Reviving the Tasmanian Tiger is a Stupid Idea

 

The last Tasmanian tiger, an individual named Benjamin, died a lonely death of exposure in an empty, cold cage in a zoo in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1936. The coyote-size animal—the last marsupial apex predator on earth—had disappeared from the Australian mainland some two thousand years earlier and was then hunted off Tasmania in the nineteenth century by the European convicts who colonized that island. Now a group of adventurist scientists and rich tech bros want to bring it back through genetic engineering.
 
The ecological argument is that Tasmania’s environment has suffered from a lack of apex predators, a problem in many places. If you find yourself picking too many ticks out of your scalp because there are too many deer in your suburb, or noticing that your garden is besieged by rabbits, you are probably living in such a place. But you probably had not considered such an exotic remedy. After all, there would be downsides to bringing the saber-toothed tiger back to Miami.
 
There’s something irresistibly sci-fi about the idea of bringing back an animal that has been extinct for nearly a century. The same company working on this project is also trying to revive the wooly mammoth, which has been extinct for much longer than the Tasmanian tiger (about 10,000 years). But resurrecting long-extinct species is daft, a waste of resources, and should be resisted.
 
Resurrection efforts are expensive, with outcomes unclear. The genetic work is complex, and the animals—if any live animals do result—will likely be some kind of hybrid, not the original mammoth or tiger. They may be no better suited to our world than poor Benjamin was to his cage. None of these ecosystems are the same as they were when the mammoth lumbered over the tundra, and may not be at all prepared for such a significant intruder. Many scientists have warned about the potential for introducing or spreading zoonotic diseases, given that extinct species may have been particularly vulnerable to certain illnesses. Especially after the last couple years, that alone seems like reason enough to think again.
 
The company behind this, Colossal (tagline: “The science of genetics. The business of discovery”) has attracted investors like Peter Thiel, a billionaire libertarian Trumper, and an array of venture capitalists. Considering the dire effect people of this class have had on our world, it’s unlikely that any of their ideas are going to save it.
 
Bringing back animals from extinction has one thing going for it, as one scientist put it: “awesomeness.” How cool would it be to save something once thought irretrievable, like the dodo bird?
 
But you know what’s even more awesome? The world we are losing right now.
 
Animals currently endangered range from the absurdly cute desert kit fox, whose ears are larger than its head, to such charismatic megafauna as the manatee or the gray wolf to homely fellows like the Mexican long-nosed bat.
 
By some estimates, thousands of species go extinct every year. A recent United Nations report found that one million animal and plant species were in danger of extinction, more than at any other time in human history. The disappearance of each of these could have complex effects on present-day ecosystems, and saving them is a better use of resources than bringing back the Tasmanian tiger.
 
Even our own flawed government knows how to do this and is constantly saving species from the brink of extinction. Recent successes have included the grizzly bear, the black-footed ferret, the whooping crane, and in a bit of symbolism that deserves far more heavy-handed propaganda, the bald eagle, our national bird. While genetic engineering can play a role in some of this work, what’s much more salient is protecting habitats and crafting the appropriate regulations on human activities that affect these species.
 
Saving endangered animals and plants from going extinct requires extensive government intervention and spending, just the sort of thing that right-wing tech billionaires like Peter Thiel dedicatedly oppose. This kind of work doesn’t get as much attention.
 
Luckily, and perhaps surprisingly, however, wildlife conservation policy enjoys bipartisan support. As Vox recently reported, Congress is about to pass the biggest wildlife protection bill in 50 years (unrelated to the climate policy contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, which clearly will also affect wildlife). The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, or RAWA, has passed the House and is expected to pass the Senate in September, with Republican co-sponsors in each body (including 16 in the Senate). The bill provides nearly $1.4 billion a year not just to help those creatures already on the endangered species list but to prevent vulnerable animals like New York’s saltmarsh sparrow from getting on that list in the first place. This is smart policy—so smart that it may seem amazing that our dysfunctional system could produce it with so little fanfare. The hypothetical Tasmanian tiger revival has attracted more national media attention, and so has the wooly mammoth, but RAWA is significantly more likely to help keep our world awesome.
 
