Talk:Breeding back

aurochs

the aurochs has not been bred back. A breed of cattle vaguely resembling them and sharing much of their genetic makeup has been bred anew, but if you're at all familiar with the perimeters of selective breeding, "much" doesn't mean much of anything. The modern cattle are most notably nowhere near the size of true Aurochs. 6'6" at the shoulders vs barely over 5 feet at the shoulders, among other differences. It's more fitting to include this in the article as an ongoing ATTEMPT to breed back the aurochs, because had the modern heck co-existed with the aurochs, it would have been easily discernible to even someone with zero interest in bovinae. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.246.200.19 (talk) 10:02, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Gene regulation

Wouldn't the recent trend highlighting the importance of the regulation of gene expression give this concept somewhat more credibility than previously?--Pharos 04:28, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Dog backbreeding to look like wolf

I might be wrong, but I don't think the example of the American Alsatian fits in here. The dire wolf was a wolf and the American Alsatian is a dog. Creating a new dog breed that looks like an extinguished wolf variety is not the same as breeding back an extinguished wolf variety, opinions? (SybilleY (talk) 14:37, 17 March 2011 (UTC))

I'd suggest looking at the source material and see what they have to say. The whole concept of "breeding back" is, IMHO, just an attempt to use domestic animals and breed them to look like wild ones. They aren't really recreating a true genetic example because the genetic material is extinct. In the case of horse examples, which I know best, it is impossible to recreate the extinct genetic stock of the Tarpan, so it's just a lookalike. Montanabw^(talk) 19:57, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe that Tamaskan (and Northern Inuit, its predecessor/related breed) is not a good example of backbreeding. For a few years now it has been known that there have been wolf crosses used in Tamaskans as well as at least one confirmed Czechoslovakian Wolfdog and Saarloos Wolfdog. This means recently introduced wolf blood into the population, confirmed by DNA tests done on several Tamaskan dogs, with the added unfortunate controversy that the ladies responsible for the "wolfdog without wolf" Tamaskan marketing headline just tried to deny their recent wolf introduction by issuing fraudulent pedigrees. Should even the mixing of domestic breeds with their wild relatives be considered backbreeding? When the wild relative is not even extinct, as is the case with dogs/wolves and cats/wild cats? (Cocopelli (talk) 13:39, 29 November 2017 (UTC))

Dedomestication vs breeding back

Dedomestication and breeding back definitely are two separate processes, therefore I will separate this into two articles. Will write them as soon as I can. -- DFoidl (talk) 08:37, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Quagga

The quagga is not "an independent species of the Plains Zebra", it's a subspecies of the Plains Zebra, as can be read both in the Quagga and the Plains Zebra's articles.--Menah the Great (talk) 17:24, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it was a subspecies, not a species, I fixed that. -- DFoidl (talk) 00:24, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

So this Dire wolf project.

With the recent news that Dire wolves were quite distantly related to wolves & other canids. This project just seems rather superficial compared to other projects, which is using animals from the same species. Can't forget the environmental & conservation uses of these other projects. To avoid an edit war, I hope to see any reason why this should be listed. Monsieur X (talk) 08:48, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

• The project was started in 1988, while the discovery of the more distant relationship between grey and dire wolves is, as you said, very recent. At the time the project was started, and for most of its lifetime, dire and grey wolves were considered to be closely related species in the same genus and there was thus fairly good reason to assume that one could be an ecological stand-in for the other. While the impacts of this development should be noted assuming that sources to this effect can be found, they don't change the fact that this information wasn't available for most of the project's lifetime. Secondarily, I don't agree that the project being "superficial" is sufficient grounds to remove it from this page. If a coordinated effort was made to breed back an extinct species, then that's worth noting. If it was done with poor methods or from bad assumptions, then it's still worth noting -- just with the statement that it was done with poor methods or from bad assumptions. Theriocephalus (talk) 07:51, 15 March 2021 (UTC)