did you know that it's almost guaranteed that every single species will eventually die out in fact scientists believe that 99 of all animals that have ever lived are now extinct sad I know but maybe Extinction isn't as permanent as we thought through advances in biotechnology there are some animals that are on the cusp of Resurrection it's time to learn about some unbelievable species that just might make a comeback [Music] welcome woolies you know how the ice caps are melting and we're all totally doomed well there might be an interesting solution to that bring back the woolly mammoth these gigantic creatures could grow up to 12 feet tall and weigh 8 tons that's the weight of four and a half cars herds of Mammoth were once widespread across the mammoth step grasslands that covered Europe Asia and North America okay we all know they're neat but how will these Wombo woolies fight climate change well you see across the Arctic tundra there's permafrost ground that remains completely Frozen for at least two years but thanks to good old global warming permafrost has begun to thaw when permafrost melts it releases carbon into the atmosphere further accelerating the effects of climate change that will lead to mass extinction geophysicist DrSergey zimov theorizes that if the tundra can be turned back to Grassland like it would have been in the mammoth time it could stop the permafrost from melting introducing big grazing herbivores disrupts the ground and allows for deeper freezing of permafrost during the winter when summer rolls around the layer of grass insulates the permafrost keeping it from melting I guess we just need to find some mammoths can't be that hard bringing these beasts back is one mean feat but DrGeorge Church feels up to the task church is a founder of multi-million dollar texas-based company colossal biosciences who plan on bringing back all sorts of extinct creatures let's hope they do better than Jurassic Park the church plans to create an elephant Mammoth hybrid that will live in the Arctic tundra the animal wouldn't exactly be a mammoth it would only contain about one percent of Mammoth DNA making it more an arctic elephant that can comfortably survive in the tundra for this they need Mammoth DNA which isn't too tricky to get considering the species vanished later than you probably think the last herd only disappeared in 1650 BCE that's over a thousand years after the Pyramids of Giza were built now the closest relative of the mammoth is the Asian elephant church will remove DNA from a female Asian elephant's ovum and replace it with mammoth-like DNA the elephant Mammoth embryo will then be placed into an African elephant surrogate despite the difficulties of cloning and the moral objections some might have colossal claim they will have an elephant Mammoth calf by 2027. I know I can barely take care of a plant but come on who wouldn't want a pet mammoth foreign troubles ah Australia home to some of the most wonderful fauna on the planet or rather it was until the arrival of Europeans colonizers weren't too kind to the Region's wildlife and one of the species they ended up wiping out was the thylacine also known as the Tasmanian tiger and being a totally different species from the Tasmanian devil this carnivorous marsupial was once found across New Guinea Australia and South Tasmania it was nocturnal preying on Kangaroos and other marsupials persecution of the Tyler sign started when Farmers claimed that the animal killed their livestock though the extent of this is likely exaggerated in 1936 the last thylacine died due to negligence in Hobart zoo and the species finally sputtered into a sad Extinction then things got worse removing an apex predator from an ecosystem has devastated dating effects on the environment in a process called trophic downgrading one thing thylassines did was keep illnesses under control by preying on sick and dying animals after their Extinction diseases in the region became widespread such as the horrible devil face tumor which quickly spread through the Tasmanian Devil Without Predators rodents and birds over graze on vegetation leading to premature tree deaths and wildfires and to top it all off invasive species brought over by Europeans have grown out of control due to the lack of predators and prey on Native species as a result more mammals have become extinct in Australia than any other country with 35 percent of all mammal extinctions being Australian however some believe that this problem can be averted colossal have teamed up with the University of Melbourne and Research Center tiger to de-extinctify the Tasmanian Tiger using preserved specimens before the species went extinct many tylosine embryos and young were preserved in alcohol like a horrific pickle in 2018 DrAndrew pask the leader of the thylacine D Extinction program sequenced The thylacine genome from a 108 year old specimen preserved at the Victoria Museum in Australia colossal planned to use Gene editing to take the stem cells of a dasiorid a family closely related to the Tasmanian tiger and transformed them into thylassine cells the cells would create an embryo hybrid which would then gestate in an artificial womb or desirid surrogate the animals will then be reintroduced to Tasmania in order to help rebalance the ecosystem years hoping the thylacine gets a second chance you know what else is good for the ecosystem clicking those like And subscribe buttons so you can keep up to date with amazing animal facts all year round are there any creatures you'd like to see brought back from Extinction hey let me