega herds & stay together because of predators. When predators have been removed from surrounding areas, those same animals stop living in large herds & migrating, so it's not even dna or learned, but also constant evolutionary pressure on them that keeps them behaving in certain ways. Holistic grazing is about applying this to domestic herds as well & when taken to the extreme, it has been seen that domestic cattle will also return to living in herds if dingos, coyotes etc are allowed to return to the farmland & pose a threat to them. This ca be used to prevent the animals nibbiling on young shoots & instead force them to eat fully grown grass & then move on quickly, cause the herd have deficated all over it, making what's left inedible, which results in major restoration of the land. Presumably these pigeons would adopt the same behaviours as other pigeon species have today unless someone came up with a way of stopping that & if they can come up with a way of stopping that, they can just do that with today's pigeons & have them fullfill the passenger pigeon's ecosystem role. It's a nice idea in theory, but has enough holes to drive an ancient passenger pigeon flock through! Of the 3 mentioned in this video, in reality, the Tasmanian tiger is the only practical one for actual re-introduction into the wild in it's still suitable traditional homeland

[@jmr]

Mammoths make the most sense to me as a first attempt. They are supposed to give huge benefits to the environment and easier to re-extinct(kill off) then birds. I don't know how effective we would be trying to stop a bird if it turned out to be a problem.

[@GNAV3]

With regards to control/re-extincting them, it probably really depends on the bird species in question. The only reason passenger pigeons are extinct in the first place is because humans already (and mostly unintentionally) wiped them out, and this is a species that is thought to have been at one point the most populous bird species of modern times. We can probably handle something like that if re-extincting them were somehow necessary. Contrast that to something like emus (like maybe a moa or something), and yeah absolutely, we have trouble killing those kinds of birds when we *try* to.

[@jmr]

@@GNAV3 Thanks for the reply. I did consider that but as pointed out the new bird would not be a true passenger pigeon. In addition to over hunting part of the reason the passenger pigeon went extinct was supposedly it's nesting habits. To successfully introduce the new birds we would have to eliminate or account for that. There may be other variables we haven't considered as well. The other thing we have to take into account is what motivated us to hunt them. There was a financial motivation and hunger. With farmed poultry that's no longer a major consideration. Hunting is more of a luxury pursuit these days. In fact hunting in general has taken a downturn. If we needed to remove the new bird we would have to pay to do so. Who pays?

[@WanderTheNomad]

De-extinct

[@jmr]

@@WanderTheNomad I typed the word I meant but must not have been clear. If we realize we messed up we can re-extinct them. AKA kill them all off. Easier to kill off large land dwelling creatures then birds. I just edited it to be clear. I see why you would think it was a typo instead of wordplay.

[@GNAV3]

@@jmr Yeah that's true, for it to exist in a modern world with even less available habitat than the one it left it does stand to reason that it may have to be made differently from the original bird to overcome that sensitivity, which yeah would erode a potential mechanism for control if things went wrong. Honestly it's conceivable that the population could get absurdly out of control if the precedent for the original birds *with* that weakness was at one point a total population in the billions. Tbf it'd probably still need some level of gross negligence for it to get there though, both in failure to predict the outcome from the outset, and failure to properly keep tabs on the birds to see the trending toward this kind of outcome. They'll probably have contained trial populations that they'll study for a while for those kinds of assessments before they breed/release them at scale. Anyway yeah, any funding for control efforts will ultimately be coming from taxpayers. Any companies involved in their creation/release *could* theoretically end up getting sued depending on what happens and who's to blame for the negligence that led to the problem, but that money would be going to damage claimants anyway and not the governments involved unless they got in on that first. There are government funded invasive wildlife control programs active right now that are going to be similar to how a passenger pigeon control program would probably operate logistically/financially, and depending on the scale could be anywhere from inexpensive open seasons for licensed hunters, to state/provincially-financed per-bird bounties/wages (like with feral hogs in Texas), to larger federally-financed programs (like the USACE's/USGS's Mississippi river electrical barrier & asian carp control program). So much is going to be up in the air depending on what they'd determine to be the most effective method of control from there, but unless things were to get truly crazy we're probably not talking anything into multiple billions of dollars? Not a wildlife control expert/conservationist/logistics analyst though tbf.

[@ShutterJunkie]

Habitat loss needs to be quelled first I think.

