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Science News

Condor Chick Born In Wild 74

Posted by michael from the cute-and-cuddly dept.
hank writes "Great news (Yahoo! News link) today on the endangered species front! A condor chick born in the wild is alive and well. Originally, biologists planned on interfering and giving "life support" to the egg; however, biologists were surprisingly pleased to see the father aggressively protecting his young. Wisely, they decided to let nature take control. The chick in Los Padres National Forest in Santa Barbara County is the first conceived, hatched and raised in the wild to survive more than a day. It was 4 days old on Monday. What does this mean for genetic cloning and incubation research? Can nature really repair itself? What do you all think?"
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Condor Chick Born In Wild More

Condor Chick Born In Wild

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  • What on earth does a captive-released pair of condors properly incubating their egg have to do with cloning?

    '(jfb)

    • Re:"Genetic cloning"? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kroymen ( 242910 )
      It has to do with cloning because it suggests that animals raised in captivity can still exhibit instinctive behaviors...like successful rearing of young.

      So if we use cloning to bring back species that are currently extinct, this suggests we may also be successful in re-introducing the cloned individuals to the wild. Otherwise they could only ever be zoo curiosities.

      • So if we use cloning to bring back species that are currently extinct, this suggests we may also be successful in re-introducing the cloned individuals to the wild.

        The biggest contributing factor for 'instinctive' behaviour of offspring are the parents. The first condor offspring, although in captivity, had parents to count on to learn the skills for being a condor. If you clone extinct species, it won't be the same, because the created organisms don't have the experience/'education' of the parents to learn from.
        Maybe humans could take account for that job, but that will mean the species will be used to humans, which make the chance for survival smaller. Moreover, the species won't be as wild as it used to be, so we're creating a 'new' species.
  • "What does this mean for genetic cloning and incubation research?"

    It means birds lay eggs and they hatch. I don't think it has much to do with cloning.

    "Can nature really repair itself?"

    If we leave it alone long enough.

    "What do you all think?"

    I'm no scientist, but doesn't this mean the bird would have to mate with its siblings to continue the species? Can this be healthy?
    • "Can nature really repair itself?

      "If we leave it alone long enough."

      Not necessarily, Well over 99.99% of all species that have ever lived are extinct because anture can't always repair itself. In fact, the ultimate fate of all species is extinction because natural selection is limited as to where it can go based on what it has done previously.

      "I'm no scientist, but doesn't this mean the bird would have to mate with its siblings to continue the species? Can this be healthy?"

      No, it's not healthy. Over the long term, this results in loss of genetic diversity because you basically keep recycling the same genes over and over again. This reduces the number of genes that natural selection has to work with. The result is that the population is less likely to be able to adapt to changing conditions because there isn't the diversity required to do so.

      There were other condors introduced I am sure. It's just that this is the first one that has survived. But if it makes it to maturity, it will likely mate with one of the other condors that was introduced who is not related to it.

  • Wow! I didn't know the father's name was Nature. But seriously, nature doesn't control anything. Nature just is.

  • THE Condor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nucal ( 561664 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @05:58PM (#3354433)
    When I think of condors and chicks, I think of The Condor [mistersf.com] in SF - Former home of Carol Doda [chixinflix.com]
  • That perhaps the mother is better @ telling which children have the best chance @ survival. "...the chick from the third egg was killed right after hatching last year by the same female mothering the latest chick..."

    Think Greeks throwing defective children off cliffs. It was barbaric, but people of Greek descent are some of the toughest people I know. The condors could be doing the same thing.

    • Even if 'defective' children live to adulthood, in human society they are much less likely to rear children. People generally find weakness and/or defectiveness unattractive in a mate. Same effect, evolution-wise.

      When societies kill their own babies, there's usually some other reason, as with Eskimos, who did it to conserve resources for the healthy ones.
    • The only ancient Greeks who did anything like this were the Spartans. Even they didn't throw babies off cliffs, but they did expose them in the wild to die. It's not clear that this actually resulted in a superior Spartan race. Minus poor generalship in the beginning and the unhappy chance of a plague at the end, the Athenians would have won the Peloponnesian War. The former was the result of their radical democracy; generals were elected by the demos rather than selected for their merit. The latter deprived them of a significant amount of manpower and of some of their top leadership -- Pericles himself was a victim.

      In any event, modern Greeks are the product of centuries of dysgenics imposed on them by the Turks. Look up the Janissaries some time. By your reasoning, they were even tougher before that. You may well be right, but who can tell from here?

      Similarly, without the data from an autopsy of the dead chick -- was one even performed? -- there's no way of knowing whether it was defective or not.

