ANIMAL FORTEANA


In the beginning of things men were animals and animals men. ~ Algonquin saying

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons." ~ The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Interview: Project Seeks To Bring Extinct Species Back

John Dankosky interviews  Dr. Michael Archer on bringing back extinct animals, known as "de-extinction"  (Archer's project is called The Lazarus Project.) He's all for it. 
Project Seeks To Bring Extinct Species Back: "But it's not a Velociraptor we're trying to bring back, although remember, of course, dinosaurs are not extinct. We don't have to bring them back. We live with them. There are birds.

Some people have budgie-saurs(ph) as pets, and others go out and gobble up a Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch. We have dinosaurs all around us. So it's really a different kind of an animal and it's not - we're not reaching that far back. Most of these projects that the Revive and Restore group and National Geographic had been focused on in this event are species that have been recently extinct, and many of these are species that we drove extinct."

Kind of missing the point there. . .

Professor Archer sees himself "rescuing" these extinct animals, and the effect of these reintroduced animals into the ecosystem has been considered:
"Yeah, that  [the ecosystem] is such an important question, and every one of us involved in projects of this kind around the world have that question right up in our mind. In fact, it often influences your choice about which animal you're going to try to see if you can rescue."
"...it often" ? Shouldn't that be "always." "Paramount?" 


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