[@ellanimation816]

This is on top of that, the wooly mammoth would help to preserve tundras

[@Joey-vw1id]

Anything that has to do with saving our planet I'm totally down with 💚🌍🌎🌏💚🌵🌿💯

[@aspiewithattitude3213]

Once we bring back the passenger pigeons, just imagine the impact that it would have on the commercial passenger airlines? This would ground the airline industry. Commercial passenger airlines are the real living passenger pigeons of the 21st century.

[@jackflash9735]

While I would love to see passenger pigeons back. Could you imagine being outside when a mile wide 200 mile long flock passes over, the shit storm it would cause!😂

[@captain54526]

The complete destruction of the American Chestnut Tree which numbered one of every four trees in our hardwood forest by the Chinese Blight had more to do in the rapid decrease in numbers of the Passenger Pigeon than any other event. Their most important food source completely destroyed. Their time period of decreasing numbers are completely parallel.

[@jackstutts6439]

The whole idea of de-extinction is, while scientifically plausible, ethically questionable. As you pointed out, we're not recreating a lost species in totality, we're creating a reasonable facsimile. We should be really concerned about possible unintended consequences to the environment. With that in mind if such hybrids are made their wholesale introduction to the wild should be curtailed if not forbidden. What would be the point of releasing a woolly mammoth into an environment that about to disappear due to global warming. The Passenger Pigeon has no significant habitat left so how would it interact with the environment? Instead of trying make ourselves feel better about our past mistakes and downright crimes against nature, we should focus on not making the same mistakes again.

[@op4000exe]

I'm oddly worried about this. Generally I think it's a good thing, heck even a great thing, but part of me also worries if just because we (humans) like the world as it is now, we're trying to stifle natural growth, in order to make the world what we want it to be. Evolution has killed billions, if not trillions of species long before humans came along, and even some species living today, would have gone extinct even without human intervention. Where do we make the distincion between a species we think should go extinct, and one that we want to keep along? While I do absolutely realise that we humans are causing unfathomable (and almost unprecedented) ecological extinctions at a rapid pace, us trying to keep "native species" only where they "belong", and ressurrect ancient species, is once again us meddling in nature. Overall with that said, I do believe that this kind of science is not only good, but needed. I do however wonder how many acts we'll justify to ourselves, just because "we think it's correct", and through that essentially go into the opposite camp, wherein we're not so much accelerating extinction, but rather stifling evolution, by keeping species that evolutionarily speaking would've gone extinct, around just because we like them, or because we like the status quo as it is.

[@MM-jf1me]

I don't disagree with you, but another way to look at it is: how is us creating new hybrids from extinct animals and "stifling" evolution any different from how we've changed the evolutionary course of domestic plants and animals? I did especially like the focus on keystone species in this video and hope that more conservation focus and funds go towards preserving currently existing keystone species rather than going towards preventing the extinction of evolutionary dead ends like pandas.

[@op4000exe]

@@MM-jf1me It isn't really any different, I just think it's an important discussion to have. I see a lot of people always talking about preserving species without a second thought, which comes off to me as odd, 'cause their reasoning is always to protect nature. Nature has however, done fine without human meddling for close to 500 million years, so if we don't properly think about what helping means, we might just be doing a new kind of harm, instead of actually helping.

[@MM-jf1me]

@@op4000exe Agreed.

[@karenbass5812]

Like the giant panda. Perfect example of this point. It's a business now not really a conservation initiative. Recent studies have shown they were on the way out until we came along.

[@Asri_]

I think you have a good point about mammoths, but not so much passenger pigeons. They didn't die because they were unfit for their environment -- humans literally ate all of them, recently, over a very short period of time.

[@DragonFae16]

De-extincting a marsupial would likely be the hardest challenge of all the species. Placental mammals are the easiest (though all of them are hard), birds are complicated but it can be done. But because of the unique biology of marsupials, the only way to do it would be to find the perfect surrogate mother that could not only carry the fetus but also had a pouch the right size for the joey as it grows as well as milk that was compatible with the joey. Unlike with placental mammals, because marsupial joeys spend most of their development in the pouch, including the months the babies of placental mammals spend in the womb, it is currently physically impossible for them to be hand-raised if they are younger than about 6 months of age. So to de-extinct any marsupial species, such as the Tasmania tiger, the first giant hurdle is for a fully functioning artificial pouch to be invented. Oh, and to add to that, Thylacinidae, the family the Tasmanian tiger belonged to, split from the rest of Dasyuromorphia over 20 million years ago so we have no living close relatives. And the largest living member of Dasyuromorphia is the Tasmanian devil. Males weigh on average 8kg and females weigh on average 6kg. Compare that to the Tasmanian tiger, which had an average weight for males being 20kg and females being 13kg.

