The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, is one of Australia’s most iconic species.
Just last year, one group claimed to havespotted the “Tassie tiger” padding through Australia’s forests.
The claims were never verified.
A group of researchers from the University of Melbourne plan to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from the dead.
“We actually need a lot of this stuff for protecting marsupials right now.”
There have been calls to resurrect the Tasmanian tiger for over two decades.
It was called a “fantasy” at the time and by 2005, it was canned.
Scientists would then be able to take cells from a related species and use CRISPR to change that code.
For instance,the Tasmanian tiger is related to another marsupial species, the mouse-like dunnart.
The first step is complete.
“It is dependent on leaps in that technology over the next few years,” he says.
He speaks specifically to one project: Gene editing in the quoll, an endangered species of carnivorous marsupial.
Quoll numbers have declined dramatically across Australia thanks to urbanization and the invasive cane toad.
The argument against bringing species back is that there’s a significant cost involved in maintaining the populations.
For Pask at least, the Tasmanian tiger is a special case with obvious benefits.
You could slot it back into the environment, he suggests, and immediately see the benefits.
It wouldn’t be as simple as just breeding and dropping off baby tigers though.
Will we see Tasmanian tigers roaming Australia in the next decade?
It’s hard to say.
The pedigree of Pask’s laboratory and the funding certainly puts humanity on the path to such a future.
but “should we?”
