Future zoos may feature robots and cloned versions of extinct animals, according to speakers at a conference held at New York's Buffalo Zoo.

Louisiana Tech's Dr. Jeffrey Yule told the Symposium on the Future of Zoos that reviving extinct species, including wooly mammoths, dodo birds, passenger pigeons or the Tasmanian wolf, is a real possibility.

"The goal is not to bring them back merely to put them in a zoo, but to put them back in the wild," he said.

Yule believes a species shouldn't be a candidate for cloning unless its natural habitat still exists somewhere on earth. So, that rules out dinosaurs -- sorry, John Hammond -- but doesn't preclude an elephant giving birth to a cloned mammoth.

As for the robots, which also came up at the conference, they'd be used to let people interact with safe versions of dangerous animals like tigers.

[newsstar]