[@mehere8038]

I do'nt get why you think placental mammals would be easier, the surrogant for that has to be able to carry the baby to term, whereas marcupials we CAN raise outside the pouch from at least part way through the growth process, so if we can't size correctly, we can swap to artificial pouches etc later on, just like we currently do with rescues. Problem would be, like you say, no close relatives. In terms of pouches etc though, tamar & brush tail wallabies have been helped back from only a handful left by removing their babies from their pouch within days of them being born & putting them into a surrogant's pouch from another species, so as to start the birthing process again as quickly as possible & get as many babies as possible from a single animal

[@leongliyang6946]

if the pigeon came back as a hybrid , it's name should be Martha for the memorial sake

[@wendymuir7818]

Before we bring back the birds and animals, we need to restore their habitat, so they have a home to come back to. Habitat loss and degradation are a major part of the extinction equation.

[@btfilther]

If in a sci-fi scenario we manage to bring back the passenger pigeon with its absurdly big population we will have to drive it to extinction again because of the present day environment we sustain for ourselves - crops, transportation, communications. Why making the effort to bring back an animal which is incompatible with today's world, and if it ever adapts it will take a completely different ecological niche?

[@glennelliott708]

A Passenger Pigeon flock would devastate a Walmart parking lot. This is a good thing.

[@gianpaulgraziosi6171]

Passenger Pigeons, American Chestnuts and Giant Beavers.

[@andi_pasti]

The only concern I have is, would we tolerate mega flocks of these birds enough without wanting to get rid of them? Humans already despise pigeons in cities. I am totally in for bringing these species back, especially thylacines, but would get the rights and protection they deserve. Would we care even less about them when we know how to bring them back?

[@rypatmackrock]

We should care for all the animals and plants in our local native ecosystems, how they interact with the global ecosystem, the basic mechanisms of ecology, and how we humans from the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat from our agriculture; all depend on healthy native ecology. That is the most important end goal to remember about conservation as we know it, if our societies are ever to survive the oncoming climate crisis, and if we are ever to adapt. If coyotes are so good at living among us humans, with the absence of their predators that they are adapt at living among, then the coyotes, (just like the indigenous tribes foretell), have lessons to teach us about animal adaptation, and coexistence. It also turns out that ironically, the bourbon industry depends on the recovery of the passenger pigeon, since I found in another video that the passenger pigeons were symbiotic with white oak trees that are part of the barrel aging recipe for bourbon. At the end of the day, it is all about a balanced, healthy ecosystem that can sustain life for decades and centuries to come. I will admit to grudging against the common rock pigeons myself, let alone seagulls, but that is the job of our native peregrine falcons to be the Apex predators that chase, hunt, and scare the pigeons away as they have since their early evolution. I was also reminded that common rock pigeons are technically feral after previously being domesticated which is still practiced by some people. I even got to toss a homing pigeon during my senior year of high school, as a right of passage.

[@absahr1414]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR DOING WHAT YOU DO

[@dolphinblue3138]

I would love it if the passenger pigeons come back and also bring back the carolina parakeets but their should be no hunting ban to prevent those birds to become extinct again.

[@Daralexen]

They will likely be put under the same protection as the other national treasures of their home country. Considering that you can go to prison for simply touching a Hawaiian Monk Seal, I think that a far worse punishment would be in place for killing a Passenger Pigeon.

[@willemvandebeek]

Dodo de-extinction would be my choice, because Dutch explorers were responsible for their extinction and as a Dutchman I feel kind of guilty for that. :-/

[@Daralexen]

@willemvandebeek Colossal is currently reviving it, and I understand how you feel. As a Spaniard, I feel bad that my ancestors drove the Pyrenean Ibex to extinction twice due to overhunting and a failed de-extinction attempt.

[@FelipeKana1]

"Oh look, let's create transgenic species just to release in the wild! W H A T C O U L D G O W R O N G, R I G H T????"

[@joelnichols9055]

We got ourselves into this environmental mess by not listening to experts and scientists. Probably time to start listening to them and trying some of their ideas. My guess is that it will take lots of crazy ideas to get our planet back on track.

