Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I was about to talk about ‘Ironheart’, perhaps, or the JWR movie, when Colossal Biosciences (CB) came back out of nowhere, and proclaimed that they are bringing back the giant moa birds. Pause.
Let us roll back to the dire wolf adventure – re-creating
those mammals is already hard because they belong to a different genus, one
that is separate from all of the genera of the modern canines, none of them,
from the grey wolf to the grey fox of the Americas are close relatives of the
dire wolf. Giving ‘primitive’ traits and characteristics to the modern grey
wolf puppies does not make them dire wolves. Pause.
With the moa birds, the situation is different from
the wolves’. See, the moa birds are part of the ratites, or Paleognath birds, a
separate infraclass from the rest of the birds for they do not have the keel
bone anymore… only not. One lineage does.
The tinamous of South America are enigmatic and
little studied birds; they behave largely like the gamebirds of the rest of the
world, (aside from Australia), and they can fly, however poorly. Yet, they are
also ratite/Paleognath birds, and they are the closest modern relatives of the extinct
moa birds. Silence.
Let us expand. All of the Paleognath birds are
related to each other, but there are nuances. The African ostriches (two
species) are a sister group to everyone else. Next are the America rheas (also
two species), followed by the tinamous and the moa birds, and finally we have
the extinct elephant birds of Madagascar and their closest living relatives –
New Zealand kiwi birds on one hand, and the Australian emus and cassowaries on
the other. Take a breath.
Now, with dire wolves, CB were able to swing it
using the parallel evolutionary similarities between them and the modern grey
wolves, and even that didn’t really float. With the giant moa birds, what
candidates will CB use to ‘recreate’ them? Genetically
their closest living relatives are the tinamous, but they do not behave or look
anything like the giant moa birds did, so giving them the anatomical
characteristics of the moa birds won’t work – the resulting mutations won’t be
viable or beneficial most likely. Meanwhile, behaviorally, among the ratites, it is the cassowaries of Australia
who are most like the giant moa birds are, but…
…But however the moa birds did behave, and we will
never know because they became extinct because of the Maori before the
Europeans could study them, the cassowaries are solitary birds with aggressive tempers
who are not afraid of humans very much and who are known to attack them. Out of
the two groups, the giant moa birds were bigger and more massive than the
cassowaries… ok, the biggest two species of the giant moa birds were bigger and
more massive than the cassowaries are, and so, if CB and co. will try to make
bigger and more massive modern cassowaries, they just might end with an
ecological disaster, and they don’t want that, hopefully.
On the other hand, Peter Jackson, the maker of the
LotR and the ‘Hobbit’ movies seems to have invested into CB’s recreation of the
giant moa birds, so now, CB does have to deliver something, at least on the
level with the genetically modified dire/grey wolf puppies, or else there might
be a lawsuit and some sort of a PR disaster for the company. Pause.
Do I care about CB? Not particularly. The wolf story
was not a bad one; they could have just stuck with mammals and went along. Now they
are off into the deep end, and with at least one celebrity along for the ride,
they are likely to have a PR explosion in their faces – but they asked for it.
Still, it will be interesting to see as to what will develop out of this
statement of theirs – but it probably will not be a giant moa bird. (We do not
really have any DNA of theirs, incidentally).
End
