The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready?
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0:01 - 0:06Now, extinction is a different kind of death.
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0:06 - 0:09It's bigger.
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0:09 - 0:12We didn't really realize that until 1914,
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0:12 - 0:15when the last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha,
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0:15 - 0:18died at the Cincinnati zoo.
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0:18 - 0:21This had been the most abundant bird in the world
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0:21 - 0:25that'd been in North America for six million years.
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0:25 - 0:28Suddenly it wasn't here at all.
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0:28 - 0:32Flocks that were a mile wide and 400 miles long
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0:32 - 0:35used to darken the sun.
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0:35 - 0:38Aldo Leopold said this was a biological storm,
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0:38 - 0:41a feathered tempest.
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0:41 - 0:43And indeed it was a keystone species
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0:43 - 0:47that enriched the entire eastern deciduous forest,
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0:47 - 0:50from the Mississippi to the Atlantic,
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0:50 - 0:53from Canada down to the Gulf.
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0:53 - 0:56But it went from five billion birds to zero in just a couple decades.
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0:56 - 0:58What happened?
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0:58 - 1:00Well, commercial hunting happened.
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1:00 - 1:04These birds were hunted for meat that was sold by the ton,
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1:04 - 1:06and it was easy to do because when those big flocks
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1:06 - 1:08came down to the ground, they were so dense
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1:08 - 1:11that hundreds of hunters and netters could show up
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1:11 - 1:14and slaughter them by the tens of thousands.
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1:14 - 1:17It was the cheapest source of protein in America.
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1:17 - 1:19By the end of the century, there was nothing left
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1:19 - 1:23but these beautiful skins in museum specimen drawers.
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1:23 - 1:25There's an upside to the story.
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1:25 - 1:27This made people realize that the same thing
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1:27 - 1:30was about to happen to the American bison,
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1:30 - 1:33and so these birds saved the buffalos.
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1:33 - 1:35But a lot of other animals weren't saved.
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1:35 - 1:40The Carolina parakeet was a parrot that lit up backyards everywhere.
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1:40 - 1:42It was hunted to death for its feathers.
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1:42 - 1:45There was a bird that people liked on the East Coast called the heath hen.
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1:45 - 1:48It was loved. They tried to protect it. It died anyway.
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1:48 - 1:51A local newspaper spelled out, "There is no survivor,
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1:51 - 1:56there is no future, there is no life to be recreated in this form ever again."
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1:56 - 1:59There's a sense of deep tragedy that goes with these things,
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1:59 - 2:01and it happened to lots of birds that people loved.
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2:01 - 2:04It happened to lots of mammals.
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2:04 - 2:06Another keystone species is a famous animal
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2:06 - 2:08called the European aurochs.
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2:08 - 2:11There was sort of a movie made about it recently.
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2:11 - 2:13And the aurochs was like the bison.
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2:13 - 2:17This was an animal that basically kept the forest
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2:17 - 2:22mixed with grasslands across the entire Europe and Asian continent,
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2:22 - 2:24from Spain to Korea.
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2:24 - 2:26The documentation of this animal goes back
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2:26 - 2:29to the Lascaux cave paintings.
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2:29 - 2:31The extinctions still go on.
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2:31 - 2:34There's an ibex in Spain called the bucardo.
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2:34 - 2:37It went extinct in 2000.
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2:37 - 2:40There was a marvelous animal, a marsupial wolf
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2:40 - 2:43called the thylacine in Tasmania, south of Australia,
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2:43 - 2:45called the Tasmanian tiger.
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2:45 - 2:50It was hunted until there were just a few left to die in zoos.
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2:50 - 2:53A little bit of film was shot.
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3:04 - 3:09Sorrow, anger, mourning.
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3:09 - 3:12Don't mourn. Organize.
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3:12 - 3:16What if you could find out that, using the DNA in museum specimens,
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3:16 - 3:19fossils maybe up to 200,000 years old
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3:19 - 3:21could be used to bring species back,
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3:21 - 3:23what would you do? Where would you start?