[@mehere8038]

reality though is that the vast majority or scientists are not onboard with this. They're spending billions on this instead of habitat protection for currently alive but critically endangered animals!

[@ariadgaia5932]

I COMPLETELY CALLED THIS IN MY FANTASY, SCI-FI NOVEL!!! I KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN! I didn't predict the reasoning for it, but still! So proud!

[@turki-ok1jk]

Sad thing is time repeats itself because we have smilar of species called in arabic "قمري هيض"(you can copy paste the name to see how they are very identical). Every September they Bird migrate to my country and people haunt it illegally and the birds are highly endangered to extinct

[@Daralexen]

I would use de-extinction technology to revive functionally extinct animals such as Baiji, Vaquita, Fernandina Island Tortoise, Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, Auwo, and Yangtze Giant Soft Shell Turtle. Since these animals are still around, but cloning or artificial impregnation needs to happen to save them from complete extinction.

[@kevincleveland763]

A band tailed pigeon + a passenger pigeon one still have a band tail so it should be a "band tailed passenger pigeon"

[@JJLom777]

If one has the money, there are actually companies that clone pets right now. So, that facet of the technology is already very valid.

[@DarwinGudex]

I find this very interesting and believe that the last known passenger pigeon died in captivity. That species was a treasure. Personally I think that this makes more sense than the wooly mammoth. Recently I came across recent alleged passenger pigeon sightings and pictures on KZbin. I just googled recent passenger pigeon sightings. I'm not a bird watcher - I just thought that I would mention it.

[@Daralexen]

@user-kg5xn2lf2c The sightings could be possible. A pigeon in Papua New Guinea was believed to be extinct for even longer than the Passenger Pigeon was captured on camera in 2022.

[@Jay_Kay666]

That would make weather reports more interesting: "a flock is arriving tuesday afternoon so remember to take an umbrella and flashlight if you dare to go outside. Now back to tornadoes in the southeast"

[@megansfo]

This is fascinating! It would certainly be an interesting experiment. Band Tailed Pigeons are common here in the Northwest, and they come to my feeders every day. They are large birds, and somewhat tame.

[@fishyfool]

nothing is ever altered beyond repair, just beyond OUR ability. Leave it alone and let nature do her thing. There's nothing we've broken that she can't fix.

[@kleinjahr]

A bit of caution here. imagine and you run into one of these flocks..You're in a plane leaving the east coast. If you run into one of these flocks, you'll end up all over the country side.

[@timan2039]

No issues with the pigeons de-extinction. To call it over hunting is an understatement, there was a time of wholesale slaughter.

[@sixvee5147]

Fire up the BBQ! By all accounts the passenger pigeon was good eating!

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

Just in time for them to be lost again....

[@nomadicroadrat]

By all means de-extinct the passenger pigeon, but don't forget the dodo.

[@JCox-zp1bk]

One food the passenger pigeon consumed was American chestnuts, and American chestnuts, unfortunately, are also now extinct. If passenger pigeons could be ''brought back'', would there be a food supply of some sort for them?

[@jasonhallock3773]

Remember the sky would turn black and the ground would turn white

[@radioraffa]

"De-Extinction" is a misnomer and a term coined by companies (such as Colossus) to create never existing animals that may look like something extinct but in reality is just a lab creations. Just because you mix up some genes to create an animal. It doesn't mean all those instincts and behaviors that are intertwined and engraved over thousands of years will be in that animal. If they do not create full clones... It's just a lab project.

[@Daralexen]

@radioraffa There was a successful de-extinction attempt in 2005 of a long lost tree in Isreal.

[@radioraffa]

@@Daralexen That was using the actual seeds of a palm found in a 1000 year old pot. Which I think is awesome.. Plants are also a simpler lifeform than animals. The term "De-Extinction" has been hijacked by companies such as Colossal. By trying to make an animal that looks kind of like an extinct one. They have yet to create anything.

[@randysmith5435]

The migratory bird population has plummeted since the widespread use of roundup and other herbicides and pesticides on grain crops. We are lied to constantly being told that cats and other introduced non native species are to blame. In my childhood, there were huge flocks of birds that filled the sky every fall. That was the 70s. When widespread use of herbicides started these flocks rapidly declined. Until we stop poisoning the environment, we have no business introducing new species to kill off.

