Can you imagine a world in which the dodo, the mammoth, and other long-lost species roamed Earth once again? Sabrina Imbler’s Defector essay is an absolutely fascinating look at the de-extinction movement, and the main VC-funded company behind it.
As the asterisk implies, the dodo* wouldn’t be a real dodo, in the strictest sense. It would be a genetic hybrid, a calculated reinterpretation of a dodo—ideally bearing some traits of its namesake but perhaps also those of the Nicobar pigeon, the dodo’s closest living relative, whose cells will be manipulated to express the physical traits of the extinct species. A Nicobar pigeon in all its gothic iridescence is certainly beautiful, but it is not a dodo. And with no real dodos around to teach this new bird how to be a dodo, it may behave like a different bird. Is this dodo* worth it?
If we reach a point where native ecosystems have been restored, conservation is abundantly and globally funded, governments have taken meaningful and equitable action against climate change, no species are endangered by our presence on the planet, and people no longer live in poverty that makes poaching a rhino horn or mammoth tusk a necessary trade-off for survival, then sure: Let the dodos* and mammoths* frolic. But in the world we live in, spending lots of money to inflict unknown degrees of suffering on living and dying animals in pursuit of creating hybrids that will require immense and expensive assistance to survive on their own amid vanishing wilds does not just seem misguided. It seems funereal.
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