
Breeding back - networked
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeding_back
======
taliesinb
As a holiday job during my undergraduate degree I worked at the iThemba Labs
particle accelerator in Cape Town. They have a braai (barbecue) event
annually.

I was told we were eating a quagga, an extinct species of zebra that was being
bred back on the grounds of various facilities in the area. They have to
periodically cull the quagga that roam free on the grounds of the particle
accelerator.

When people ask how it tasted I say "rare".

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detaro
And I just realized where the Quagga routing suite (which is a fork of GNU
Zebra) got it's name :)

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Outdoorsman
Ahhh...me, too!

I've eaten a lot of wild game, including rattlesnake steak, and wonder if
taliesinb could compare the taste of aqagga to any semi-popular meats...?

On a side note I've always marveled at the "animal husbandry" practiced by the
Amish dairy farmers who live not far from me...no lab, no testing, little
theory other than that passed down orally through the generations...yet they
always maintain sturdy healthy-looking herds...

An interesting article...glad it was posted...thanks...

~~~
fiatmoney
It's not that surprising. Animal husbandry quite plausibly predates
civilization, let alone labs / theory / written records.

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Dr_tldr
More a novelty than an actual scientific undertaking, since most "breeding
back" currently being undertaken is just selecting for a few of the most
prominent physical features.

It's an interesting idea, but I would guess we'll have better luck with direct
genetic manipulation of embryos and then using the existing species to birth
them.

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_wo6a
In the linked article
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_cattle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heck_cattle)
(an attempt to breed back aurochs), this is amusing:

"Derek Gow, a British conservationist who operates a rare breeds farm at
Lifton near Okehampton in Devon, bought a herd of 13 Heck cattle from Belgium
in 2009.[15] The herd grew to 20 animals, but in January 2015 it was reported
that Gow had had to slaughter most of them due to high levels of aggression,
leaving just six."

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gaur
It's interesting to think that Eurasia and North America once had a diversity
of megafauna comparable to Africa and Australia.

Pleistocene rewilding seems unrealistic, but it's nice to think about.

