CB and the giant moa birds - July 10

 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