What If We Raised Dinosaurs for Food?

With the world’s population growing every year, we need to find ways to produce more food. So, if we could bring dinosaurs back from the dead, would you eat them?

How could we bring dinosaurs back from extinction? How much would they need to eat each day? And which dinosaur would be the most delicious? We’re sparing no expense. Things are becoming Jurassic.

Dinosaurs haven’t walked on Earth for 65 million years. But, if we managed to bring them back, could we raise them for food and eat their meat?

Just like the movie Jurassic Park, we could possibly bring back dinosaurs. Do you know that dinosaur DNA is most closely related to chicken DNA? But, unlike the movies, it wouldn’t be easy to bring dinos back.

We would need some dino DNA that hasn’t deteriorated. And unfortunately, that isn’t easy to come by. But let’s say that we did stumble upon some suitable dinosaur DNA. What would be the next steps?

Well, scientists have been trying to resurrect woolly mammoths by sequencing their DNA from a frozen specimen. Then, they synthesized its genes and placed them into an Asian elephant embryo, as 99% of their genomes are similar.

We could do the same thing to bring back dinosaurs, but we’d use a chicken egg instead. Then, we’d leave it under a heater and see if a dinosaur hatches. If it were a dinosaur, we’d treat it just like other farm animals we raise. And we’d need to feed that hungry dinosaur baby. So, how much would a dinosaur need to eat?

Well, if you’ve watched Jurassic Park, you know that dinosaurs come in a range of shapes and sizes. So it depends on what the dinosaur’s diet is. For instance, herbivores like the Brachiosaurus, could weigh 4 kg (8 lb) at birth. And within a few months, they could easily weigh 10 times more.

Once it becomes an adult, this plant-eating giant would weigh in at a whopping 35-56 metric tons (77,000-123,000 lb). That’s about the same as 120 head of cattle. And it would need to eat 400 kg (880 lb) of food per day. That’s the same as 16 dairy cows eat.

But let’s not forget how much meat that dinosaur would give you. You’d have quite a feast. And talking about meat, which dinosaur do you think would taste the best? Well, it’s hard to know, as no one alive today has ever tried dinosaur meat.

But if we compare it to the meats we enjoy, the most delicious tend to be from herbivores, the plant-eating animals. Like our Brachiosaurus. So, something like the infamous T. rex might taste a little different.

We know that dinosaurs are distant relatives of birds. And fast-moving dinosaurs would mainly consist of white meat. So a T. Rex might taste like an ostrich. But maybe you prefer to eat seafood. In that case, you might want to try

And here’s one thing you probably hadn’t even thought of. Recent studies have shown that some dinosaurs, like T. rex, had feathers. So if we did raise them for food, imagine plucking a dinosaur that big.

One Tyrannosaur fossil had feathers that measured an incredible 1m (39 in) long. So, it would be a bit different from plucking a chicken. But before we get too carried away, we’d better say that bringing back dinosaurs is not very likely.

And if we were to do it, there would be other consequences. And maybe some that we couldn’t handle. Just like in Jurassic Park, things could get out of hand pretty quickly. But, if you think about it, we’re already eating dinosaurs. Or at least their very distant relative, the chicken. They might be smaller, but they sure taste good.