What happened to the cloned dodo that was supposed to hatch in Mauritius?

[Prehistory Resurrection]

Hello all, after quite a while, I am back with a question that has kept me curious for months and I want the answer to it:What happened to the cloned dodo that was supposed to hatch in Mauritius? You will surely remember that I created a topic about this, I think in April 2018, but most members on the forum here thought it was a joke for April Fool's Day and did not take it seriously. If any member knows if it has hatched successfully or not, please let me know.
There is a member named 'Reptilia', here on the forum and told me that I will get updates about it soon. They all said that it would hatch in a week or two since April 2018, and it's already October. I am waiting also an answer from 'Reptilia'. Thank you for your attention and give me an answer to it, and please, once again, I am serious and I am not joking.

[IrritatorRaji]

I can't find any info about this? I can find articles about scientists hoping to bring a dodo back but nothing more.

[Prehistory Resurrection]

Yes, me too, thanks for your effort though.

[Halichoeres]

It was definitely an April Fool's joke. I have worked with old DNA and it's extremely difficult. To reconstruct the entire genome would be a monumental task. To then reconstitute that genome in a living cell and incubate it in a host would be very close to impossible. It's at least possible that with a combination of nanopore and Illumina sequencers and CRISPR gene cassettes we will one be able to do something like this but we'd need quite a lot of reasonably intact, uncontaminated DNA. Maybe there is a source of DNA like that for dodos but I rather doubt it. The thylacine went extinct barely 100 years ago so some zoos and museums had the foresight to store organs, and we have most of the thylacine genome as a result. The dodo went extinct 350 years ago, nobody was trying to preserve anything but skins. Finally, I think a chicken would not be the first choice as a surrogate. They would probably use a pigeon of some kind.

[Faelrin]

Would the Nicobar pigeon be the best choice for surrogate if they could do something like this (aka if they had the genetic material)? I heard that it was the closest living relative to the Dodo.

Since de-extinction (I don't know what else to call it) is so complicated (partly by how much genetic material is in tact), is this why it's taken so long for the whole mammoth thing (assuming it was being actively worked on)?

[Halichoeres]

I don't know much about their physiology, which might have an effect, but if I were to choose probabilistically, yes, I'd go with the Nicobar pigeon. It's relatively large, and as you said, appears to be the closest living relative. There's also a reasonably large captive population because they're popular in zoos.

Mammoths are easier in one sense (lots of relatively intact DNA because of frozen mummies, unlike Mauritius, which is tropical), but harder in some senses (housing and breeding large animals with a long generation time). I think mammoths are a useful point of comparison, because with all the frozen carcasses they should be among the most feasible to bring back, but it's hard anyway just because reliably reconstructing an entire genome is difficult and expensive even when you have nice fresh tissue. I think the probability of cloning something that looks like a mammoth is pretty high, eventually, although a stable population on the Eurasian steppes strikes me as quite unlikely. I think the probability of bringing back dodos is close to zero.

[stargatedalek]

There is more chance of creating a new domestic breed of pigeons that resemble Raphus than actually cloning one.

[Neosodon]

You don't even need a geneticist, lab or anything fancy to recreate a dodo. Pigeon breeders could get something about as close to a dodo as you can imagine. Given a few hundred years anyways.

[stargatedalek]

You don't even need a geneticist, lab or anything fancy to recreate a dodo. Pigeon breeders could get something about as close to a dodo as you can imagine. Given a few hundred years anyways.

Less than that these days. If the project had significant money or an actual lab we could probably have commercially available "dodos" in a matter of years. We already have pigeons with the size and general proportions, all we'd need is to combine that with the large beak and bald face.

[Dinoguy2]

Obvious nonsense. This would be all over the international news if they were even TALKING about trying it, let alone if they figured out a way to do it, let alone if they were already in progress. Critical thinking, people.

[tyrantqueen]

I thought it was an April Fool's joke.

[CityRaptor]

Thought so, too.  If it were real, we probably would get a lot stupid comments involving the dangers of cloning and of course Jurassic Park about it.