know down in the comments now let's move on to even more colossal ambitions pygmy problems take a trip to mount hotham ski resort in Victoria Australia and there's a slim chance you might come across the mountain pygmy possum this thumb sized crumb of cuteness is so rare that for a long time it was only known by its fossils and categorized as extinct until it was spotted in a log pile at the ski lodge in 1966. it spends seven months of the year hibernating in Burrows under the snow occasionally waking to snack on its winter stores they only fully emerge in the spring to stuff themselves with food and find a mate huh sounds like me if I ever made it that is anyway their diet consists of invertebrates particularly the tasty bagong moth seeds and berries since they made it into this video you can probably guess there aren't many of them left there's estimated to be less than 2 000 of them left in the wild in fact the growth of ski resorts in Australia has destroyed a lot of their environment disrupting mating practices the poor possum has also proved to be a nice meal for invasive species like feral cats and foxes due to droughts there's not many dog on bogong moths around anymore either and if this weren't enough climate change means less snow for the possums to burrow in without this snowy blanket their Burrows drops from 96 degrees Fahrenheit to 35 degrees Fahrenheit freezing them as they hibernate the Wayne and possum numbers is so drastic that DrMichael Archer of the University of New South Wales decided to step in Archer didn't want to risk releasing them back into the mountains considering said mountains were still being messed up by climate change but we had a solution he found that the direct ancestors of the possum live in the lowland forests 15 to 25 million years ago so why not try moving some Mountain possums there Archer says they won't be releasing any possums straight into the forest without preparation otherwise you'd have a very confused possum the paleontologist says that possums at the breeding center are adaptable eating unusual Foods mating and some have foregone hibernation altogether Archer and his team will trial slowly releasing animals to forests and monitoring the experiment we'll have to wait to see if the possums adapt to Woodland living reason to brood giving birth is such a bore ladies do you ever wish that you could eat your eggs grow your baby in your stomach and then give birth through your mouth no oh man I really don't understand women the southern gastric brooding frog was discovered in 1972 in Queensland Australia and its birthing practices are indeed that bizarre in 1974 herpetologist Mike Tyler discovered how it reproduced a mother frog Begins by swallowing her eggs to stop those eggs getting scrambled her stomach turns into a womb and stops producing hydrochloric acid for six weeks after she would be unable to eat geez I get angry if I skip on breakfast meanwhile 20 to 25 tadpoles hatch inside her as they grow her stomach becomes so bloated there's no longer room for her lungs so she begins breathing through her skin finally she vomits out her brood as fully formed froglets alas these awesome amphibians went extinct in 1983 when when the last frog in captivity died this was shortly followed by the extinction of the northern gastric brooding frog in 1985.
the frogs may have been driven to extinction by deforestation invasive species such as weeds and feral pigs and lethal chitrid fungus an awful disease that is wiped out more than 90 amphibian species worldwide feeling that these animals were too cool to be consigned to the history books DrMichael Archer yes him again decided to clone them back to life he contacted Tyler Who provided the Frog's old tissue samples the team then put the DNA of the gastric frog into the egg of a barred frog its closest relative the problem is barred frogs only lay eggs once a year Archer frustratedly admitted we had a few times when we went in and the frogs weren't laying and that was that for a year unlike other animals up for D Extinction like the mammoth the Frog was not a social animal and wouldn't need a complicated surrogate parent and at one to two inches in length the Frog was also pretty pint-sized and could easily be raised in a laboratory in 2011 Archer successfully produced a frog embryo with any luck there will be mother frogs puking up babies in no time clockosaurus pecs did you know that the closest living relative to the terrifying monstrous carnivorous Tyrannosaurus Rex is the humble chicken what's more it might even help us bring the terrible lizard back from Extinction sort of in 2015 scientists DrBart anjan boular and Drarat abzanov reported that they found a way to reverse engineer the beaks of chicken embryos back into dinosaur-like snouts a bird's beak is formed from prey maxilla these are two tiny distinct bone plates at the front of the jaw in other animals like ourselves pray maxilla hold our front teeth in place as Birds evolved their prey maxilla extended and fused together to form a beak when the bird is an embryo and has yet to grow a recognizable face a large patch of cells in the middle of what will become its face develop proteins man it's these proteins that form form the beak boulara and absinov hypothesized that if they caused a chicken embryo to develop the proteins the way other animals do the embryo would become a bird without a beak instead they would have skulls like their dinosaur ancestors the scientists added microscopic beads into the middle of what would become the chicken embryo's faces the beads released