The dodo has been the literal poster child for extinction for over three hundred years. We’ve used it as a punchline. "Dead as a dodo" is a phrase everyone knows, mostly because we've long viewed the bird as a clumsy, flightless mistake that practically invited its own demise. But that's mostly a lie. It was actually quite well-adapted to Mauritius until humans showed up with rats and pigs. Now, things are shifting. We aren't just looking at dusty museum skeletons anymore. Scientists are actually talking about bringing back the dodo bird using gene-editing tools that sound like they belong in a movie script.
It’s happening. Or at least, the groundwork is being laid.
Colossal Biosciences, a company that’s already made headlines for trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth and the thylacine, has put the dodo on its "to-do" list. This isn't just about nostalgia. It’s a massive technological gamble involving paleogenetics, synthetic biology, and a whole lot of questions about what it even means to be an "extinct" species in 2026.
The DNA Problem: You Can’t Just Clone a Bird
If you’re thinking Jurassic Park, stop. Cloning a bird is way harder than cloning a mammal. With a sheep or a cow, you can take a cell nucleus and pop it into an egg. Birds? Their reproductive systems are a nightmare for lab techs. You have the shell, the yolk, and the fact that the embryo is already developing by the time the egg is laid.
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Beth Shapiro, a lead paleogeneticist and an advisor at Colossal, has been working on this for years. She actually led the team that first sequenced the dodo’s genome using DNA from a specimen in Denmark. That was the "Aha!" moment. Without that genetic map, we’d be flying blind.
Basically, you can't just find a dodo "seed" and plant it.
The process involves looking at the dodo's closest living relative: the Nicobar pigeon. It's a vibrant, metallic-green bird that looks nothing like a dodo but shares a common ancestor. The plan is to take Nicobar pigeon primordial germ cells—the cells that eventually become sperm or eggs—and edit their DNA to match the dodo’s sequence. These edited cells are then injected into a host bird's embryo. If everything goes right, that host bird grows up and produces offspring that are, genetically speaking, dodos.
Sorta.
It’s actually more like a "proxy" species. It’ll look like a dodo and act like a dodo, but it’s technically a heavily modified pigeon. Does that matter? To a purist, maybe. To an ecosystem, perhaps not.
Why Spend Millions on a Dead Bird?
A lot of people think this is a huge waste of money. Why spend millions on bringing back the dodo bird when we have living species on the brink of vanishing right now? It's a fair point. But the tech being developed for the dodo—like the ability to edit bird genomes at a high level—can actually be used to save those living birds.
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Think about avian flu. Or climate change. If we can master "de-extinction" tech, we can use it to inject genetic diversity back into endangered populations. It’s like a backup drive for biodiversity.
- Ecosystem restoration: Dodos were major seed dispersers on Mauritius. Their disappearance changed the forest.
- Technological spinoffs: The gene-editing tools created here have massive implications for agriculture and human medicine.
- The "Wow" factor: Nothing gets people interested in conservation quite like seeing a "dead" species walking around. It’s a PR win for the planet.
Mauritius is a different place now than it was in the 1600s. The invasive species that killed off the dodo—the rats, the monkeys, the pigs—are still there. If we dropped a dodo back onto the island today, it would probably just go extinct all over again. You can't just build a bird; you have to rebuild a home. The Government of Mauritius is actually involved in this, looking at how to restore native habitats so that if a dodo proxy ever exists, it actually has somewhere to stand.
The Ethical Mess Nobody Wants to Talk About
Is it weird? Yes. Is it "playing God"? Some people definitely think so.
There's a real fear that if we tell the world we can just "undo" extinction, people will stop caring about protecting what we have left. Why save a rare parrot if we can just print a new one in 50 years? That’s a dangerous mindset. Most scientists in the field, including those at Colossal, are quick to say that de-extinction is a supplement to conservation, not a replacement.
Also, what kind of life does the first "new" dodo have? It’ll be the only one of its kind. It won't have parents to teach it how to be a dodo. It’ll be a lab-grown anomaly. There are serious animal welfare questions here that don't have easy answers yet.
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Honestly, the science is moving faster than the ethics. We are reaching a point where the question isn't "Can we?" but "Should we?" and "How do we do it right?"
What Happens Next: The Reality Check
Don't expect to see a dodo in a zoo next week. We’re still years, likely over a decade, away from a living breathing bird. Sequencing the genome was the easy part. Successfully editing those germ cells and getting them to produce a viable chick is a monumental hurdle that has never been cleared in this specific way.
But the momentum is real.
The investment is there. The interest is there. And the dodo, a bird that has been dead for centuries, is suddenly the center of a high-tech arms race to redefine what "extinct" even means.
If you want to stay ahead of this, you should keep an eye on the progress of the "avian de-extinction" pipeline at Colossal. They are the ones holding the keys right now. You can also look into the work of Revive & Restore, a nonprofit that has been championing these types of "genetic rescue" projects long before they were trendy.
How to Follow the Science
- Monitor the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation: They are the ones on the ground doing the actual habitat restoration. Without them, the dodo has no home.
- Read "How to Clone a Mammoth" by Beth Shapiro: It’s the best book on the subject, and it explains the "why" and "how" without the hype.
- Track CRISPR advancements: Since bringing back the dodo bird relies entirely on gene editing, any breakthrough in CRISPR-Cas9 or similar tools is a step closer to the bird's return.
It's a wild time to be interested in biology. We’re watching the line between history and the future get very, very blurry.