As for breeding a "fake Dodo", this somehow comes to mind:

[Halichoeres]

OP is 14 years old and from a country where 1) a person's primary language might not be English and 2) trolling might not be a common form of humor (I'm not sure of course, but let's at least keep the possibility in mind). Critical thinking is a skill and requires development. I think this thread would have been helpful in that respect without derisive comments. Can we have a little empathy on this supposedly friendly forum?

[Derek.McManus]

I know Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame was trying to create an accurate dodo model and had obtained a number of casts of the existing bones. It was on his Tested channel on youtube

[Shonisaurus]

Honestly I am quite skeptical about the cloning of extinct animals.

The extinct Iberian goat bucardo was tried to clone in the year 2000 but it was a failure the cloned bucardo died soon after being born. If that happened to an extinct species in the year 2000, I doubt that the dodo that disappeared several centuries ago could be cloned.

I pass the English text of the news, of this extinct species and that unsuccessfully tried to clone:

"The first cloning attempt of the bucardo fails, the extinct Pyrenean goat


The first cloning attempt of the bucardo fails, the extinct Pyrenean goat
«At: Monday 07 July 2003 08:27:10 am»
Let us hope that it is not repeated that the extinction of an endangered species in a national park is allowed.

The first cloning attempt of the bucardo fails, the extinct Pyrenean goat



The first attempt to clone an extinct animal in Spain, the bucardo (subspecies of Pyrenean goat), has been negative, although the scientists involved in the project got two simultaneous pregnancies that lasted two months, so they see their recovery possible. According to the scientist Joseph Folch, project director and head of the Animal Production Technology Unit of the Agrifood Research Service (SIA) of Aragon, the achievement of pregnancy and the permanence of the latter for two months is a "very important" advance in this project

José Folch observed that only between 1 and 3 percent of pregnancies concludes with the birth of a live animal cloned, and he was convinced after this first attempt made with the bucardo of the viability of recovering the species, whose last specimen, a female, died in the Aragonese Pyrenees three years ago. This project involves three teams of scientists-two Spanish and one French-coordinated by the Agrifood Research Service of the Government of Aragon and the National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (INIA), and the Institute will also participate in the National Institute of Agricultural Research of France.

Nearly three hundred embryos

As a recipient of the cloned embryos of bucardo (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica), adult mountain goats were used from the National Hunting Reserve of the Tortosa and Beceite Ports and crossbred (mountain-domestic) goats. A total of 285 bucardo embryos were reconstructed, of which 54 were transferred to a total of twelve mountain or crossed goats, but only two of them kept the gestation for about two months, until last January, when spontaneously interrupted the two pregnancies. The rest of the transferences of embryos cloned from bucardos to goats had been diagnosed as negative, although the team opted not to make early pregnancy diagnoses in most of the animals to avoid possible abortions due to stress or traumatic.

The scientific team that has carried out this project has concluded that the maintenance of pregnancy for two months "indicates that the existing genetic material of bucardo is appropriate to think about the recovery of this subspecies disappeared".

The last specimen of bucardo was a female that was controlled by a radio-tracking collar and died in its habitat in 2000, although a few months before its death the animal was captured and samples of different tissues were taken in order to store frozen cells .

The cells from these tissues are kept alive in liquid nitrogen and are deposited in the Aragonese Agri-Food Research Service and INIA.

Learning in France

In the project for the cloning of the bucardo, the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA), which has produced more than thirty cloned cattle, in addition to goats, rabbits and rats, has also succeeded in getting several cloned animals to reach adults without manifest any alteration.

The Spanish authors involved in the project moved to France to learn the cloning technique and verify the feasibility of this in special cases such as the bucardo.

The same sources of the Agrifood Research Service have reported that the implantation of the cloned embryos was made in Zaragoza last November, and have reported that they have the places to house the animals that are born alive, in Zaragoza and in Jaca (Huesca)."

[Derek.McManus]

I guess that just goes to show how difficult such a procedure would be in reality.