chemicals into the tissue that hindered the proteins just as predicted instead of growing beaks the embryos developed rounded unfused prey maxilla like a dinosaur's snout note that these embryos weren't hatched sadly bular says we were interested in the evolution of the beak and not in hatching a dino chicken just for the sake of it someone who is interested in Dino chickens for the sake of it is DrJack Horner a professor of paleontology at Montana State University unlike the nursery rhyme this Jack Horner is less interested in Christmas pies and more about playing with genetics to create a chickenosaurus for Horner four major modifications are needed to make such a creature the animal would need to have teeth a long tail and its wings would be reverted back into arms and hands so what motivates Horner to create a dino chicken Abomination the most important thing is that you cannot activate an ancestral characteristic unless the animal has ancestors so if we can do this it definitely shows that Evolution Works maybe future egg Farms will look like this Scimitar Nations imagine walking down the street minding your own business when suddenly a large cat with teeth the length of daggers lunges out of nowhere annoyed then you found it made kitty litter in your lawn and didn't even bury it well this nightmare might be closer than you think in 2020 the University of Copenhagen successfully sequenced the Genome of homotherium latitans or the Scimitar toothed cat a relative of the saber-toothed cat the DNA was extracted from a cat that was discovered in the melting permafrost of Canada's Yukon Territory the specimen lived at least 47 500 years ago that's one old puss sequencing the cat's genome allowed scientists to discover more about this apex predator these felines were certainly a force to be reckoned with an adult could weigh up to a ton and measure over 10 feet long that's as big as a polar bear they would have snacked on bison deer horse Antelope camel and even bruisers like the woolly mammoth and Mastodon another distant relation of the elephant fossils of the saber family have been found on five continents a testament to the success of these deadly creatures according to paleontologist DrRoss Barnett the current geological period is the first time in 40 million years that Earth has lacked saber-toothed Predators we just missed them oh no what a shame if these creatures were so formidable what drove them to Extinction change in climate led to a decline of large mammals which may have caused more direct competition with other cat species that were better suited to catching smaller prey when it comes to de-extincting these fearsome fuzzies there are some hurdles to overcome for example the Scimitar toothed cat has no close modern relatives they are very very distantly related to Modern Cats diverging around 22. 5 million years ago in comparison humans and Gibbons only split 15 and 20 million years ago in other words you'd have more luck making some Unholy Gibbon human hybrid than getting these two together the lack of modern relations means that it's unlikely these animals will be brought back in the near future thankfully I think we're safe from Scimitar toothed cats prowling the streets Rhino reunion dogs and cats are all right pets but there are a lot of things they can't do for example you can't ride them to work or use them to smash up cars in your way I'd much prefer a prehistoric pet meant lucky for me this dream may One Day become a reality this is the woolly rhinoceros these hairy hulks could reach six and a half feet in height and weight 3. 5 tons that's about one and a half times as heavy as modern rhinos which weigh in around 2.
3 tons these Shaggy goliaths would while away their day munching on Grassland throughout Europe north Asia and Asia between 5. 3 million and 11 700 years ago that was of course until climate change not man-made climate change obviously just the natural warming of the globe that occurred towards the end of the Ice Age it could be that their thick fur couldn't adapt to warming temperatures or that there was a shortage of their favorite food there's also a good chance our ancestors had an appetite for rhino meat though I bet they'd be pretty gamey in the end all we know is they died out in 2020 a specimen with its organs still intact was found in the melting permafrost of yakusha in northeastern Russia Valeri plotenkov a researcher who examined the remains told Russian media that the Rhino was between three and four years old when it died most likely by Drwning as you might have guessed discoveries of specimens and melting permafrost are becoming more common due to climate change the remains of extinct animals such as mammoths foals puppies cave lion cubs and Bear have all been discovered in Siberia using an 18 500 year old specimen The Woolly Rhino's genome was sequenced in 2020. gene sequencing makes it more likely for The Woolly Rhino to be cloned by taking their DNA and breeding them with a related living animal will this mean we'll be able to have woolly Rhino safaris no here to burst your bubble is DrAlbert protopov from The akushian Academy of Sciences in Russia who thinks that woolly Rhino Revival is unlikely conventional cloning techniques won't work since there's no modern relative close enough for the Rhino to cross breed with there go my dreams of having Scimitar toothed cats and woolly rhinos duke it out maybe it's a good thing I'm not in charge of this dodo rodo you may have heard something described as did as a dude before well put that saying in your back pocket because