If they can clone animals why not clone indangered species?

Question

If scientists can clone animals for food, why can't they clone indangered species?

Answer 1

A few factors, really.
Cloning animals isn't 100% effective, it's more effective for some than others. It requires access to a female of the endangered species (so eggs can be harvested and implanted with DNA from the same species). It requires access to a female, which will then be operated on and implanted with the engineered eggs. You could, theoretically, implant the eggs in a related species, but that could be problematic for other reasons.

I'm sure that this approach is being considered in cases where it seems possible, but in cases where there just aren't enough animals to be operating on them willy-nilly, or where they don't do well in captivity, it's not realistic. Yet (hopefully :)).

Answer 2

First of all, I believe at this time, cloning is not as easy as the media makes it seem. It is still very costly to clone domesticated animals, and we can't even clone humans (not that we should, I'm talking about for stem cell purposes). Organisms are not cloned for food (except plants). Animals that are cloned are ones that have been genetically modified or have very special genetic traits (like cows that have been genetically modified to produce human milk-- because it costed millions of dollars to produce this cow. )

I think the main issue is, it's more important to identify the cause of species becoming endangered, and save species by solving the problem. Cloning the animals and putting them back in to the habitat that cannot support them will be a fruitless endeavor.

If the problem really can be reduced by increasing the number of individuals in the population, conservationists do this by captive breeding. They may even go as far as artificial insemination (I think they do this with pandas)

By the way, it will be possible to someday clone and bring back animals that have already become extinct. Do you guys think this is ethical? What if the extinction is caused soley by human activity and we can bring back and protect its habitat?

Answer 3

Well, its complicated. In cloning, they take the nucleus from one animal and put it in the egg of another. Then when the animal gives birth, they're exactly alike genetically. Its not something where they step into a machine, and boom. There are 6 cows instead of one. Cloning endangered species would only make members of the same species similar to others. It wouldnt' increase their number. Cloning is making a copy of something else, but it doesn't increase the amount in this case.

Answer 4

They probably could. But it isn't really necessary. All they need to do is breed them in captivity. That is being done, but the result is just zoo animals. The real goal is to maintain wild populations.

If you are thinking of cloning a species that is ALREADY extinct by using DNA from some source like embalmed dead animals or whatever, that is not possible. It is just science fiction. Cloning, at least the way we can do it now, requires living animals to start with.

Answer 5

Because cloning is still a new process, certain problems arise because the cells being cloned are older than newborn... so the animals die prematurely and have other illnesses not common in the young.

Answer 6

basically a remark. The FDA is the nutrition inspection business enterprise, not the nutrition advent business enterprise. They exist as a results of fact of questions like this approximately what form of nutrition we are ingesting. In direct answer on your question, NO, i do unlike cloning. yet could i comprehend if i became ingesting a cloned chicken? additionally, No, however the FDA has regulations against it although specific worldwide places could want you to think of they don't. See below:

Answer 7

I don't really know, but I think there are laws preventing it and it may be dangerous to those endangered species; thus, they might kill the animals or something

Answer 8

They don't have enough research yet.

Answer 9

good question.