Venture capitalists’ attraction to the Tasmanian tiger project feels not so much altruistic as childish; it’s a classic misapplication of the power that money brings, attempting to do something that seems impossible rather than a possible thing that improves the world. In Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, the character of Satan promises humans that “ye shall be as Gods … what are Gods that Man may not become as they?” Peter Thiel has also funded research on human immortality, another project that would have delighted Milton’s Satan. But rather than rejecting all limits and boundaries in this infantile manner, what nature actually needs is for humans to set more limits and boundaries on ourselves. That’s why RAWA is so astonishing and so welcome—and why tech billionaires and venture capitalists should be kept far away from everything we love.
 
Resurrecting the Tasmanian Tiger Is a Dumb Project. By Liza Featherstone. The New Republic, September 2, 2022.

 

There is a beautiful, heartbreaking scene near the end of the 2011 movie The Hunter. Shot in Tasmania, the film tells the story of a mercenary hired by a global biotech company to find, take DNA samples from, and destroy a thylacine that is rumoured to have survived deep in the state’s wilderness.
 
When the last Tasmanian tiger appears in CGI form at the movie’s climax, walking slowly and alone through the snow, the impact of seeing the lost species in its natural habitat is quietly devastating. The mercenary, played by Willem Dafoe, makes an equally devastating, and complicated, choice.
 
It isn’t hard to find people who believe there is truth in the film’s central conceit – that the thylacine still lives out there somewhere – but despite hundreds of reported sightings there is no scientific evidence that it survived beyond 1936, when the last known specimen died due to neglect at Hobart zoo.
 
Since the 1990s, the endless searches for the marsupial in the wilds of Tasmania and Victoria have run alongside another romantic idea – that it can be brought back through genetic engineering. For years, the chief proponent of this idea was Prof Mike Archer, a former director of the Australian Museum who wanted to use DNA from preserved specimens in its collection. That mantle has now passed to the University of Melbourne’s Prof Andrew Pask, who in 2017 led a project to sequence a thylacine’s genome, a necessary first step.
 
While the ambition is familiar, what’s new is the cash. Earlier this year Pask and his team received a $5m philanthropic gift to set up a thylacine integrated genetic restoration research (acronynm: Tigrr) lab. Last week came the announcement that the lab had partnered with Colossal, a US “de-extinction” company that uses cutting edge CRISPR gene-editing technology, for an even larger sum.
 
Ambition breeds grand statements, and Pask and Colossal’s co-founder, the tech and software entrepreneur Ben Lamm, have their share. Their timeframes differ a bit – Pask is more cautious – but both say the Tasmanian tiger could be back in its homeland within a decade. It sounds fantastic, in both senses. The suggestion by some that it was all a Jurassic Park-style reverie was perhaps not helped by the news that actual movie stars – Chris Hemsworth and his brothers Luke and Liam – were among the funders.
 
In Tasmania, where I live, it is hard to overstate the conflicted place the thylacine holds in the local psyche. Within a few decades of colonisation, Europeans had mislabelled it a cat, put a bounty on its head based on lies about how many sheep it killed, and hunted it to the edge of extinction. When the last animal died, it was initially ignored. But it is celebrated on the state’s coat of arms and used to sell sporting teams, hotels, beer and the island itself. Exploitation has rarely been more thorough.
 
The thylacine, of course, was not a tiger, or a wolf. It wasn’t a dog either, though it looked a bit like one. It was Australia’s only marsupial apex predator, and its place in the landscape remains unfilled a near century on, unless you count feral cats. The scientists behind the recreation project are right when they say its reintroduction could have a positive impact on the ecosystem. In theory, it could just slot back in.
 
I’m not here to tell you what to think about this project. I’m certainly not here to say whether the plan – to edit stem cells from a living marsupial with similar DNA, probably the mouse-like fat-tailed dunnart, and turn the edited cells into a viable thylacine embryo and baby – will work. Smarter people with more expertise than me differ on that. But it is worth considering some of the questions that could lie ahead.
 
A key one: to what extent would the recreated animal actually look and behave like a thylacine? The editing process means minor variations on the original genome are probably inevitable. Pask says they are aiming to make a 99.9% Tasmanian tiger, but it may involve some trial and error.
 
