Scientists could soon resurrect the Tasmanian tiger. Should we be ...

Nearly a century after its extinction, scientists from the US and Australia believe they're on the verge of reviving the Tasmanian tiger.

But that’s not all. The researchers, working with the company Colossal Biosciences, think their new DNA technology (combined with Tasmanian tiger fossils) could help reintroduce the animal back into the wild.

How exactly are they going to pull this off? And is there a chance it could all go a bit Jurassic Park?

With the help of a few de-extinction scientists, we discovered the inside plan to bring back the Tasmanian tiger… and whether we should have Jeff Goldblum on standby. 

Here’s all you need to know.

undefined

What was the Tasmanian Tiger? 

It may be known as a Tasmanian tiger, but many of this animal's features were more similar to dogs and wolves. Its full name of Thylacinus cynocephalus even roughly translates to ‘dog-headed pouched-dog’. 

The Tasmanian tiger – also called the thylacine – was quite similar to a golden retriever in its body-size. But once you included its tail, which was half of its length, the marsupials could measure from 100cm-130cm long.

By nature, thylacines were also quite shy and preferred to keep out of the way of the Tasmanian people.

Unfortunately, humans didn’t get the memo. In 1888, due to fears the thylacine was targeting farmers’ livestock, the Tasmanian government placed a £1 bounty on their heads, which would be worth just over £100 today. 

By the time people realised the Tasmanian tiger likely wasn’t to blame for farming problems, it was too late. The animal soon went extinct, the last of the species dying in a zoo in Tasmania in 1936.

Why do they want to bring it back…?

We know what you’re thinking: isn’t bringing back a huge predator dangerous? Could it go after native wildlife? 

Well, Colossal Biosciences thinks the species could serve an important purpose in the ecosystem.

“Predators typically go after the young, the old and the sick. So they actually play a critical part in keeping the ecosystem at this kind of mezzanine level very healthy,” says Ben Lamm, the company’s CEO and co-founder. 

Researchers believe major problems facing Tasmania’s ecosystem could have been avoided if the Tasmanian tiger was still around, like the facial tumour disease that's killed off 80 per cent of today’s Tasmanian devil population.

For an easy meal, a predator like the thylacine would naturally target ailing devils, so researchers think they could’ve stopped the facial tumour disease from spreading.

Although it would’ve led to the death of the affected individuals, Colossal’s theory is that it could’ve prevented the large-scale death and destruction the disease eventually caused.

…and how?

While this may sound like an Australian spin-off of Jurassic Park, researchers behind the project claim this isn’t the case.

“Jurassic Park is what people think of when they think of de-extinction. But that is not actually what we're doing. What we're doing is capitalising on the fact that evolution is slow,” says Dr Beth Shapiro, Chief Science Officer of Colossal Biosciences. 

Luckily, Dr Shapiro explains samples of the thylacine haven’t broken down in the way that other historic species have. You know, in the way you’d expect an animal from a year ago, 10 years ago or in this case, more than a century ago to do. 

A lot of it is thanks to a whole thylacine head that's been preserved in ethanol for 110 years. This has allowed scientists to study its genetic makeup, and try to slot bases – a building block of DNA – into a genetic puzzle that has billions of pieces. 

But the science team isn’t just working with one sample. One hundred years is fortunately a speck on the timeline of evolution, so researchers have lots of samples from museums that they are able to use.

Read more:

Resurrecting the dodo: Science’s bizarre plan to bring back extinct bird, explained What is the dodo’s closest living relative? Scientists could create a genetic doppelgänger of a Tasmanian Tiger?

The foundation for the future thylacines is the fat-tailed dunnart. Like the Tasmanian tiger, it’s a marsupial and gets its moniker from, you guessed it, the fact it stores fat in its tail. It may be small, but it’s mighty. It has sharp teeth and is a carnivore, like the thylacine was. 

Scientists have lined up all the DNA from Tasmanian tiger specimens and compared it to that of the fat-tailed dunnart to see how they differ. They can then use gene editing to make the fat-tailed dunnart genome (its DNA code) more and more similar to the Tasmanian tiger samples. 

This has also led some scientists outside of the project to label the potential resurrection as ‘thylacine-like’ rather than real resurrections of the animal. It would be like if they brought back a version of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park with the help of a crocodile. 

Colossal was also able to crack the code for what DNA gave the thylacine its sharp jaw by comparing the Tasmanian tiger’s genome with that of wolves and dogs. When they tested these DNA regions on mice, the mice also developed the same strong head shape, so scientists could confirm they were on the right track. 

A skull of a Tasmanian tiger - Photo credit: Getty

Now, the team at Colossal Sciences believe they are only months away from closing the 45 remaining gaps in the DNA, just two years after launching a program to de-extinct the species. 

Are we all doomed?

We'll level with you: this is very new territory. This is the furthest scientists have ever come in completing the DNA of an ancient species. 

Something even more unknown is how a species could go from the lab to the wild. A key part of Colossal Biosciences’ plan is reintroducing the thylacine to Tasmania. But many scientists are sceptical.

“It is simply impossible to know what could happen if a species is to 'come back' to the wild,” says Dr Adam Searle, expert in de-extinction at the University of Nottingham. 

“The worst-case scenario here is that the novel organism would directly compete with what little Tasmanian devils remain, undermining critical work of rewilding efforts seeking to reinstate an apex marsupial across Australia.”

A generated image of how thylacines might look in the Tasmanian environment - Photo credit: Colossal Biosciences

Then there's this issue of behaviour. Could the resurrected thylacines learn how to survive without ancestors to look up to? 

Instead of being raised in the wild by parents who could teach it how to sustain itself, the thylacine would have to be raised by humans or another species. 

“They’ve had no living thylacines to learn complex behaviours such as hunting from, which we know is important in other large carnivore species,” says Dr Euan Ritchie, expert in ecology and conservation.

What animals could come back next?

Unfortunately (or fortunately) you can't bring back any prehistoric animal after finding its fossil. Currently, scientists at Colossal Biosciences are working on bringing back two familiar species. 

Firstly, the dodo, which died out in 1693, after humans hunted it to extinction. It has a bad reputation for being too stupid to survive, but scientists now believe that's far from the case. However, it’s not clear when this flightless pigeon could be back on the shores of Mauritius.

Even though the woolly mammoth hasn’t been alive for between 4,000 to 6,000 years, it could be something we see again in the near future. The company wants to have the first calves born in late 2028.

Read more:

10 monstrous beasts we're glad have gone extinct Back from the brink of extinction: The best conservation success stories Can we bring extinct animals back from the dead?