it might not be true much longer the dodo was a flightless bird native to Mauritius an African island in the Indian Ocean scientists believe that Mauritius was formed around 8 million years ago and that dodo's ancestors arrived on the island not long after the species began to decline when Dutch Sailors colonized the island in the 16th century leading to their Extinction 100 years later Europeans destroyed their habitat and released invasive species such as cats dogs and pigs which preyed on the bird and their eggs the bird's image has been constructed by incorrect accounts and fanciful illustrations that paint the bird as slow fat and unintelligent which seems like a bit of victim blaming to me in reality the dodo was quick and agile with at least one sailor describing them as hard to catch if they were alive today maybe we'd be training dodos for whatever the bird equivalent of crufts is and that day might come the bird may have died out in the 17th century but that won't stop scientists from trying to bring them back in 2022 DrBeth Shapiro professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California revealed that a complete dodo genome had been sequenced from a specimen in Copenhagen sequencing has revealed that the dodo's closest relative is the nicobar pigeon and if scientists were to bring the dodo back they would edit the pigeon's DNA to include dodo DNA however we mustn't get ahead of ourselves as DrMike Benton paleontologist at the University of Bristol says even if we could do this the animal would probably not look anything like what we expected dodo to look like another problem is that even if scientists were able to create a pigeon dodo embryo they wouldn't have anywhere to keep it when cloning a mammal the embryo can be stuck in a surrogate mother's uterus and left to grow birds have no uterus so scientists currently have no place to gestate the embryo currently researchers are working on solutions to that problem but no dodo chicks have hatched yet let's hope they haven't put all their eggs in one basket bucardo rebornado in 2003 something amazing happened and hasn't been replicated since no I don't mean Audioslave having a hit for a few minutes an extinct species was brought back to life the animal was a bucardo also known as a pyrenean Ibex this was a species of wild goat typically found in the Pyrenees Mountains 220 years ago the Ibex began to die out although no one is exactly sure why it was likely due to stop me if you've heard this before over hunting and their habitat being taken over by Farmland just once I wish we'd find a cool and original way to eradicate a species in 1999 there was only one boocardo left a female called Celia she was captured by researchers who took a cell and froze it in liquid nitrogen before releasing her back into the wild curtains closed on the bacardo species in 2000 when Celia was hit by a falling tree what a tragic end for an entire species however Celia's story wasn't over yet scientists led by Jose Felch from the center for Agro nutrition research and technology in Aragon Spain had the means to clone embryos from her tissue sample scientists emptied the original genetic material of domestic goat ovum and inserted bucaro DNA in its place these were implanted into the subspecies of Spanish Ibex or goat Ibex hybrid a goat became pregnant and the experiment worked sadly when the calf was born it had lung abnormalities and died shortly after moving DNA from one cell to another can lead to problems during fetus growth and is unfortunately common during cloning despite this story's unhappy ending this was no doubt a massive achievement and is the only example of an extinct animal being brought back to life albeit briefly some argue such as reproductive biologist Bill Holt from the Zoological Society of London that cloning is an unsustainable method of conservation even if scientists were successful in D extinct creatures the cloned animals gene pool would be so small they'd be prone to ill health and disease additionally with the natural world shrinking there's a good chance that the revived species would become extinct all over again should scientists spend more time conserving endangered species rather than bringing back extinct ones let me know your thoughts in the comments foreign T big problems remember singing Pop Goes the Weasel as a kid well do you still think it's an innocent song knowing actual mustolids are going extinct you monster the black-footed ferret once scurried through Burrows underneath the American Plains and as the only ferret species native to the USA these days however their numbers are restricted to the mountain states these guys are nocturnal only waking to hunt prairie dogs or they usually do regrettably these animals habitat is being destroyed to make way for Farmland tick your bingo card if that weren't enough their numbers are dwindling from the rise of the sylvatic plague this plague is the same bacterium as the Black Death which wiped out an estimated 25 million people during the Middle Ages the blague is incredibly deadly and 100 lethal to the animals when unvaccinated of course fewer tasty prairie dogs means more hungry ferrets the black footed ferret population deteriorated to the point where it was officially declared extinct in the wild in 1979.
to save the species from Total Extinction 18 animals were captured by conservationists for breeding including one special female called Willa but we'll get back to her from these 18 only seven gave birth to kids these seven were released into the wild and eventually grew to over 300.
