Month: November 2018

What is Extinction and what can we do about it?

Have you ever wondered what happened to the woolly mammoth? Or where did all the passenger pigeons go?

The answer to these questions is the same – they got extinct. The reason why some species no longer exist is simply because their population disappeared. Extinction happens when species cannot evolve to adapt to the changes in the environment and they die.

The factors affecting extinction can be natural or human. Nowadays many animals are endangered and becoming extinct, because of many human factors, such as habitat loss, global warming, overexploitation and hunting.

One of the many times, when the extinction of the species led to changes in the environment, was when the last passenger pigeon died. In the past 500 years our human race has killed approximately 1,000 passenger pigeons. It was one of the many causes that influenced scientists to invent the resurrection biology, also called de-extinction.

Even though extinction is a natural process occurring all the time, for the past years it has increased massively. It has taken over the whole world to the extent of trying to save animals and protecting endangered species. It has created many campaigns and has taken over the world market, but it hasn’t been solved yet.

De-extinction will not just bring dead species back to life, it will also counter the effects of the environmental depredation. Once this technology is developed and successful, there would be no reason to get any political support for endangered animals.