Without experience with others of their kind, would test-tube created thylacines know how to behave like wild thylacines?
 
Some behaviours – hunting, for example – may be hard-wired, and there are examples of human-raised predators being trained before being released into the wild. But nurture has a part to play, and ecologists say it is difficult to know what the absence of a generational imprint would mean, and impossible to predict how a new-model thylacine would interact with its ecosystem.
 
Can a lab-made thylacine have enough genetic diversity to thrive, or would it end up struggling to sustain a viable population?
 
Pask, who five years ago wrote a paper that showed the thylacine was in poor genetic health before it was hunted to death, says addressing diversity is “nothing compared to bringing the whole animal back” and “really sweating the small stuff”, as it could be done by sequencing the genomes of between 80 and 100 specimens. Others, such as Prof Corey Bradshaw from Flinders University, are unconvinced.
 
The reaction to the project in the scientific community has been mixed, and has included some understandable frustration that money is being spent to resurrect a dead species when hundreds of living threatened species are comparatively ignored.
 
I look at it slightly differently. As Deakin University Prof Euan Ritchie has said, funding for conservation is not a zero sum game, and the support for de-extinction research has not come at the expense of other environmental protection. It is additional.
 
What it has highlighted is how little, in relative terms, we prioritise our existing environment. Ritchie gives an example: the previous federal government announced $10m for 100 priority threatened species as native forests continued to be cleared and billions were spent on subsidies to expand fossil fuel industries.
 
Pask says he hopes his team’s research proves worthwhile even if they fail to bring back the thylacine. His wish is that the technology developed can be used to preserve the genetic diversity of the growing list of threatened marsupials that could be wiped out. Which, given the challenges faced, is a noble idea.
 
I’m perhaps a little more naive. I hope our leaders make the choices needed so we don’t have to rely on de-extinction projects to give our wildlife a future.
 
 
Resurrecting the Tasmanian tiger may be a noble idea – but what about preserving existing species? By Adam Morton. The Guardian, August 21, 2022

 

If you haven't heard of the Tasmanian tiger, it's not because it's unworthy of discussion: it's famously not a feline but a dog-like marsupial, a predator that humans hunted to extinction. The last known specimen died in a zoo in 1936.
 
Now the "de-extinction" company Colossal Biosciences wants to genetically resurrect the Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) or the Tasmanian wolf.
 
"Whatever you call it, this mythically beautiful carnivorous marsupial was a true masterpiece of biological advancement," the company says of the project. "Yet, the story of its extinction is a tragedy of human interference and aggression."
 
The thylacine had trademark stripes and, rare in the animal world, abdominal pouches in both females and males. Australian researchers have called it "a dingo with a pouch" or "a dog with a pouch" — but its DNA also has a lot in common with the kangaroo.
 
Colossal, which has previously aired plans to resurrect the woolly mammoth, is intent on giving the thylacine "a second chance at life."
 
Here's a rundown of some of the big questions the project raises:
 
Is the thylacine capable of living again?
 
Humans have been blamed for the animal's extinction, especially after a bounty program was instituted in Tasmania to protect sheep and other animals. But in 2017, Andrew Pask, a biosciences professor, led research that found the thylacine also suffered from a lack of genetic diversity.
 
"The population today would be very susceptible to diseases, and would not be very healthy" if it still existed, Pask said back in 2017.
 
Pask is now part of Colossal's new project to bring the thylacine back. When asked if his view on its viability had changed, he said via email that the plan will incorporate diverse DNA sources.
 
"We have now sequenced many thylacine specimens and hope to continue doing so in this new partnership with Colossal," Pask said in an email to NPR. "Even species with low genetic diversity can be brought back to healthy population numbers again if they are managed correctly."
 
The goal, he said, is to bring back "a good number" of animals to help ensure healthy diversity in the new population. And while the thylacine was seen as struggling in the wild, any new population would be closely monitored, he noted.
 
How would the animals be created?
 
For one thing, it's not cloning.
 
"Cloning is a very specific scientific process. That process requires a living cell," evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro of University of California, Santa Cruz told NPR when talk of resurrecting the mammoth gained new currency in 2015.
 