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3:23 - 3:26Well, you'd start by finding out if the biotech is really there.
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3:26 - 3:28I started with my wife, Ryan Phelan,
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3:28 - 3:31who ran a biotech business called DNA Direct,
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3:31 - 3:35and through her, one of her colleagues, George Church,
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3:35 - 3:38one of the leading genetic engineers
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3:38 - 3:41who turned out to be also obsessed with passenger pigeons
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3:41 - 3:42and a lot of confidence
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3:42 - 3:44that methodologies he was working on
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3:44 - 3:47might actually do the deed.
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3:47 - 3:50So he and Ryan organized and hosted a meeting
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3:50 - 3:52at the Wyss Institute in Harvard bringing together
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3:52 - 3:57specialists on passenger pigeons, conservation ornithologists, bioethicists,
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3:57 - 4:01and fortunately passenger pigeon DNA had already been sequenced
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4:01 - 4:04by a molecular biologist named Beth Shapiro.
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4:04 - 4:07All she needed from those specimens at the Smithsonian
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4:07 - 4:10was a little bit of toe pad tissue,
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4:10 - 4:13because down in there is what is called ancient DNA.
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4:13 - 4:16It's DNA which is pretty badly fragmented,
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4:16 - 4:21but with good techniques now, you can basically reassemble the whole genome.
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4:21 - 4:23Then the question is, can you reassemble,
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4:23 - 4:26with that genome, the whole bird?
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4:26 - 4:28George Church thinks you can.
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4:28 - 4:31So in his book, "Regenesis," which I recommend,
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4:31 - 4:35he has a chapter on the science of bringing back extinct species,
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4:35 - 4:36and he has a machine called
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4:36 - 4:40the Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering machine.
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4:40 - 4:41It's kind of like an evolution machine.
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4:41 - 4:44You try combinations of genes that you write
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4:44 - 4:47at the cell level and then in organs on a chip,
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4:47 - 4:49and the ones that win, that you can then put
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4:49 - 4:52into a living organism. It'll work.
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4:52 - 4:55The precision of this, one of George's famous unreadable slides,
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4:55 - 5:00nevertheless points out that there's a level of precision here
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5:00 - 5:02right down to the individual base pair.
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5:02 - 5:07The passenger pigeon has 1.3 billion base pairs in its genome.
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5:07 - 5:10So what you're getting is the capability now
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5:10 - 5:13of replacing one gene with another variation of that gene.
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5:13 - 5:15It's called an allele.
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5:15 - 5:18Well that's what happens in normal hybridization anyway.
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5:18 - 5:21So this is a form of synthetic hybridization of the genome
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5:21 - 5:23of an extinct species
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5:23 - 5:26with the genome of its closest living relative.
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5:26 - 5:29Now along the way, George points out that
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5:29 - 5:33his technology, the technology of synthetic biology,
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5:33 - 5:37is currently accelerating at four times the rate of Moore's Law.
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5:37 - 5:41It's been doing that since 2005, and it's likely to continue.
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5:41 - 5:44Okay, the closest living relative of the passenger pigeon
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5:44 - 5:47is the band-tailed pigeon. They're abundant. There's some around here.
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5:47 - 5:51Genetically, the band-tailed pigeon already is
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5:51 - 5:53mostly living passenger pigeon.
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5:53 - 5:56There's just some bits that are band-tailed pigeon.
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5:56 - 5:59If you replace those bits with passenger pigeon bits,
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5:59 - 6:03you've got the extinct bird back, cooing at you.
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6:03 - 6:05Now, there's work to do.
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6:05 - 6:07You have to figure out exactly what genes matter.
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6:07 - 6:10So there's genes for the short tail in the band-tailed pigeon,
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6:10 - 6:13genes for the long tail in the passenger pigeon,
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6:13 - 6:16and so on with the red eye, peach-colored breast, flocking, and so on.
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6:16 - 6:19Add them all up and the result won't be perfect.
