Jeff Corwin thinks humans are looking too far back for species to save ... noting it's a substantial scientific achievement to bring dire wolves back -- but, there are a lot of endangered species who are currently in dire need of help.
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00:00Can you explain for people like us how they did this and does it apply to all species that are
00:12now extinct? So basically every living organism has a genotype and that is their genetic fingerprint
00:20and that's expressed in the physical characteristics which we call a phenotype, right?
00:26That's who you are based on your genetic evolution as a unique type of living creature.
00:34Now what they have done is they have found the most similar living creature that could serve as a host.
00:43A host in two ways. A host for a mother to give birth and a host for the egg to hold that genetic material.
00:50So they took fossilized DNA just like they did in Jurassic Park. They took it from a tooth and some
00:59other stuff and it ranged from 12,000 years old to almost 50,000 years old and they scrubbed out all
01:06the closest cousin which would be your regular wolf species, your gray wolf and they scrubbed out the
01:15parts that didn't fit and they put in the parts that were the dire wolf and they try to basically
01:22put together a puzzle and that's how they did this. So these are 100% dire wolves. They're not like a mix
01:28of the two. They are a hollow type. They're as close as we can get and sometimes that close is really
01:34close but you know you can have a fake Rolex watch and you walk into that dealer and you sell he's gonna
01:39know that's not a real Rolex. So the question is guys is this valuable? Well it is. Scientifically
01:46it's important but ecologically conservation my question is what is the value? What is the value
01:55of bringing back something beyond the fascination of it that has been extinct for 12,000 years where
02:02there is no place for it to live wild? And my other question is if we take all these resources it must
02:08have cost tens of millions if not more to create these dire wolves. It's estimated to like to make
02:13a woolly mammoth out of an elephant with ancient DNA. It'll cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
02:19What could I do with that hundred millions of dollars today? Yeah I mean it's like with climate change
02:25and with everything that seems to be going extinct now it seems like a tool like this is really useful
02:31to regenerate these animals that are almost extinct or even those that are um but more recently to to
02:38preserve the ecological balance of the world. I don't buy it. Really? No I don't think so. Why? Why?
02:45Because it's it's like that whole argument you know what guys let's go to Mars and fight or go to other
02:50planets and find strange life. Guess what we have strange life here. Instead of fantasizing about going in
02:56the past to rekindle extinct species why don't we just focus on the amazing species we're about to
03:02lose right now. Give me that 10 million dollars to make a dire wolf and I want to save the 40 java
03:09rhinos that are left right. I want to help restore coral reefs off Florida which only four percent survive.
03:17The the Mexican gray wolf it's just as amazing as a dire wolf. There's about less than 200 left.
03:25We want to travel back in time to save species that are long gone when and use this amazing science and
03:32technology when right now today what we're about to do is we're about to inviscerate the endangered species
03:38act that policy and push species to the brink of extinction that we're already losing. We have tens of
03:45thousands of endangered species. That is an urgent call to action right now and I think that's where we should
03:53focus on. I'm not saying we don't do this but this is not a panacea.