[@jennellhickam7912]

I think we should leave it alone. We humans have a tendency to do things that look good on paper and turn out to have lasting repercussions. There is a good chance this could be disastrous and by the time we figure it out it will be too late. We should be focusing on what we can do to stop the damage now and let mother nature figure out how to fix what needs fixing. Human interference in nature = DISASTER

[@pjk9225]

youre ignoring the thousands of years of land management that indigenous groups in the Northeastern forests made. Humans are not naturally destructive, it's the systems we've recently made that look to extract maximum value FROM forests. It's short term thinking that is a very recent phenomena. We aren't interfering with nature, we ARE nature, and it's up to us to learn how to sustainably manage the land so we can leave it a better place.

[@Gaia_Seraphina]

It would be just reversing human's own deeds.

[@WanderTheNomad]

With every mistake we gain more knowledge on how to do things better, not stop doing new things.

[@johnnyearp52]

​@@Gaia_Seraphina We can't reverse it.

[@MrMash-mh9dy]

You could bring back the Passenger Pigeon, but they will never have the impact they did because the ecosystems they relied on to grow to such large numbers are gone. It wasn't just hunting that made them extinct, it was the forests they relied on disappearing too that did it. And the forests that were cleared in the past are the farmlands of today that we need to feed a population that is 10x larger than then. To bring anything back is only going to be a novelty, not a solution to any of the problems our over-consumption and over-population have caused. I'm for trying but let's not pretend it is anything but what it is. It's a niche science that doesn't have any real applications to solve the problems that made them extinct in the first place.

[@ruelruelan]

faith in humanity restored.

[@glencmac]

No point in bringing the Passenger Pigeon back because they didn't have enough luggage space for the wheelie things.

[@AniFam]

Awesome~👍 Thank you for sharing this video~🤗

[@raulpinto7543]

There's an obvious problem. You could de-extinct a wooly mammoth and plant them in Siberia with no risk of overlap with their southern real risk of overlap and elephant extinction by hybridization because elephants don't fly. Pigeons do.

[@richardk6196]

I've been very pro de-extinction and for the most part I still am. But this video offered some really thought-provoking stuff.

[@chloe.d178]

I want to know more, I've become pretty convinced it's a good idea to bring back the mammoth and the thylacine. I'd have more concerns about bring the passenger pigeon back and would like to know more about their impacts on their ecosystems.

[@gojira4036]

If they do decide and manage to do it. Let’s just call it the Band Tailed Passenger pigeon OR The Passenger Tail pigeon

[@redrockcrf4663]

De-instinction - if we do it at all - should focus on species important to their eco system and not long extinct. The passenger pigeon and Tasmanian Tiger and examples, or the Huia in NZ; not so sure of the mammoth.

[@ellanimation816]

The wooly mammoth would preserve are tundras which are at high risk

[@damiwilliams267]

ok nice. can we hear more about the mammoths please.

[@LauK-uw9lz]

Do you Agree? Scientists believe that bringing back the woolly mammoth, or at least species similar to it through genetic engineering and cloning techniques, could serve several purposes: 1. **Ecosystem restoration**: Woolly mammoths were a keystone species in the Pleistocene era, and their presence helped shape the landscape and ecosystem dynamics. By reintroducing them, scientists hope to restore ecosystems in certain areas to a more balanced state, particularly in the Arctic regions where they once roamed. 2. **Climate change mitigation**: Some researchers believe that reintroducing large herbivores like the woolly mammoth could help mitigate the effects of climate change. Mammoths grazed on grasses and other vegetation, which could help prevent the spread of shrubs and trees in the Arctic tundra. This, in turn, could help maintain the reflective properties of the tundra, which helps regulate global temperatures. 3. **Conservation of biodiversity**: Bringing back extinct species, even if they are not exact replicas, could contribute to the preservation of genetic diversity and help prevent further species loss. However, there are several potential dangers associated with bringing back the woolly mammoth or similar species: 1. **Ecological impact**: Introducing a species into an ecosystem can have unforeseen consequences, potentially disrupting existing ecological balances or introducing diseases to which current species have no immunity. 2. **Ethical concerns**: There are ethical questions surrounding the cloning and genetic engineering of extinct species, including concerns about animal welfare, the potential exploitation of genetically engineered animals, and the implications for conservation efforts. 3. **Resource allocation**: Reviving extinct species requires significant resources, both financial and scientific. Some argue that these resources could be better spent on conserving existing species and habitats or addressing more pressing environmental issues. Advantages of bringing back the woolly mammoth or similar species include: - **Ecosystem restoration**: Reintroducing mammoths could help restore ecosystems that have been degraded due to human activities. - **Research opportunities**: Studying revived species could provide valuable insights into genetics, evolution, and ecology. - **Educational value**: Reviving extinct species could generate public interest and awareness about conservation and the importance of biodiversity. Disadvantages include: - **Ecological risks**: Introducing new species into ecosystems can have unpredictable consequences. - **Ethical concerns**: There are ethical questions surrounding the creation and treatment of genetically engineered animals. - **Resource allocation**: Reviving extinct species requires significant resources that could be allocated elsewhere. Whether or not we should bring back the woolly mammoth is a complex question that involves weighing the potential benefits against the risks and ethical considerations. It's a topic that requires careful consideration and discussion among scientists, policymakers, ethicists, and the public. Some argue that the potential benefits, such as ecosystem restoration and research opportunities, outweigh the risks, while others believe that the resources required could be better spent on other conservation efforts. Ultimately, decisions about de-extinction should be made with careful consideration of scientific evidence, ethical principles, and societal values.