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6:19 - 6:21But it should be be perfect enough,
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6:21 - 6:24because nature doesn't do perfect either.
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6:24 - 6:28So this meeting in Boston led to three things.
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6:28 - 6:32First off, Ryan and I decided to create a nonprofit
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6:32 - 6:35called Revive and Restore that would push de-extinction generally
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6:35 - 6:38and try to have it go in a responsible way,
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6:38 - 6:42and we would push ahead with the passenger pigeon.
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6:42 - 6:46Another direct result was a young grad student named Ben Novak,
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6:46 - 6:49who had been obsessed with passenger pigeons since he was 14
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6:49 - 6:52and had also learned how to work with ancient DNA,
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6:52 - 6:55himself sequenced the passenger pigeon,
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6:55 - 6:58using money from his family and friends.
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6:58 - 7:00We hired him full-time.
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7:00 - 7:04Now, this photograph I took of him last year at the Smithsonian,
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7:04 - 7:06he's looking down at Martha,
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7:06 - 7:09the last passenger pigeon alive.
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7:09 - 7:12So if he's successful, she won't be the last.
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7:12 - 7:14The third result of the Boston meeting was the realization
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7:14 - 7:16that there are scientists all over the world
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7:16 - 7:18working on various forms of de-extinction,
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7:18 - 7:20but they'd never met each other.
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7:20 - 7:22And National Geographic got interested
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7:22 - 7:25because National Geographic has the theory that
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7:25 - 7:28the last century, discovery was basically finding things,
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7:28 - 7:32and in this century, discovery is basically making things.
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7:32 - 7:34De-extinction falls in that category.
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7:34 - 7:38So they hosted and funded this meeting. And 35 scientists,
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7:38 - 7:41they were conservation biologists and molecular biologists,
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7:41 - 7:44basically meeting to see if they had work to do together.
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7:44 - 7:47Some of these conservation biologists are pretty radical.
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7:47 - 7:50There's three of them who are not just re-creating ancient species,
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7:50 - 7:53they're recreating extinct ecosystems
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7:53 - 7:57in northern Siberia, in the Netherlands, and in Hawaii.
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7:57 - 8:00Henri, from the Netherlands,
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8:00 - 8:02with a Dutch last name I won't try to pronounce,
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8:02 - 8:04is working on the aurochs.
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8:04 - 8:09The aurochs is the ancestor of all domestic cattle,
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8:09 - 8:14and so basically its genome is alive, it's just unevenly distributed.
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8:14 - 8:17So what they're doing is working with seven breeds
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8:17 - 8:22of primitive, hardy-looking cattle like that Maremmana primitivo on the top there
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8:22 - 8:25to rebuild, over time, with selective back-breeding,
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8:25 - 8:27the aurochs.
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8:27 - 8:30Now, re-wilding is moving faster in Korea
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8:30 - 8:32than it is in America,
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8:32 - 8:36and so the plan is, with these re-wilded areas all over Europe,
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8:36 - 8:39they will introduce the aurochs to do its old job,
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8:39 - 8:41its old ecological role,
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8:41 - 8:44of clearing the somewhat barren, closed-canopy forest
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8:44 - 8:48so that it has these biodiverse meadows in it.
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8:48 - 8:50Another amazing story
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8:50 - 8:53came from Alberto Fernández-Arias.
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8:53 - 8:56Alberto worked with the bucardo in Spain.
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8:56 - 8:59The last bucardo was a female named Celia
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8:59 - 9:04who was still alive, but then they captured her,
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9:04 - 9:06they got a little bit of tissue from her ear,
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9:06 - 9:09they cryopreserved it in liquid nitrogen,
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9:09 - 9:11released her back into the wild,
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9:11 - 9:15but a few months later, she was found dead under a fallen tree.
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9:15 - 9:18They took the DNA from that ear,
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9:18 - 9:21they planted it as a cloned egg in a goat,
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9:21 - 9:23the pregnancy came to term,
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9:23 - 9:25and a live baby bucardo was born.
