Moa 'de-extinction'

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Welcome to Jurassic Park! Or something like that.

Sir Peter Jackson is getting behind a project with Ngāi Tahu, Canterbury Museum, and Colossal Biosciences all teaming up to 'de-extinct' South Island giant moa within a decade.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/566 ... cast-doubt

I guess they might manage some sort of moa-ish emu (moamu?, or will it be an emu-based moastrich?), like they made dire wolf-ish grey wolves. I can imagine bus loads of naive tourists paying to see one behind a deer fence, but would you?

Interesting science, and perhaps a promising business venture, but what we need is more conservation, and this ain't that.

Yup, I'm not convinced, but let's see where this story goes.

[SomesBirder]

I think that CB's dire wolf project gave us a good idea of what to expect from the moa project. The dire wolf project was not aiming to create an animal that resembled the actual extinct dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) at all; rather, it was an attempt to create a real-life strain of the "dire wolves" that were featured in the Game of Thrones series. The animals from that series were likewise not meant to resemble Aenocyon dirus; they were played by wolf-like domestic dogs and actual grey wolves, which were sometimes edited to look larger in post-production, but were otherwise unchanged.

The moa equivalent of the dire wolf project, therefore, will have the aim of creating a large bird that resembles the most common artistic reconstructions of moa, which shows all of them as being uniformly grey- or brown-feathered birds, with an entirely feathered head. The only artist who I know of who has dared to illustrate moa as having more interesting colours is Dave Gunson, but sadly I don't think that his work is popular enough to be used as a model of what resurrected moa should look like.

So, CB's "Moa" is most likely to be an emu that has an entirely feathered head and is (on an imperceptible scale) larger. But good luck to CB for finding a place in NZ where they will be allowed to release these birds into the wild!

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Yes, a step up from animatronics, maybe. CB shot themselves in the foot somewhat by claiming dire wolves then having to backtrack when it was pointed out they were not. They seem to be on the same path with moa.
Maybe moamu could recreate important ecological processes, and maybe allow testing some of the moa hypotheses, but I don’t think we’ll see them doing that in the wild any time soon. Too valuable for that. They will be behind double high fences. Maybe big enclosures, but not wild.

[Jake]

I'm yet to see anyone, anywhere, state what I thought would be obvious:
The Lab should be using one of the Tinamous, which are in a tighter clade than the Ostriches/ Emu. I don't know enough about what sort of moa genetic material is available, but perhaps one of the smaller species is appropriate if basing a deextinction on their closest living relative, the Tinamous.


Currently NZ only allows import of Chickens, Ducks and Turkeys (Flamingoes used to on the list); all under very strict quarantine. So a change of legislation maybe (will be) required to import these "moa", unless works are done onshore.

I'm already seeing the expected racist commentary on Meta about how "Māori will just kill them off again" or "Māori KFC". But it is curious that Ngai Tahu are so involved, knowing the authenticity of the "Dire Wolves" project, which was essentially GMO. I'm hopeful that these moa will be as close to clones as possible

Many years ago Trevor Mallard suggested bringing Moa back and was hit with a lot of criticism; mostly stating that we're not taking good enough care of our environment or threatened species as is, and money would be better spent cleaning up

Another thing I'd like to point out is that you *can* crack an egg, put it in a dish and incubate it to full-term; obviously under lab conditions, but it's not as far-fetched to swap out what's inside an egg and have a viable outcome as what's intuitively dismissed

Idk; I guess that starting these ambitious projects has to start somewhere

[SomesBirder]

I am aware that the tinamous are the closest living relatives to Moa. Because tinamous are not kept in NZ and cannot be imported, I thought that it was a given that the only options for creating a resurrected Moa are to use either Emu or Common Ostrich; the only palaeognaths other than the Kiwi that are already here.

Even though using a tinamou to make a new Moa would technically be the best option in phylogenetic terms, even the largest tinamou species are less than a third of the size of the Little Bush Moa. To make a tinamou approach the size of the smallest holocene Moa is something that I struggle to imagine is possible.