[@tonyroberts7481]

So I’m curious on how you’re bring back extinct behavior? Seriously you’re not going to get that from resequencing extinct organisms. You’ll get behavior from the extant species your using for your ladder, right?

[@himanbam]

I think it really depends. Some behaviour is learned, but a lot is seemingly genetic. So I guess you just gotta hope the desired behaviour is more on the gentic side.

[@jskanderson2210]

We could protect the existing elephants instead of wasting money to bring back the wooly mammoth which needs cold weather. What a stupid plan. I'm not so freaked out about the passenger pigeon. Millions of birds are already extinct, so bringing them back looks like it's sort of good.

[@mascadadelpantion8018]

See this is why birds are the most interesting damn animals in the world

[@N0sf3r4tuR1s3n]

Okay, but is the Carolina Parakeet also on the table?

[@backcountrylifemagazine6912]

Our planet is not in a dire state!

[@mapiasal]

carolina parakeets should be brought back as well as the first animals to be resurrected imo

[@robrice7246]

So, who's against the Pleistocene Park project? Because subjects like this might be considered illegal to continue for various ethical reasons.

[@teemadarif8243]

Roger that lol

[@danphenPhe]

The big question, if we bring it back, where is the environment it used to have and how can we create that environment that does not exist anymore for them, otherwise would be wonderful.

[@danielkleiner7369]

We blame over hunting, but consider a bird flu accidentally transmitted from European poultry on American farms to a wild population. Makes better sense on the extinction .

[@FlambartPhotography]

Please lots of de-extinction, please paradigm shift and let's embrace the idea of de-exctincting many species. It will be awesome and surely done with proper care.

[@broccanmacronain457]

I would love to have the Passenger Pigeon back but how are the farmers with their fields and orchards going to deal with it.

[@mikeharrington5593]

The reasons that passenger pigeons were exterminated included their decimating human crops. Would we really welcome back a 2 legged locust, & what about all the extra pigeon poop, would it be beneficial or toxic ? Where would such a reintroduced genetic sub species claim as its main habitat & what are the implications of that ?

[@MarSchlosser]

Passenger pigeons are one of those things people say thank God it's extinct. I cannot think of any species more hated in its day. Their destruction was phenomenal. They caused famines and local extinctions of other birds and animals. How about something reasonable? Save the Nepal native elephant, which is believed to be a mammoth. Save the desert American antelope.

[@DarkPesco]

As long as passenger pigeons could be engineered to take to the forests and rural areas...fine. But if they choose to camp out in cities (like today's pigeons) they frequent then the birds end up munching down the leaves of the trees in our cities! The few there are needed to combat the rising heat, as well!

[@mehere8038]

They'd take to crops instead of forest leaves! Couldn't be allowed to be rural because of this

[@kurtzwar729]

Restoring extinct species should only be done if it can be done with original DNA. NO hybridization should be done with other animals or altered DNA. Pure species or nothing.

[@Frank-oz8be]

The G R E A T R E S U R R E C T I O N is coming!

[@arTE-VI]

The Saber Tooth Tiger, Yeahhhhh!!!!