Instead, Colossal plans to essentially create a hybrid animal, with many of the characteristics of a Tasmanian tiger. Its scientists will use CRISPR gene editing technology to splice bits of recovered thylacine DNA into the genome of a Dasyurid — a family of carnivorous marsupials such as the numbat and Tasmanian devil that are the extinct animal's closest relatives.
 
The altered nucleus would then be inserted into a Dasyurid egg — and when it develops into an embryo, it would be implanted into a surrogate.
 
How would the thylacine affect Tasmania's habitat?
 
"The thylacine was the only apex predator in the Tasmanian ecosystem, so no other animal was able to fill its place once it was lost," Pask said. "We have seen the impacts of this in the Tasmanian devil population which was nearly wiped out by a facial tumor disease."
 
The return of an apex predator would "remove the sick and weak animals from the population to control the spread of transmissible diseases and also improve the genetic health of all the populations it impacts," he added.
 
The thylacine played that role for thousands of years, Pask said, and its return now could restore balance to the entire ecosystem in Tasmania.
 
When might the first embryo be created?
 
It could arrive as early as the next few years. By comparison, Colossal hopes to bring its first woolly mammoth calves into the world within the next five or six years, using elephant surrogates.
 
A timeline for the thylacine hasn't been revealed. But Ben Lamm, Colossal's founder and CEO, noted via email that the Tasmanian tiger's expected gestation period of up to 42 days would be much shorter than that of an elephant-mammoth hybrid.
 
"A large part of our mammoth timeline is based on the nearly two-year gestation of the calves," Lamm said. "I think it is safe to assume that the thylacine proxy could be one of the first animals to be brought back."
 
Would the Tasmanian tiger ever be brought to mainland Australia?
 
"Whether we would return the thylacine to the mainland is a really interesting question," Pask said, noting that the animal is believed to have been found in Australia until 2,000 or 3,000 years ago.
 
"If the thylacine was effective at eradicating some of our invasive pest species such as rabbits, cats and foxes — their reintroduction to the mainland might have major conservation benefits for other ecosystems," he said.
 
But, he added, such an idea would have to be vetted and studied in captive areas before any broader release could be considered.
 
Sure, they could — but should they?
 
Boosting genetic diversity and helping ecosystems are the same reasons Beth Shapiro has cited in speaking in favor of using genetic editing. But while Colossal focuses on trying to bring back extinct animals, Shapiro suggests the focus should be on the wildlife we currently have that are struggling, such as the black-footed ferret (which was once thought to be extinct).
 
"Maybe we could use this technology to give those populations a little bit of a genetic booster shot and maybe a fighting a chance against the diseases that are killing them," she told NPR in 2017. "We're facing a crisis — a conservation, biodiversity crisis. This technology might be a very powerful new weapon in our arsenal against what's going on today. I don't think we should dismiss it out of fear."
 
A plan to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from extinction raises questions. By Bill Chappell.  NPR, August 20, 2022. 

In a newly announced partnership with Texas biotech company Colossal Biosciences, Australian researchers are hoping their dream to bring back the extinct thylacine is a “giant leap” closer to fruition.
 
Scientists at University of Melbourne’s TIGRR Lab (Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research) believe the new partnership, which brings Colossal’s expertise in CRISPR gene editing on board, could result in the first baby thylacine within a decade.
 
The genetic engineering firm made headlines in 2021 with the announcement of an ambitious plan to bring back something akin to the woolly mammoth, by producing elephant-mammoth hybrids or “mammophants”.
 
But de-extinction, as this type of research is known, is a highly controversial field. It’s often criticised for attempts at “playing God” or drawing attention away from the conservation of living species. So, should we bring back the thylacine? We asked five experts.
 
Axel Newton, Evolutionary Biologist at TIGRR Lab
 
YES, with a “but” (more on that shortly). The thylacine is one of the most tragic stories of the modern era, being actively hunted to extinction through a government bounty scheme. Unlike other extinct species, the thylacine was eradicated less than 100 years ago. Its habitat and ecological environment that it once thrived in is still intact.
 
