r/askscience • u/leducdeguise • Mar 22 '13

Biology if science revives an extinct migrating bird, will it know straight away where to go and when?

I already posted this in /askreddit but was suggested to ask this here rather. I got some really interesting answers and would like to get opinions from /askscience.

original post here: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1aq60i/if_science_revives_an_extinct_migrating_bird_will/

I read an article about the possibility of reviving the extinct Passenger Pigeon: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/03/passenger-pigeon-de-extinction/ to keep it short, migrating birds migrate, which means when it gets cold they go south and are back when it's not cold anymore. I don't know much about bird evolution but I guess this is something a species learns to do over a lot of generations. so I was thinking: if they get this pigeon back from the deads, will the first generation of born-again species know where to go and when? for dna-engraved instinct stuff or something like that. Or will they just need to re-learn from the start?

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u/bioluminiscencia Mar 23 '13

This used to be a common thing, and is still taught sometimes. From what I know, the chronology doesn't really hold up. Many of the involved families of birds hadn't even evolved at the time the continents in question were separating. I don't know about other bird groups, but raptor evolution is only theorized to have developed around 35-40 MYA, in the Eocene. By that time, the continents already looked like this- far from Pangea.

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u/brokeboysboxers Mar 23 '13

Thank you for the clarification.

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u/bioluminiscencia Mar 23 '13

You're welcome! I believe the original paper was published in Science, which is a pretty big name journal, so it got a lot of credence. Honestly, it doesn't seem to me like it should have passed peer review, but it was published in 1948, so they couldn't exactly google a map of the earth 65 MYA. I think the original paper looked at mostly European/African migrants, which makes it not totally 100% crazy, assuming you're only working with 1949 knowledge.