Name: 滅絕動物復活的真正原因？！ (The Real Reason We Should Revive Extinct Animals)
Uploaded: 2025-11-12T02:16:57.000Z
Duration: 15 min 50 s

You see this dog looking animal pacing back and forth in a cage.

你看到這隻像狗一樣的動物在籠子裡踱來踱去。

That's a Tasmanian tiger, one of the very last of its kind.

那是塔斯馬尼亞虎，牠們最後的幾隻之一。

It died in 1936, and the species was ultimately declared extinct.

牠在 1936 年死了，這個物種最終被宣佈滅絕。

But now scientists are trying to bring them back.

但現在科學家正試圖讓牠們回來。

You might have seen headlines about dire wolves or woolly mammoths or dodo birds or passenger pigeons or dinosaurs.

你可能看過關於恐狼、猛獁象、度度鳥、旅行鴿或恐龍的頭條新聞。

De extinction has become a new and urgent scientific debate that we should all know about.

滅絕復育已經成為一個我們都應該知道的、新且緊迫的科學辯論。

But when I took a deep dive into what's really going on here, I realized that we're getting this conversation very, very wrong.

但當我深入研究這裡真正發生的事情時，我意識到我們對這場對話的理解非常、非常錯誤。

Because we're on the cusp of a huge genetic breakthrough.

因為我們正處於一個巨大的基因突破的邊緣。

But the most huge, if true, thing happening here isn't actually bringing back extinct animals.

但這裡最重大的事情，如果屬實，其實並不是讓滅絕的動物回來。

It's what this means for all the animals alive today.

而是這對今天所有活著的動物意味著什麼。

And very few people seem to know about it.

It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie.

聽起來就像科幻電影裡的情節。

All right, imagine you're a mad scientist and you want to bring back an extinct animal.

好了，想像一下你是一位瘋狂科學家，想讓一種滅絕的動物復活。

Step one, choose your animal like a mammoth.

第一步，選擇你的動物，像是猛獁象。

Now, from here, you need to choose one of three pads, and for each you'll need different ingredients.

從這裡開始，你需要選擇三種方法之一，每種方法都需要不同的材料。

You could try to take a close living relative of the animal that you chose and breed a bunch of them together until you get an animal with traits that roughly match the one that you wanted.

你可以試著找這種動物近親的現存親戚，然後把牠們繁殖很多代，直到你得到一種特徵大致符合你想要的動物。

This is the same basic process that made my dog Thor out of a wolf.

這跟讓我的狗狗 Thor 從狼演變過來的基本過程是一樣的。

But instead of trying to make something new and adorable, you're trying to make something old.

但你不是要創造新的可愛東西，而是要重現舊的東西。

It's called back breeding, and it can work, like with this guy.

這叫做回溯育種，而且它真的有效，就像這個一樣。

I actually have a little toy quagga right here.

我這裡剛好有一個小小的誇加玩具。

It's a subspecies of zebra native to South Africa.

牠是南非特有的一種斑馬亞種。

They have stripes on the head and neck, and the stripes fade away along the body.

牠們的頭部和頸部有條紋，但條紋會漸漸消失在身體上。

牠們在 1880 年前就被獵捕到滅絕了，但是

we've already been able to bring a version of it back using back breeding.

我們已經能透過回溯育種讓牠的一個版本回來了。

This is a really exciting approach and it can work for both animals and plants, but

這是一個非常令人興奮的方法，對動物和植物都有效，但

It takes many generations of zebra to get there.

這需要好幾代的斑馬才能辦到。

You don't know which genes will appear when and which will go away.

你不知道哪些基因會出現，哪些又會消失。

In reality, it's a cool method that's been done, but probably pretty limited.

事實上，這是一個很酷的方法，雖然已經有人做過，但可能限制很多。

I remember in Jurassic park, they pulled dinosaur DNA from blood inside a fossilized mosquito.

我記得在《侏羅紀公園》裡，他們從化石蚊子裡的血液中提取恐龍 DNA。

And then they cloned the animal based on that DNA.

然後他們就根據這些 DNA 複製出動物。

這一切都是複製奇蹟的一部分。

In real life, though, the ingredients that you need for this method aren't just the extinct animal's DNA.

不過在現實生活中，這種方法需要的材料不只是滅絕動物的 DNA。

Because cloning is actually a very specific scientific technique.

因為複製其實是一項非常專門的科學技術。

The long name is somatic cell nuclear transfer.

It means removing the nucleus out of an egg cell and replacing it with the nucleus of a body or somatic cell of the animal you want to clone.

意思是把卵細胞裡的細胞核取出，換成你想複製的動物體細胞的細胞核。

And then you put that egg with its new nucleus into an animal where it can grow.

然後再把這個卵細胞和新的細胞核放進一隻動物體內讓牠發育。

People tried this in the early 2000s with an extinct species called the Bucardo.

人們在2000年代初期嘗試用一種叫做布卡多（Bucardo）的滅絕物種來做。

But by 2000, there was only one Bucardo left.

