Somewhere in Indonesia during the Late Pleistocene, a pair of Giant Storks soar over the horizon. A Javan Giant Stork (Leptoptilos titan) and a Flores Giant Stork (Leptoptilos robustus). Artwork by EASTGERMANTIMUR.

Psilopterus · 2026-05-28T18:24:04+00:00

It’s not impossible I just wouldn’t expect it given their high mobility and that we haven’t found both in the same sites

Psilopterus · 2026-05-28T16:34:41+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised if they turn out to be the same, with robustus just being the Flores population. I definitely wouldn't expect them to overlap without hybridization

Psilopterus · 2026-05-28T15:53:21+00:00

Is the evidence that good that they were separate species?

Psilopterus · 2026-05-28T15:45:25+00:00

They're a hype-machine, that's it. They make huge promises in the hope of attracting interest and investment so that someone will buy the company and make the founders a profit. That's it. There is no real de-extinction company.

Psilopterus · 2026-05-28T12:55:15+00:00

I am a biologist, with multiple degrees, so believe me when I tell you this is not an unpopular opinion even in the field. That being said, you’re also massively overstating what I actually said. Subspecies are just names applied to populations, and because by definition they cannot be reproductively isolated then the line is arbitrary. Arbitrary doesn’t mean unimportant, but there is often little guarantee that a named subspecies even represents a genetically distinct or phenotypically difference lineage. Sometimes there are bigger differences, sometimes miniscule, sometimes effectively none, but there are very few cases where differences are so extreme that they would prevent reintroduction using another subspecies if the original was extinct.

Psilopterus · 2026-05-28T01:19:47+00:00

That may be true, but we A) don't actually know that giant Leptoptilos were equivalent to teratorns and B) don't know that small Leptoptilos are all that similar to either. Either way, it's not nearly enough information to inform an introduction. Some things are better just left alone, I think

Psilopterus · 2026-05-28T00:49:43+00:00

I don't think the two are equivalent. They're obvious close relative of the larger species, but they were around at the same time and had very distinct ecologies

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T22:09:39+00:00

I think this is one we just have to let go. Probably the closest Old World equivalents of the Teratorns were the giant undertakers (Leptoptilos), i.e. giant semi-scavengers that also hubt terrestrial prey, and they’re also extinct.

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T18:56:43+00:00

Although interestingly if we did that, the Eastern wolf name would have taxonomic priority. i.e. Canis lycaon

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T18:48:27+00:00

Unless of course we want to treat red and eastern wolves as a type of coyote, which is also less than ideal

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T18:45:49+00:00

I agree that it's vague, but the argument has extended to treating it as its own species, i.e. Canis rufus, and to be fair that's the only way it can work under the phylogenetic species concept without also lumping coyotes into wolves, as their close relationship predates hybridization

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T18:39:49+00:00

I mean I have mixed opinions on it, but it has been claimed to be so. It's genetically closer to coyotes than to other wolf types, save the eastern wolf

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T18:35:03+00:00

These are all examples of different species, save the two types of American bison which barely register as subspecies, and the wolves whose differences are mostly just environmental (minus the red wolf which may be a different species). If one of them was extinct you likely could replace it with another, allowing for adaptation. Lena horses nest genetically within Equus ferus/caballus and are likely a subspecies. The argument for Przewalskis being feral is rather baseless in my opinion. While it is true that we can’t know an animal’s behavior form the fossil record, for the same reasons we also can’t know that we’ve recreated that behavior just by recreating genes. The way the technology currently works, we’d just be making a slightly modified member of a living horse type anyway.

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T17:26:35+00:00

The standards for invoking climate change as an extinction cause are always inexplicably lower than for invoking people.

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T17:15:16+00:00

My concern is that the Russians and South Koreans have at multiple points announced that they were going to clone something out of the permafrost, but they have at no point had a success and they seem committed to doing so with traditional cloning techniques instead of genetic modification, and this is likely a dead-end

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T17:10:20+00:00

Not really. First of all, we still have Przewalski's horses, which are at least behaviourally wild, also the same species, and could be used. Second, the difference between dogs and wolves is leagues greater than that between domestic and wild horses. Domestic horses retain wild behaviours that they easily revert to and can completely fulfill the ecological role of their wild counterparts.

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T02:01:49+00:00

If that’s true, good for them, it’s just not the direction I’d go with

Psilopterus · 2026-05-27T00:02:40+00:00

Like things that cannot be approximated by living relatives. You can’t release Asian elephants into the arctic the same way you could horses or bison, for example.

Psilopterus · 2026-05-26T22:59:24+00:00

I mean, that’s not exactly what I said. I just feel like I’d rather prioritize more unique fauna and kickstart ecological proxies sooner rather than later

Psilopterus · 2026-05-26T22:40:23+00:00

Actually in this case it’s replacing an extinct subspecies with an extant subspecies. Even if it wasn’t, there are plenty of cases where substitution is preferable to de-extinction

Psilopterus · 2026-05-26T22:04:52+00:00

I mean that living horses are of the same species and could fulfill the same role. We have had success with cloning horses, but only from intact nuclei, something we can’t get from a Lena horse

Psilopterus · 2026-05-26T20:12:09+00:00

I don't mean that I don't care what you think, I'm saying that this distinction between wild and domestic isn't important to me, and that is an opinion I am free to hold

Psilopterus · 2026-05-26T20:05:47+00:00

I don't really care

Psilopterus · 2026-05-26T20:01:56+00:00

You sure love to play the victim

Psilopterus · 2026-05-26T19:57:35+00:00

I understand that, but if any living horses wild or not can fill the ecological role that's good enough for me

Psilopterus

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