Should extinct animals be cloned?

Question

Lately, there has been talk of cloning a wooly mammoth. Do you believe extinct animals should be cloned? Please note, this is not a question pro or con general cloning; it refers to extinct animals only.

Pharmnerd, I gave you a thumbs up for your answer, but you're wrong about the mammoth being before human beings. They were here together and were hunted, probably to extinction as were the American buffalo.

Answer 1

well,,,,, in my opinion animals that have been extinct in recent years do to over fishing, hunting, or over industrializing of the rain forrest should be since their death demise was brought on artificially by man. As for the wooly mammoth? i dont know, they were extinct before present day man started showing up so they had a natural reason for extintinction. So i feel prehistoric animals should not be cloned due to their low fitness for modern day, not to mention they would be a huge drain on the ecosystem, especially if the started eating another animal or plant in high quantity which would in fact impact that animal/plant artificially.

Answer 2

I believe some extinct animals should be cloned. In the early 1800s, there were two billion passenger pigeons. Now there are none. That's a lot of birds. We don't know what role they played in the long-term life of the forests in the eastern USA. It would be best to clone them, before we find out that they had a critical role.

I'm not so much in favor of cloning the mammoths. In the 11-13 thousand years they've been gone, the tundra and taiga ecosystems they once inhabited have adapted to their absence. Bringing them back might have the same effect as releasing a non-native nuisance animal.

Answer 3

From an ecological viewpoint, i feel that cloning an extinct animal is not a good thing. from this i don't mean creating a single individual, i think you must be referring to a population. Extinction is quite a natural process, though many have been triggered by man. When an animal goes extinct, the ecosystem readjusts itself to compensate for that loss. For example, dinosaurs were once top carnivores, with their extinction, many other animals have taken their place. The ecosystem has learnt to do without them. Now just imagine cloning dinosaurs and releasing them in the wild, there would obviously be a major imbalance in the ecosystem. So, that's the main reason for not attempting this kind of things.

Answer 4

Cloning an extinct animal is just setting it up to become extinct again. Since we only have a limited number of fossil finds for any one animal, there would not be enough genetic diversity to maintain existence beyond a few generations. There would be too much inbreeding for the species to survive.

c-ya

Answer 5

It's interesting... I think that they probably shouldn't mess with it...
Some animals that are extinct are extinct for a reason... They're ways of living just didn't work anymore...

Others because of human interference, whether it be hunting/poaching or just habitat destruction...

Either way, most animals that are extinct would be unable to adapt to today's environmental conditions... Depending, of course, on how long it's been since they became extinct.

Personally, I think that things like that should be left alone...

Answer 6

I think that there's value in genetic research into extinct species. Personally, I'd like to see animals like dodo birds, passenger pigeons, and Tasmanian tigers make a return, but that's not likely for various reasons. But if I had a choice, I feel that we should be concentrating on conserving living habitats and animals currently under threat, instead of trying to expensively recreate what's already been lost.