I think we have an obligation to do everything in our power to bring back this remarkable animal, particularly as our forebearers were the direct cause of its disappearance. However, we also have an ethical and moral responsibility to ensure that the animal we resurrect is a 99%+ thylacine and not an almost-thylacine hybrid.
 
The largest challenge of this endeavour is reconstructing the genome of an extinct species without access to any living tissue (the difference between de-extinction and cloning). This equates to putting together a 3-billion-piece puzzle, with our hands tied behind our back.
 
Inevitably some argue that money used on this project could be put to better use through actively preserving habitats of animals on the brink. But this project will have enormous conservation benefits to already threatened species, and has the potential to generate significant advancements to human health.
 
The crux of this is through producing the genetic tools and methods to edit the DNA of stem cells, and then turn those stem cells back into an animal. This technology will not only meet our end goal of turning a surrogate marsupial cell into a thylacine, but in the process allow us to reintroduce genetic diversity into endangered populations. We could take bio-banked tissues of rare, endangered species, and produce animals to be reintroduced into the environment to increase beneficial genetic diversity. Not only this, but the work could be applied for targeted gene therapy to correct mutations underlying human health and cancer.
 
So, should we bring the thylacine back, yes. Not only for the fate of this incredible, lost species, but also the significant benefits this project will produce for humanity as a whole. As long as we keep the moral and ethical considerations at the forefront, we have an opportunity to correct the wrongs of the past.
 
 
Parwinder Kaur, Geneticist and Biotechnologist
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MAYBE. It depends on the complex risks re-introductions of extinct species would have on our current ecosystems. Will such risks outweigh the potential benefits and fear unsuccessful environmental management actions?
 
Earlier this year, our DNA Zoo Australia team completed a chromosome-length 3D genome map of thylacine's closest living relative: the numbat. This raised the tantalising prospect of piecing together the thylacine’s genetic sequence, which in turn would offer the possibility of reintroducing one of Australia’s most iconic lost species.
 
But the big question our team faced was: shall we go after resurrecting the dead, or help numbats first? Numbats are now struggling and on the verge of extinction, with fewer than 1,000 numbats left in the wild and the species officially listed as endangered. The answer was simple: focus on what we have first.
 
We live in exciting times when biotechnology offers various promising alternatives for achieving this purpose, and probably a better use of these techniques will be towards preserving critically endangered species on the verge of extinction.
 
In my opinion, focusing on de-extinction could compromise biodiversity conservation by diverting resources from preserving ecosystems and preventing newer extinctions. It is no trivial work in terms of resources and skills required to revive an extinct animal; given the low level of investments into conservation research, we need to be very careful as a scientific community to not prioritise preservation over resurrection.
 
Euan Ritchie, Wildlife Ecologist
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MAYBE. There is much to consider with such an ambitious project. Most importantly, we must greatly increase efforts to save and recover living species, and it’s simply far cheaper and easier to conserve what we have than to attempt to resurrect species and their ecological roles.
 
This requires confronting the many causes for species decline & extinction, and, broadly speaking, our unsustainable existence and inability to share this planet with other species.
 
At current rates of species decline and extinction, de-extinction will not be able to come even close to resurrecting what we have destroyed. So which species do we try to bring back, and why? And, if it is even possible, will resurrected species behave the same way, will they perform the same ecological roles and affect ecosystems in the same way? I’m very doubtful.
 
However, we must stop perpetuating the idea that conservation is a zero-sum game, feeding a flawed narrative that we must choose which projects, species and ecosystems we support. A shortage of money isn’t the issue, values and priorities are. For perspective, it’s estimated Australia spent A$11.6 billion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2021–22, but recently only allocated A$10 million to 100 priority threatened species, fewer than 6% of the country’s listed threatened species.
 
It’s vital we maintain robust scrutiny and scepticism of ambitious projects, but we must also support scientists to push boundaries and take educated risks. And sometimes we learn, even when we ‘fail’.
 
Personally, I would love to see thylacines back in the wild, but I’m not optimistic we’ll see a self-sustaining and genetically diverse population of thylacines any time soon, if at all. If such projects are to proceed, I also hope that Indigenous people, and communities more broadly, are properly consulted and involved.

