In 2000, Celia Was The Last Animal Of Her Kind – Until They Cloned Her

The Pyrenean ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica), also known as the bucardo or herc, was one of the four subspecies of the Iberian ibex. Since the Middle Ages, they had roamed the rugged Pyrenees mountains that border France and Spain, incorporating parts of the Basque Country and Catalonia while completely encompassing the microstate of Andorra.

Despite being figures of regional pride, their grand curly horns made them an attractive target for hunters and towards the latter half of the 20th century, they were more often seen mounted on the walls of hunting cabins than they were roaming the hillsides.

Extensive breeding efforts took place throughout the 1980s, but these attempts fell flat. By 1997, just one bucardo was left, a 13-year-old female named Celia. Rangers found this remaining individual mangled beneath a fallen tree in a remote part of Ordesa National Park on January 9, 2000. The bucardo had joined the ranks of the dodo. But fortunately for this curly-horned creature, all was not lost.

Alberto Fernández-Árias, a wildlife veterinarian at the Agri-food Research and Technology Centre of Aragon who had previously researched the reproduction of the Spanish ibex, captured the female bucardo 10 months before her death using a blowpipe, then took cell samples from her ear and flank. These cells were taken back to a lab where they were cultivated and then held in deep-freeze cryopreservation.

Around the turn of the millennium, the science of cloning was still in its infancy, but the team had a bold idea. “Cloning in mammals was thought to be impossible,” Fernández-Arias told IFLScience in 2017. “Then in 1996, there was Dolly the Sheep. And that changed a lot of things.”

Using Fernández-Arias's expertise in Spanish ibex reproduction, a team of French and Spanish scientists led by Jose Folch began working with these sacred cells left by Celia.

The team injected nuclei from the bucardo’s cells into goat eggs that had been emptied of their own genetic material. They then implanted these eggs into hybrids of Spanish ibex and domestic goats. They managed to implant 57 embryos. However, just seven of these hybrids became pregnant, and six eventually miscarried. One, however, was a success. 

I pulled out the little bucardo. For that moment, it was the first time in history that an extinct animal was brought back alive.

Alberto Fernández-Árias

Against all odds, a female bucardo clone was born by cesarean section on July 30, 2003.

“I pulled out the little bucardo. For that moment, it was the first time in history that an extinct animal was brought back alive,” Fernández-Arias added.

Fernández-Arias managed to explain the miraculous event with a remarkable amount of steely scientific restraint: “We were just like robots about it. We knew everyone had a particular skill, and we were being just professional.”

It looked as if humanity had defeated extinction for the first time; albeit very, very briefly.

“As soon as I had the animal in my hands, I knew it had respiratory distress. We had oxygen and special drugs prepared, but it could not breathe properly. In seven or 10 minutes, it became dead.”

The story did not hit the public's imagination until 2009 when the scientific study was published in the somewhat obscure journal Theriogenology. By then, the money had dried up, and many of the researchers had parted ways. It seemed the bucardo was to remain extinct once more.

The idea of de-extinction still holds a zealous appeal to scientists and the public alike, as if humanity is striving to attain a God-like mastery of nature and life. In recent years, a number of organizations have become hellbent on the mission of de-extinction. The most famous of these groups, Colossal Biosciences, has had a great deal of success and has even braver visions to revive extinct species, including the giant moa, the dodo, and the woolly mammoth.

The bucardo's (very short) de-extinction might sound a bit like a Jurassic Park-style leap into the future. However, the scientists on the project did not see themselves as glorious pioneers removing the chains of extinction. For them, it was all about saving the bucardo.

“When the bucardo were alive, we were trying to save them," said Fernández-Arias. "When they all died, we were still just trying to save them.”

An earlier version of this article was published in November 2017.