You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. Fortunately, embryo cloning may help us to learn from our mistakes.
Scientists are hoping to bring back (or should we say “resurrect”?) the bucardo mountain goat by making cloned embryos from frozen cells, which will be implanted into female goats. If the clones survive, these Spanish scientists will have revived a sub-species that has been extinct for 14 years. Though being able to successfully bring a species back from extinction would be a phenomenal accomplishment, is “de-extinction” really the best long-term solution to animal endangerment?
To learn more, check out this article at Popular Science, and this one at National Geographic.
Image courtesy of Zaragoza Salvaje, used under CC BY 2.0 license.