但到了2000年，只剩下一隻布卡多了。

But luckily, this was four years after Dolly the sheep successfully cloned.

但幸運的是，這是在桃莉羊成功複製的四年後。

So in an attempt to save the species, some quick thinking biologists put tissue samples from the remaining Bucardo in storage.

所以為了拯救這個物種，一些反應快的生物學家將僅存布卡多的組織樣本儲存起來。

And then they were able to take the nucleus from those cells and put them into the cells of domestic goat hybrids.

然後他們就能取出這些細胞的細胞核，放進家山羊雜交體的細胞裡。

而在2003年，一隻小布卡多誕生了。

Unfortunately, their first clone that was born had a malformed lung and didn't survive.

不幸的是，牠們第一個出生的複製體肺部畸形，沒能存活下來。

So we are able to clone animals when we have living cells, which is wild.

所以當我們有活細胞時，我們就能複製動物，這真的很厲害。

Carefully preserve the whole cells of a mammoth.

小心地保存猛獁象的完整細胞。

The biggest challenge is needing those living cells in the first place, because it turns out that cells have a shelf life.

最大的挑戰是首先需要活細胞，因為細胞是有保存期限的。

Once an animal dies, their cells are typically pretty short lived, dying off within hours or days.

動物死掉後，牠們的細胞通常壽命很短，幾小時或幾天內就會死亡。

But freezing can dramatically slow this process, which is why there's been hope that animals found preserved in ice, like this 40,000 year old baby mammoth, might have some usable cells, but

但是冷凍可以大幅減緩這個過程，這也是為什麼人們希望在冰裡發現的保存動物，像是這隻有四萬年歷史的幼年猛獁象，可能還有一些可用的細胞，但

so far no revivable cells have been found.

到目前為止還沒有找到可以復甦的細胞。

所以複製動物是其中一個很難的。

And this one is by far the most popular for the 99.99% of extinct species.

而這個方法是目前對99.99%的滅絕物種來說，最受歡迎的。

We have to use the third method, gene editing.

我們必須使用第三種方法，基因編輯。

If you imagine DNA as a group of blocks, each block here could represent a gene like this one tells me the shape of the skull, and

如果把 DNA 想像成一堆積木，這裡的每一塊積木可能代表一個基因，像是這個基因告訴我頭骨的形狀，

還有這個基因告訴我耳朵的大小。

And maybe this one tells me thick woolly coat.

或許這個基因告訴我厚厚的毛皮。

And then stacked together, they give me the instructions for how to build this specific animal.

然後把這些積木堆疊起來，它們就組成了建造這種特定動物的指令。

The challenge is like living cells have a shelf life, so does DNA.

挑戰在於，就像活細胞有保存期限一樣，DNA 也有。

Once an Animal dies, the DNA in its cells starts to break down into tinier and tinier and tinier fragments until eventually there's nothing left.

動物一旦死亡，牠細胞裡的 DNA 就會開始分解成越來越小的碎片，直到最後什麼都不剩。

That's why right now, we can't bring back animals that went extinct too long ago, like the dinosaurs.

這就是為什麼現在我們沒辦法讓像恐龍那樣滅絕很久的動物復活。

Too much time has passed and their DNA is way too fragmented.

因為時間過去太久了，牠們的 DNA 已經碎裂得太嚴重了。

But if we use an animal that died off fairly recently or was frozen in just the right way, scientists can figure out what some of those key missing pieces are and replicate this stack of blocks in another animal.

但如果我們使用最近才滅絕，或是以恰當方式被冷凍保存的動物，科學家就能找出那些關鍵的缺失片段，並在另一隻動物身上複製這堆積木。

You compare the stack of DNA blocks of the extinct animal with the blocks of a close living relative to see where the two are different, and

你會把滅絕動物的 DNA 堆疊跟牠們近親的 DNA 堆疊做比較，看看哪裡不一樣，

edit the DNA in the living relative so it resembles the DNA in the extinct one.

然後編輯近親的 DNA，讓牠們盡量跟滅絕動物的 DNA 一樣。

This is what they're trying to do with woolly mammoths and dire wolves.

這就是科學家們正在嘗試用在猛獁象和恐狼身上的方法。

But they won't be exactly like the extinct animal.

但牠們不會跟滅絕的動物一模一樣。

In fact, people online were really quick to point out that these extinct actually aren't really dire wolves at all.

事實上，網路上的人們很快就指出，這些滅絕動物其實根本不是真正的恐狼。

It's better to think of them as genetically modified gray wolves.

最好把牠們想成是基因改造過的灰狼。

Scientists are choosing which exact traits to manipulate to get the outcomes that they want.

科學家們正在選擇要操控哪些確切的特徵，來達到他們想要的結果。

And they want to do it by making the least amount of edits possible.

而且他們想用最少的編輯次數來達成。

I asked the scientist in charge of the direwolf project why I'm thinking about de extinction, and

我問了負責恐狼計畫的科學家，為什麼我會想到滅絕復育，

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滅絕動物復活的真正原因？！ (The Real Reason We Should Revive Extinct Animals)

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