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9:25 - 9:28It was the first de-extinction in history.
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9:28 - 9:32(Applause)
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9:32 - 9:33It was short-lived.
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9:33 - 9:37Sometimes interspecies clones have respiration problems.
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9:37 - 9:40This one had a malformed lung and died after 10 minutes,
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9:40 - 9:43but Alberto was confident that
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9:43 - 9:45cloning has moved along well since then,
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9:45 - 9:47and this will move ahead, and eventually
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9:47 - 9:49there will be a population of bucardos
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9:49 - 9:52back in the mountains in northern Spain.
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9:52 - 9:56Cryopreservation pioneer of great depth is Oliver Ryder.
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9:56 - 9:58At the San Diego zoo, his frozen zoo
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9:58 - 10:02has collected the tissues from over 1,000 species
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10:02 - 10:05over the last 35 years.
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10:05 - 10:07Now, when it's frozen that deep,
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10:07 - 10:10minus 196 degrees Celsius,
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10:10 - 10:12the cells are intact and the DNA is intact.
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10:12 - 10:14They're basically viable cells,
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10:14 - 10:18so someone like Bob Lanza at Advanced Cell Technology
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10:18 - 10:21took some of that tissue from an endangered animal
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10:21 - 10:23called the Javan banteng, put it in a cow,
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10:23 - 10:27the cow went to term, and what was born
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10:27 - 10:32was a live, healthy baby Javan banteng,
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10:32 - 10:35who thrived and is still alive.
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10:35 - 10:38The most exciting thing for Bob Lanza
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10:38 - 10:40is the ability now to take any kind of cell
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10:40 - 10:43with induced pluripotent stem cells
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10:43 - 10:47and turn it into germ cells, like sperm and eggs.
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10:47 - 10:49So now we go to Mike McGrew
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10:49 - 10:53who is a scientist at Roslin Institute in Scotland,
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10:53 - 10:55and Mike's doing miracles with birds.
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10:55 - 10:59So he'll take, say, falcon skin cells, fibroblast,
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10:59 - 11:01turn it into induced pluripotent stem cells.
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11:01 - 11:05Since it's so pluripotent, it can become germ plasm.
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11:05 - 11:07He then has a way to put the germ plasm
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11:07 - 11:11into the embryo of a chicken egg
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11:11 - 11:14so that that chicken will have, basically,
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11:14 - 11:16the gonads of a falcon.
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11:16 - 11:18You get a male and a female each of those,
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11:18 - 11:20and out of them comes falcons.
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11:20 - 11:22(Laughter)
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11:22 - 11:28Real falcons out of slightly doctored chickens.
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11:28 - 11:30Ben Novak was the youngest scientist at the meeting.
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11:30 - 11:32He showed how all of this can be put together.
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11:32 - 11:35The sequence of events: he'll put together the genomes
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11:35 - 11:37of the band-tailed pigeon and the passenger pigeon,
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11:37 - 11:40he'll take the techniques of George Church
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11:40 - 11:43and get passenger pigeon DNA,
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11:43 - 11:45the techniques of Robert Lanza and Michael McGrew,
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11:45 - 11:48get that DNA into chicken gonads,
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11:48 - 11:52and out of the chicken gonads get passenger pigeon eggs, squabs,
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11:52 - 11:55and now you're getting a population of passenger pigeons.
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11:55 - 11:57It does raise the question of,
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11:57 - 11:59they're not going to have passenger pigeon parents
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11:59 - 12:02to teach them how to be a passenger pigeon.
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12:02 - 12:04So what do you do about that?
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12:04 - 12:07Well birds are pretty hard-wired, as it happens,
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12:07 - 12:09so most of that is already in their DNA,
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12:09 - 12:12but to supplement it, part of Ben's idea
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12:12 - 12:14is to use homing pigeons
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12:14 - 12:17to help train the young passenger pigeons how to flock
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12:17 - 12:19and how to find their way to their old nesting grounds
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12:19 - 12:23and feeding grounds.
