Bring back the dodo? Ambitious plan draws both investors and critics
- Colossal Biosciences, the company that wants to revive the woolly mammoth, has now set its sights on the flightless bird that went extinct in 1681
- Scientists are planning to study the dodo’s closest living relative, the Nicobar pigeon, and could eventually tweak its cells in a quest to produce dodo eggs
The dodo bird is not coming back any time soon. Nor is the woolly mammoth. But a company working on technologies to bring back extinct species has attracted more investors, while other scientists are sceptical such feats are possible or a good idea.
Colossal Biosciences first announced its ambitious plan to revive the woolly mammoth two years ago, and on Tuesday said it wanted to bring back the dodo bird, too.
“The dodo is a symbol of man-made extinction,” said Ben Lamm, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Colossal. The company has formed a division to focus on bird-related genetic technologies.
The last dodo, a flightless bird about the size of a turkey, was killed in 1681 on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
The Dallas company, which launched in 2021, also announced on Tuesday it had raised an additional US$150 million in funding. To date, it has raised US$225 million from wide-ranging investors that include United States Innovative Technology Fund, Breyer Capital and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm which invests in technology.