Out of these species, which would you bring back to Life?

[Batto]

Part of me still can't believe the house sparrow is declining, both around uni and at home I still see them frequently... Sadly can not say the same for starlings, used to see huge flocks regularly but now almost never! Of course my experience doesn't speak for everybody but it still seems 'weird' to think of them as a declining species

Both species are still doing pretty well as introduced neozoa in other parts of the world. Therefore, I'm not too worried about their further existence as a species.
And there were enough starlings around this and last year to lay waste to my berry bushes and fruit trees...

 

[Dassie rat]

But why not anywhere else?

TLD mentioned this. Generally speaking, I doubt if many people visit zoos to see pigeons and many zoo directors were not interested in passenger pigeons, which had been one of the most abundant species of bird in the world. The passenger pigeon became extinct soon after the American bison almost went the same way. There was more interest in conservation after the passenger pigeon became extinct, but the last thylacine died in captivity a couple of decades later and that was another species where zoos showed little regard in conservation.

 

[Batto]

TLD mentioned this.

He did, and I already replied to that.

 

[imaginarius]

Of the ones you list, definitely the baiji. Sadly the vaquita is about to join it too. If I could resurrect any species from any epoch, however, hands down I would pick the Megalodon.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

o. If I could resurrect any species from any epoch, however, hands down I would pick the Megalodon.

Problem is, there *definitely* isn't the niche for those any more - nor the habitat.

 

[Fallax]

Problem is, there *definitely* isn't the niche for those any more - nor the habitat.

Quite interested to hear about this, not to sound ignorant but what made Megalodon's way of of life unachievable today?

 

[imaginarius]

Problem is, there *definitely* isn't the niche for those any more - nor the habitat.

I feel like it would have no problem chowing down on the extant whales and porpoises traversing the oceans today. It is theorized that it died out when its food supply dwindled with the onset of the ice age, and having to compete with the smaller, faster great white for the same resources doomed it to the fossil record. But we may never know.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

Quite interested to hear about this, not to sound ignorant but what made Megalodon's way of of life unachievable today?

The main issue is that they were specialist predators of rorquals and other large whales, and even *before* humans came along there was a significant reduction in the diversity and range of species such as these due to oceanic cooling trends during the late Pliocene - moreover, fossil evidence suggests the species was far less cold-tolerant than the great white shark, and current oceanic temperatures are such (recall that we are still technically speaking in the middle of an Ice Age) that the species would only really be able to survive around the Equator.

So basically - not enough food for them, and the ocean is now too cold for them.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

I feel like it would have no problem chowing down on the extant whales and porpoises traversing the oceans today. It is theorized that it died out when its food supply dwindled with the onset of the ice age, and having to compete with the smaller, faster great white for the same resources doomed it to the fossil record. But we may never know.

Interestingly, it appears it was not competition with the great white which represented an extra death knell for the species, but rather competition with the (also now-extinct) giant macropredator sperm whales, which WERE able to hunt in the colder oceans and seas which the majority of surviving rorquals had retreated to.

These, in turn, appear to have been outcompeted by the evolution of the orca and great white shark.

 

[imaginarius]

Interestingly, it appears it was not competition with the great white which represented an extra death knell for the species, but rather competition with the (also now-extinct) giant macropredator sperm whales, which WERE able to hunt in the colder oceans and seas which the majority of surviving rorquals had retreated to.

These, in turn, appear to have been outcompeted by the evolution of the orca and great white shark.

Orcas would definitely be a problem for a megalodon. They’re a problem for great whites and even blue and humpback whales! (Their infants, anyway). The thing that always surprises me the most after watching those orca hunt videos is not so much their intelligence, but their cruelty. They will coordinate with one another to chase a mother whale and her calf for five hours, inducing the whales’ exhaustion. Then after they drown the calf as its mother looks on hopelessly, they’ll only eat a small part of it, leaving most of the corpse untouched. Such assholes.

 

[Batto]

Aside from the already listed factors: remember the whalers on a killing spree that Dassie rat mentioned? Well, I guess that the fins of a giant shark might be quite interesting for Asian fish trawlers. Supersize my shark fin soup, please. And given the danger a giant prehistoric apex predator might pose to all larger sealife as well as humans, the general public acceptance of it would probably be so negative that even SeaShepherd and Greenpeace would support its extermination.

As for the orcas' hunting strategies appearing cruel from an anthromorphizing pov: sure, but so is the general hunting strategy of every predator for its prey. May it be the Dhole pack disembowling a deer, a rattlesnake envenomating into a rat or a frog swallowing a fly. Being prey ain't pretty.

 

[Kakapo]

I see that one can't vote more than one option and hence I voted "other". If not, I also would have been voted "Baiji", the most recent of these extinctions, and for that one of the saddest ones for me as we lived the moment when it happened, also because I'm a cetacean lover. But for recover the baiji from clonation probably we would need first to extinct the animalists and anticetacean people, that is a very growing collective.
But I voted "Other" because I would choose the woolly mamooth. A lot of attempts have been done already, and none is successful but I think is only a matter of time. Having very good soft tissues preserved from which DNA can be extracted, having a very close cousin (Indian elephant) that can be used as a fetus developer and calf nurser, having enormous extension of suitable well preserved habitat without human disturbances in Russian tundra, I think the clonation of this is only a matter of time, and soon than later the science would find the gaps that still are missing in the corrupted DNA of the preserved tissues.
Having herds of woolly mammooths roaming into Siberian tundra once we can clonate one is, however, very unlikely. Mankind would want these recontructed species to being seen only in parks/captivity.