Julian Koplin, Bioethicist
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YES. Most of us think we should protect ecosystems from damage and prevent animals from going extinct. This might be because we value nature for its own sake, or it might be because we think biodiversity is good for humans ourselves.
 
Importantly, both of these reasons also support de-extinction. One reason to bring back (approximations of) animals like the Tasmanian tiger and woolly mammoth is to help restore the ecosystems they used to live in; another is to bring humans a sense of wonder and awe, and perhaps even greater respect for the natural world. So, why not push ahead?
 
Perhaps the most serious ethical worry is that de-extinction is a poor use of resources; we could probably make a bigger difference to biodiversity by funding conservation efforts instead. But this objection isn’t decisive. The costs of de-extinction may come down over time.
 
Also, it’s unclear whether many people funding de-extinction efforts would otherwise have funded traditional conservation projects instead. We should keep an eye on the costs, but we shouldn’t reject de-extinction outright.
 
 Corey Bradshaw, Ecologist
 
 NO. While the scientific endeavour to demonstrate capacity to re-animate long-extinct species does have some merit, claiming that the approach will counter present-day extinction rates or could be used as a conservation tool is naïve.
 
Viable populations require thousands of genetically diverse individuals to be able to persist in the wild. There is simply no prospect for recreating a sufficient sample of genetically diverse individual thylacines that could survive and persist once released.
 
Also, large predators like thylacines require large home ranges to gather food, establish territories, and raise young. The reason they were driven to extinction in the first instance was due to perceived conflict with landholders, so even if the problem of genetic diversity could be solved, the social licence to re-establish a large population of predators is unlikely to be granted (consider the case of dingo persecution throughout most of Australia today).
 
Furthermore, the available habitats in Australia that could support a large population of thylacines have dwindled or been degraded radically since the early 19th Century. Combined with no-analogue climates of the immediate future due to global warming, it is unlikely that there would be sufficient available habitat to support a viable population.
 
Should we bring back the thylacine? We asked 5 experts. By Signe Dean. The Conversation, August 17, 2022. 

Researchers in Australia and the US are embarking on a multi-million dollar project to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from extinction.
 
The last known one, officially called a thylacine, died in the 1930s.
 
The team behind the bid say it can be recreated using stem cells and gene-editing technology, and the first thylacine could be reintroduced to the wild in 10 years' time.
 
Other experts are sceptical and suggest de-extinction is just science fiction.
 
The thylacine earned its nickname of Tasmanian tiger for the stripes along its back - but it was actually a marsupial, the type of Australian mammal that raises its young in a pouch.
 
The group of Australian and US scientists plan to take stem cells from a living marsupial species with similar DNA, and then use gene-editing technology to "bring back" the extinct species - or an extremely close approximation of it.
 
It would represent a remarkable achievement for the researchers attempting it, and require a number of scientific breakthroughs.
 
"I now believe that in 10 years' time we could have our first living baby thylacine since they were hunted to extinction close to a century ago," said Professor Andrew Pask, who is leading the research from the University of Melbourne.
 
The population of Tasmanian tigers declined when humans arrived in Australia tens of thousands of years ago, and again when dingoes - a species of wild dog - appeared.
 
Eventually, the marsupial only roamed free on the island of Tasmania, and was ultimately hunted to extinction.
 
The last captive Tasmanian tiger died at Hobart Zoo in 1936.
 
If scientists were to succeed in reviving the animal it would mark the first "de-extinction" event in history, but many outside experts are doubtful of the science behind it.
 
"De-extinction is a fairytale science," Associate Professor Jeremy Austin from the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA told the Sydney Morning Herald, adding that the project is "more about media attention for the scientists and less about doing serious science".
 
The idea of bringing back the Tasmanian tiger has been around for more than 20 years. In 1999, the Australian Museum started to pursue a project to clone the animal, and various attempts have been made at intervals ever since to extract or rebuild viable DNA from samples.
 
This latest project is a partnership between scientists at the University of Melbourne and Texas-based company Colossal.
 
The US firm made headlines last year with its plans to use similar gene editing technology to bring the woolly mammoth back to life - a technological feat yet to be pulled off.
 
Tasmanian tiger: Scientists hope to revive marsupial from extinction. BBC, August 17, 2022.