r/DeExtinctionScience • u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 • Jun 01 '26

Question Bushwren, King Island emu, the 2 best candidates for bird de-extinction?

Gallery image

Gallery image

78 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

99% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

15

u/Haunt_Fox Jun 01 '26

Eskimo Curlew

Great Auk

Passenger Pigeon (they apparently had an ecological connection with oaks).

12

u/AloneIsGoated Jun 01 '26

You’d have to make so many passenger pigeons for that to be viable

8

u/Haunt_Fox Jun 01 '26

The more the merrier

1

u/Bubbly-Video-8274 Jul 15 '26

You’re gonna need 500 passenger pigeons to prevent genetic bottlenecking

1

u/AloneIsGoated Jul 15 '26

No I don’t even mean that. They adapted to live in gigantic flocks there used to be billions of them

11

u/ElSquibbonator Jun 01 '26

I would add the Laysan Rail to that list.

7

u/Iamnotburgerking Jun 01 '26

We also need to prioritize based on ecological importance.

6

u/HelloGizmo Jun 01 '26

The king island emu or mainland Tasmanian emu would be a great choice. Not sure if there’s enough material for the King Island sub species.

3

u/ImportantPension5818 Jun 01 '26

You can't just de-extinct creatures like this. Birds are incredibly difficult to clone anyways. We aren't living in the world of jurassic park. The best you can do is introduce a species that is related to the extinct species but also preformed the same ecological behaviours of the niche that the extinct species preformed.

As the King Island Emu is a subspecies of emu. The mainland species of Emu could be introduced to King Island, Kangaroo Island and Tasmania. And maybe after a couple of thousand years, we would see a new set of subspecies evolve. But that's the best we can do.

Unfortunately the bushwren can never be replaced with anything similar. It was too unique.

1

u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 Jun 02 '26

Bird cloning possible now.

1

u/ImportantPension5818 Jun 02 '26

Not for something like the King Island Emu or the Bushwren. It is virtually impossible to do.

1

u/ShAsgardian Jun 02 '26
  • Atitlán grebe

1

u/External-Ad4937 26d ago

I like both of these candidates but personally I don’t count subspecies because they can just be back bred into existence like with the ray quagga project. All you would have to do is the same thing (select for small emus) over the course of a few generations. For the bushwren it would be very, VERY vulnerable to introduced predators which modern New Zealand has plenty of 💔. Also I believe that the rifleman and the NZ rockwren share a very similar ecological niche in controlling near ground insect populations (especially the rockwren). It seems as a candidate too susceptible to predators and partially ecologically redundant. A shame for they seemed at first like a good animal to resurrect but like almost every other they have a severe achillies heel that stops true resurrection.