[fras444]

I feel that the moa is like the flagship series you know.. Bringing back arguably the "world's largest bird" known during, I'm not good with all the historical terminologies to describe periods but I guess you could say.. "modern human" times..
If you bring back a moa.. I honestly feel that the haast eagle should definitely be on that list.. you can't have one without the other.
I certainly do not belive that species that died out during early human times, whether its as a result of humans or purely climate change and genuine evolution... i.e mammoth and saber tooth tigers.... should ever be brought back..
However
I definitely do believe we should be using technology like this in bringing back recently lost species, especially species with a common genetic link with a lost species like the various extinct tiger subspecies, barbarian lions, asiatic cheetah, species of fish or mammals, the passenger pigeon and the likes and here in nz..
All the species we lost through human times... which.. are all very very recent in a time point of view..
I'd definitely be one for using this logic on our wren species we've lost, the S.I kokako, huia and even species with a direct Australian link like the n/s goose, pink eared ducks and the like... the Auckland island messanger would also be an option as well.. many of these species we have skins or feathers for and surviving living relatives..
I honestly feel we should be starting from the last species we lost and work backwards if we are to use this technology correctly..
But going back to our lost species.
We obviously had the power to wipe out a species, be it directly or indirectly as in NZ as the case study, through hunting and or introduced species..
We have some knowledge on what those species we wiped out, and what their most direct living relatives are...
Evolution of our species has been very surprising and a few.. wtf moments.. let's use the complete randomness of the Auckland Island merganser?
There is from my understanding from some very interesting studies on this bird.. a completely random evolutionary jump for a species thats currently well.. found so far away from New Zealand.. even if we use Godwanda as a landmass.. how did that Auckland Island merganser get here... was there some "helping hand" a voyage that went horribly off course and the merganser was a food source that escaped..
But I do honestly feel that..
We as humans have the power to wipe out a species...
But we also do have the power and ability to bring back a species... well... through another million of years of evolution from a "reintroduction"
What is actually stopping us from introducing the tinamou? Or a costal population of living merganser to the Aucklands.. we've had a brilliant example of how quickly sheep, cattle and pigs adapted and basically showed some scarily fast evolution within a blink of an eye... or our Australian duck species that have a link to what would have been the NZ counterpart.. only 7 species of NZ duck that went extinct that share a Australian ancestry..
We've technically done that with the black swan.. introduced it to NZ but somehow it became reclassified as a native species..
There certainly should be nothing stopping us from "reintroducing" modern species through a strong living genetic link that used to habitat here first and foremost. Like the various ducks and waterfowl and then look towards species such as Moa, haast eagle merganser and the like..
In the most purists technicalities.. we are "introducing" a species but with a mindset change and removing the square... we as humans here in NZ can "reintroduce" a lost "native" species...
I mean.. the UK and its massive long term reintroduction program..
The wolves, bears, lynx even the beavers.. those species would have all but been genetically different species through isolation for the many eons of years when that last land landbridge broke away..
The species they plan on bringing back would never be the species they lost in a genetic sense..

[Mike Bickerdike]

The big question is, will it be tickable?

[Neil Fitzgerald]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... cience-aoe

I was thinking the same as Somes on the tinamous. It comes with other hurdles.

If I was a lister, I cant imagine ticking a moa hybrid thing. Or maybe they could go on a side list of hybrids, and another for exotic species like SI takahe in the North Island, or NI brown kiwi around Wellington. Kinda interesting to see, but inside you know it's just not quite the real thing.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Richard Holdaway, well put.
https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3607 ... zarus-bird

[Michael Szabo]

This article in The Guardian quotes Nic Rawlence:

" ... moa expert Nic Rawlence, an associate professor in ancient DNA at the University of Otago, says there is little chance of bringing the giant birds back from the dead. “This is Jurassic Park with very low chance of success,” he says. “If we think of the dire wolf, the genome is 2.5bn individual letters long. It’s 99% identical to the grey wolf, so that’s still significantly over a million differences, and they made only 20 changes to 14 genes. So, to say they’ve created a dire wolf is farcical. They’ve created a designer grey wolf. And that’ll be the same with whatever they do with the moa.”

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... cience-aoe