  • In an interesting twist, it seems as if our coyote problem(these creatures are extremely numerous) can help the condors. Instead of culling coyotes and burying them we should instead leave them out in areas where condors are known to frequent to provide ample food for the scavengers.

    (Why does genetic engineering and cloning seem as the answer to our endangered species problems. What does cloning and genetic engineering have to do with anything. The baby was born naturally, without our tampering. That is the way it should be.)
    • "(Why does genetic engineering and cloning seem as the answer to our endangered species problems. What does cloning and genetic engineering have to do with anything. The baby was born naturally, without our tampering. That is the way it should be.)"

      Genetic engineering can be important because it can allow us to enhance traits that aid survival. Some endangered species are unlikely to recover unless we tamper with the genetic makeup of the population. For example, the reason the cheetah is endangered is because of a long history of inbreeding (which resulted from overhunting). This inbreeding resulted in a population of cheetahs that has a lot of health problems and very little genetic diversity (in ecology terms, this is called a genetic bottleneck). Loss of genetic diversity is bad for evolution because it leaves little for natural selection to work with. In the case of the cheetah, a large number of cubs are born with health problems and die before they reach maturity. Also, because of the loss of genetic diversity, there is nothing for natural selection to work with. So basically, there are two reasons genetic engineering and artificial breeding can be useful in preserving endangered species:

      1. To select for the introduction and enhancement of traits that will aid survival.
      2. To introduce more genetic diversity so that natural selection has something to work with.

  • What the regular /. reader sees: (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mik!tAAt ( 217976 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @07:04PM (#3354869) Homepage
    This is what the regular /. reader sees from the headline:

    "****** Chick **** ** Wild"

  • Nature, nope, it's people doing awesome work (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.peregrinefund.org/conserv_cacondor.html

  • What tha'? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by zangdesign ( 462534 )
    Birds lay eggs. Big deal ...

    Even if this is an endangered bird, unless it was cooked up in a vat in some lab somewhere, it still doesn't say dick about cloning or cloning technology.

    The bird laid an egg. So does this story.

    Who's in charge around here, anyway?
  • What does it have to do with cloning? It means you don't need to clone animals to save a wild species, as some technophiles like to think. Of course, we already knew that. Witness the recovery of bald eagles, wood ducks, and the slow increase in the numbers of Whooping cranes, which were down to about 25 individuals a few years back but now number in the hundreds. Cloning to save a species is a silly idea anyway, because you need genetic diversity to survive diseases and changing environmental conditions. Jim Kling
  • This article from Reason comes to mind [reason.com]:

    All environmental problems occur in open-access commons -- areas like rivers, airsheds,
    and fisheries -- that no one owns and no one has a responsibility to protect. Political
    management has generally been the way we have tried to handle the problems caused by
    the institution of open-access commons. The CPC is pointing to how private property can
    effectively deal with environmental problems. "An owner who neglects or harms what he
    owns is soon out of business and is replaced by somebody better," noted Smith.

    • The problem with private conservation is that most people don't have the scientific knowledge necessary to know how to manage this stuff. But yes, private conservation can work if it is directed by knowledgable people. If someone's livelihood depends on a certain animal doing well, than they have a great deal of incentive to protect it.

      But this can only work if people are willing to accept the recommendations of people who actually understand how all of these variables interact with each other to determine outcome.

      • Good sir, you yourself just stated:

        If someone's livelihood depends on a certain animal doing well, than they have a great deal of incentive to protect it.

        That is exactly the point. People protect and defend that which belongs to them. By monopolizing the market in parks, for instance, and charging property taxes, governments punish the very large-scale ecology we're discussing. I canot keep large tracts of land in their un-touched condition if I have to pay rent on it every year.

        I don't consider the push-me-pull-you of property taxes and tax-funded parks to have been a deliberate act on the part of the governments to put private efforts out of reach, but it is a beneficial (for government) outcome.

        Bob-
  • the first conceived, hatched and raised in the wild to survive more than a day

    Dude... How do you think they reproduced before we were around to help? :-)

  • The hubris is hot and heavy. We are as much party to evolution as is the Condor. That we are able to impact evolution via gene manipulation makes us no less party to evolution than say a species in runaway that depletes it's food supply and faces extinction or change. Species die off and rise phoneix like from the dead as much without our help as with it. Walking the urban core at night I'm as likely now to meet the acquaintance of a racoon or a cyote as another person. There's an overabundance of false pride in a context that sets us up as having risen above the give and take of nature. Although we do have the responsibility of stewarts so there's an element of ambivalence.
  • Some species of genetically modified plants were left to see if they would take over the surrounding natural area in an experiment in the UK. What they found was that the genetically engineered plants were incapable of survival in the wild without farming assistance, they died out within one generation. Something in the engineering process hadn't prepared it for the riguors of competition. Nature knows best.

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