In the process, Colossal may have handed a useful tool to developmental biology.
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Chickens without eggs? De-extinction company creates artificial egg.
- Thread starter JournalBot
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This makes me wonder if we'll see artificial wombs in the near future. Obviously this is something that we would want to seriously test on animals before ever trying it on humans, but something like that might shift humanity's social/gender dynamics to be more like those of egg-laying species rather than of placental species. Whether that leads to utopia or dystopia depends on a lot of other factors.
Kids will still require a lot of attention after "birth" though. Just ask any birds near you.
Kids will still require a lot of attention after "birth" though. Just ask any birds near you.
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This is very cool! Lots of potential to learn about embryonic development, and wonderful to have an article from this perspective.
Hatching chicks is a common kid science project in schools and in 4H. Interesting to consider other applications if the technology becomes more accessible.
Hatching chicks is a common kid science project in schools and in 4H. Interesting to consider other applications if the technology becomes more accessible.
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If society has to pick between utopia and dystopia, the path is always towards dystopia. I can imagine this going down the path of complete societal disfunction and situations where eugenics comes back.This makes me wonder if we'll see artificial wombs in the near future. Obviously this is something that we would want to seriously test on animals before ever trying it on humans, but something like that might shift humanity's social/gender dynamics to be more like those of egg-laying species rather than of placental species. Whether that leads to utopia or dystopia depends on a lot of other factors.
Kids will still require a lot of attention after "birth" though. Just ask any birds near you.
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Would be pretty cool to see a dodo in person. Hopefully the de-extinction efforts work. Always has been an interesting area of research!
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This makes it sound like the plastic egg is a big advance. But with a little care, anyone can decant a chicken egg into plastic and watch it develop. High-school students were doing this a decade ago: there's a story on the NY Post website from 2016 about students in Chiba growing chicks in plastic.
I had to look elsewhere to find out what was exciting about this. The MIT Tech Review story makes it clearer that the advance from Colossal is a more-oxygen-permeable membrane.
I had to look elsewhere to find out what was exciting about this. The MIT Tech Review story makes it clearer that the advance from Colossal is a more-oxygen-permeable membrane.
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I thought for a minute that article image was a naked mole rat face through a really weird filter.
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de-extinction: The dumbest fucking idea humanity has ever come up with.
Life IS change. Without change, which includes species going extinct, there wouldn't be us. Mammals became the dominant species on the planet only 60 or so million years ago. That's because mother nature wiped the slate almost clean and took out the dinosaurs, leaving birds and reptiles, and a tiny, emerging species called "mammals" behind.
The entire reason why this fake egg thing happened was to bring back various species of recently extinct large moas like the Terror Birds, which couldn't survive the arrival of mankind.
It's not the first species we've wiped out, but then, we're not the only critters to wipe out other species. Climate change does more to kill species off than we do. And there are a lot of cases in the historical records of climate change doing that which humans had NO hand in creating.
Environmentally, these creatures have no home left to inhabit. So basically, we're recreating something that probably isn't what the real thing was like (since we don't have any of the real things left to recreate with) just for our amusement.
And once humanity is gone, they'll die off again because the environment they'll be left in is isn't survivable for them anymore.
The way I see it, we killed them off through ignorance, are trying to bring them back due to guilt, and will make them suffer AGAIN when we kill ourselves off and they're stuck in zoos that are the only places left on Earth where they could thrive and will eventually starve to death probably before inbreeding kills them off completely.
Wow, compassionate species humans, huh? Ian Malcolm was right. This is a "we shouldn't be doing this" thing. It sure as fuck isn't going to end well for the critters that come from it.
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The Dodos were doing just fine, until humans arrived and basically ate them all. There are lots of specimens with still pretty fresh DNA, in museums all over the world.
From what I've read about them, the Dodos sound like they might actually make for pretty decent pets (at least, in petting zoos) - given their lack of fear response to humans, and their generally friendly and curious disposition, along with amusing antics.
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Le sigh... Judging by the responses, I suppose too many amongst the Ars readership are unaware of the multiple meanings (including in particular the NSFW one) of the word 'come' in contemporary English. I, for one, chucked appreciatively at the joke.
(Though to be pedantic, the rooster's contribution would actually have to land upon... an egg... in order for the act to have any consequences.)
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Outsourcing my comment to Sabrina Imbler at Defector:
https://defector.com/colossal-biosc...ays?giftLink=dc56616079983aa2d05839ba210b0777
https://defector.com/colossal-biosc...ays?giftLink=dc56616079983aa2d05839ba210b0777
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You're just giving them away? You're breaking my balls here...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sc2vm6aBMc
This is really awesome.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sc2vm6aBMc
This is really awesome.
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Not sure their "dire wolf" stunt is comparable to their bird de-extinction plans.
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Artificial eggs and wombs? We may "soon" be able to check a couple more boxes on the "Science Fiction Becomes Fact" list.
And I may be able to add "Dodo Divan" to my favorite recipes.
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