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12:23 - 12:24There were some conservationists,
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12:24 - 12:27really famous conservationists like Stanley Temple,
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12:27 - 12:30who is one of the founders of conservation biology,
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12:30 - 12:35and Kate Jones from the IUCN, which does the Red List.
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12:35 - 12:37They're excited about all this,
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12:37 - 12:39but they're also concerned that it might be competitive
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12:39 - 12:42with the extremely important efforts to protect
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12:42 - 12:44endangered species that are still alive,
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12:44 - 12:46that haven't gone extinct yet.
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12:46 - 12:49You see, you want to work on protecting the animals out there.
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12:49 - 12:53You want to work on getting the market for ivory in Asia down
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12:53 - 12:57so you're not using 25,000 elephants a year.
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12:57 - 13:00But at the same time, conservation biologists are realizing
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13:00 - 13:02that bad news bums people out.
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13:02 - 13:05And so the Red List is really important, keep track of
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13:05 - 13:08what's endangered and critically endangered, and so on.
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13:08 - 13:11But they're about to create what they call a Green List,
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13:11 - 13:16and the Green List will have species that are doing fine, thank you,
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13:16 - 13:18species that were endangered, like the bald eagle,
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13:18 - 13:22but they're much better off now, thanks to everybody's good work,
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13:22 - 13:24and protected areas around the world
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13:24 - 13:26that are very, very well managed.
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13:26 - 13:30So basically, they're learning how to build on good news.
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13:30 - 13:33And they see reviving extinct species
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13:33 - 13:36as the kind of good news you might be able to build on.
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13:36 - 13:39Here's a couple related examples.
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13:39 - 13:42Captive breeding will be a major part of bringing back these species.
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13:42 - 13:46The California condor was down to 22 birds in 1987.
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13:46 - 13:47Everybody thought is was finished.
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13:47 - 13:50Thanks to captive breeding at the San Diego Zoo,
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13:50 - 13:54there's 405 of them now, 226 are out in the wild.
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13:54 - 13:58That technology will be used on de-extincted animals.
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13:58 - 14:02Another success story is the mountain gorilla in Central Africa.
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14:02 - 14:05In 1981, Dian Fossey was sure they were going extinct.
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14:05 - 14:07There were just 254 left.
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14:07 - 14:11Now there are 880. They're increasing in population
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14:11 - 14:13by three percent a year.
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14:13 - 14:16The secret is, they have an eco-tourism program,
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14:16 - 14:18which is absolutely brilliant.
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14:18 - 14:21So this photograph was taken last month by Ryan
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14:21 - 14:23with an iPhone.
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14:23 - 14:28That's how comfortable these wild gorillas are with visitors.
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14:28 - 14:31Another interesting project, though it's going to need some help,
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14:31 - 14:33is the northern white rhinoceros.
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14:33 - 14:35There's no breeding pairs left.
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14:35 - 14:37But this is the kind of thing that
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14:37 - 14:42a wide variety of DNA for this animal is available in the frozen zoo.
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14:42 - 14:44A bit of cloning, you can get them back.
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14:44 - 14:47So where do we go from here?
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14:47 - 14:48These have been private meetings so far.
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14:48 - 14:51I think it's time for the subject to go public.
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14:51 - 14:52What do people think about it?
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14:52 - 14:54You know, do you want extinct species back?
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14:54 - 14:57Do you want extinct species back?
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14:57 - 15:03(Applause)
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15:03 - 15:05Tinker Bell is going to come fluttering down.
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15:05 - 15:06It is a Tinker Bell moment,
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15:06 - 15:09because what are people excited about with this?
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15:09 - 15:11What are they concerned about?
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15:11 - 15:13We're also going to push ahead with the passenger pigeon.
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15:13 - 15:17So Ben Novak, even as we speak, is joining the group
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15:17 - 15:20that Beth Shapiro has at UC Santa Cruz.
