Emily Chan
Dodos are certainly very interesting creatures that died before their time. A company called Colossal Biosciences recently announced plans to revive the dodo bird. They are already working on bringing the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) and the wooly mammoth back.
The process of resurrecting a species that has died out is called de-extinction. Experts at Colossal will use advanced technology to create a dodo-like bird from genomes that have been gathered from real dodo specimens as well as genomes from the dodo’s close relatives, including the Nicobar pigeon and the Rodrigues solitaire, which is another species of extinct flightless bird.
So, the dodo won’t be an exact clone but rather a species with edited DNA. This version of the dodo bird will then be returned to its original habitat in Mauritius.
Most cloning and gene-editing technology focuses on mammals, so regardless of whether or not Colossal is successful in resurrecting the dodo, their efforts will lead to new revelations in avian research and benefit the conservation of other threatened bird species, such as the Nicobar pigeon.