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15:20 - 15:22They're going to work on the genomes
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15:22 - 15:24of the passenger pigeon and the band-tailed pigeon.
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15:24 - 15:28As that data matures, they'll send it to George Church,
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15:28 - 15:32who will work his magic, get passenger pigeon DNA out of that.
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15:32 - 15:35We'll get help from Bob Lanza and Mike McGrew
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15:35 - 15:38to get that into germ plasm that can go into chickens
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15:38 - 15:40that can produce passenger pigeon squabs
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15:40 - 15:43that can be raised by band-tailed pigeon parents,
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15:43 - 15:45and then from then on, it's passenger pigeons all the way,
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15:45 - 15:48maybe for the next six million years.
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15:48 - 15:50You can do the same thing, as the costs come down,
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15:50 - 15:54for the Carolina parakeet, for the great auk,
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15:54 - 15:56for the heath hen, for the ivory-billed woodpecker,
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15:56 - 15:59for the Eskimo curlew, for the Caribbean monk seal,
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15:59 - 16:01for the woolly mammoth.
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16:01 - 16:04Because the fact is, humans have made a huge hole
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16:04 - 16:07in nature in the last 10,000 years.
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16:07 - 16:09We have the ability now,
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16:09 - 16:14and maybe the moral obligation, to repair some of the damage.
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16:14 - 16:18Most of that we'll do by expanding and protecting wildlands,
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16:18 - 16:20by expanding and protecting
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16:20 - 16:25the populations of endangered species.
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16:25 - 16:27But some species
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16:27 - 16:32that we killed off totally
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16:32 - 16:35we could consider bringing back
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16:35 - 16:38to a world that misses them.
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16:38 - 16:41Thank you.
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16:41 - 16:52(Applause)
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16:52 - 16:54Chris Anderson: Thank you.
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16:54 - 16:55I've got a question.
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16:55 - 17:00So, this is an emotional topic. Some people stand.
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17:00 - 17:03I suspect there are some people out there sitting,
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17:03 - 17:06kind of asking tormented questions, almost, about,
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17:06 - 17:08well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute,
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17:08 - 17:11there's something wrong with mankind
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17:11 - 17:15interfering in nature in this way.
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17:15 - 17:18There's going to be unintended consequences.
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17:18 - 17:21You're going to uncork some sort of Pandora's box
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17:21 - 17:25of who-knows-what. Do they have a point?
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17:25 - 17:26Stewart Brand: Well, the earlier point is
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17:26 - 17:30we interfered in a big way by making these animals go extinct,
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17:30 - 17:32and many of them were keystone species,
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17:32 - 17:35and we changed the whole ecosystem they were in
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17:35 - 17:37by letting them go.
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17:37 - 17:39Now, there's the shifting baseline problem, which is,
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17:39 - 17:41so when these things come back,
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17:41 - 17:43they might replace some birds that are there
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17:43 - 17:46that people really know and love.
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17:46 - 17:48I think that's, you know, part of how it'll work.
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17:48 - 17:51This is a long, slow process --
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17:51 - 17:53One of the things I like about it, it's multi-generation.
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17:53 - 17:55We will get woolly mammoths back.
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17:55 - 17:57CA: Well it feels like both the conversation
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17:57 - 18:00and the potential here are pretty thrilling.
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18:00 - 18:01Thank you so much for presenting. SB: Thank you.
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18:01 - 18:04CA: Thank you. (Applause)
- Title:
- The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready?
- Speaker:
- Stewart Brand
- Description:
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Throughout humankind's history, we've driven species after species extinct: the passenger pigeon, the Eastern cougar, the dodo ... But now, says Stewart Brand, we have the technology (and the biology) to bring back species that humanity wiped out. So -- should we? Which ones? He asks a big question whose answer is closer than you may think.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 18:24
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready? | ||
Morton Bast approved English subtitles for The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready? | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready? | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready? | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready? | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready? | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready? | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |