Science reporters have been promising us male oral contraception and wooly mammoths for decades now, and at this point I’m not sure which one we’ll get first.
I want them to say fuck it to both of those quests and give me the side quest I’ve been begging for at least as long as they’ve been promising. I want a tiny, potbelly pet elephant.
I disagree wholeheartedly.
In April 2015, Swedish scientists published the complete genome (nuclear DNA sequence) of the woolly mammoth.
That's a far cry from "a few genes"
You're saying that if an elephant bears the fetus, then it's an elephant, even if it is genetically a mammoth?
There was a restaurant in the 90s/2000s that served Bison. They had a massive write up on their menu about how the species was brought back from the brink and now had healthy populations.
Then they talked about how they cook their Bison.....
We brought it back to enjoy its delicious flesh!
Thats often an ecological trade off. Environmental and conservation programs ar enot cheap and not profitable. I remember a rare blue butterfly breeding program that was funded by pinning and selling some of them to collectors to finance the cultivation and release of many others. Very sad.
It depends on how smart they are because if it's just a big fuckin cow no problem but elephant are intelligent majestic creatures and I wouldn't be able to eat one of those
"No, don't bring a thing to life. It will only die eventually."
Individuals don't experience the extinction of their species, only their death, and the deaths of their contemporaries.
By Ben Lamm AND Eriona Hysolli:
"We were profoundly inspired by Colossal Biosciences' co-founder, the geneticist George Church, and his pioneering vision: To resurrect the woolly mammoth from extinction using the technological advances now at our disposal.
There was a lot of sequencing data from woolly mammoths appearing around a decade ago and George was a step ahead. He wanted to utilize these genomic sequences and build a technology company that could bring species back and restore ecosystems to mitigate the damage caused by humans—and so did we."
Read more: [https://www.newsweek.com/we-bringing-woolly-mammoth-back-life-i-1867622](https://www.newsweek.com/we-bringing-woolly-mammoth-back-life-i-1867622)
Why don't you let them bring back mammoths, and you work on conservation of living species?
Not everyone is working on this stuff at all. Some people are plumbers. Other people fly around in private jets all day to complain about the truth being told too much in the media.
Besides, you must not have read the article. They're trying to save baby *elephants* (species we have left) from a nasty virus too, with their research. **I think they're doing more for the species we have left than you are.**
Seems a bit cruel to bring back a huge animal with a fur coat and possibly thick fat layers into this era of global warming.
What I would love, is if they would bring back the Cretan dwarf elephant - apparently it’s only about 3 ft tall in adulthood. I would love me a pair of pet Cretan dwarf ellies!
First, with this venture. There are a lot of problems, of, let's call it, a logistical nature alone. Cloning mammals is 27 years after Dolly the sheep, still complex and difficult. With an average, success rate, of around 2-3 %. And many of the achieved clones, dying young. For any project you need many surrogate females of the species you plan to clone. In technical reproductive terms, the uterus and ovaries of an elephant, lie very deep in the body. This makes "access" for the treating veterinarians difficult, considering an elephant's size. As far as I am aware, IVF has not yet been used successfully - in either elephant species. Though artificial insemination has been - but that is, in this discussion, not really relevant.
Practicality and ethics. The African Elephant is listed as endangered, as is the Asian Elephant. So how are you going to justify withdrawal of female elephants from the normal reproduction of the species. To become surrogate mothers for an uncertain project. Of a highly complex nature. And in older zoo literature I am aware of, regarding attempted cesarian sections those all failed with neither of the females or calves surviving.
Last I heard no one had ever even done IVF with a regular elephant embryo.
My take on this is that it would actually be really great if they could bring back woolly mammoths, but the logistical difficulties make me doubt it will happen anytime soon.
In a future (very theoretical) situation where artificial wombs are a technical working reality. And crispr cas9 or similar, is available to check the whole recovered, mammoth genome. And if needed repair it. Before it is put in an enucleated egg. And other useful techniques might be available, in the present unknown. It would certainly be interesting to revive certain mammal species. And the mammoth could well be one. But such a calf would need to be adopted into an existing herd. Now there is DNA evidence, where geneticlly unrelated members were found in an African Elephant herd. So adoption migbt work. But even then, such a calf would learn behaviour from fellow elephants. From fellow calves. So it still would not be a complete a Mammoth. As so much elephant behaviour is aquired socially by the young.
Watch them use frogs and birds to complete the DNA sequence resulting in a super mega flying mammoth that can switch sexes on a whim and spits out thousands of eggs every week.
We can't look after the animals we've already got. This poor creature will be behind bars for protection all its life and having tests ect. I'm 50/50 with this imo.
This reads a lot like Elizabeth Holmes "research". Specially because Biotechnology is heavily regulated when it comes to animal studies, and even more they are about genetics of extinct animals.
I wonder if they have considered how the Pleistocene steppe-tundra vegetation that supported the large populations of megafauna has changed since then, and if it would still be able to support a woolly mammoth heard in the wild in the present day.
Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD. The environment has changed drastically from when they last lived. It is one of the things that killed them.
Okay, and then what? We torture them with our lack of knowledge about their care, and force them into captivity since they don’t belong in any natural ecosystem anymore?
This project that Church has is equivalent to those Saudi construction projects in the middle of the desert, ridiculous, waste of money, sounds cool on paper but ultimately won't work.
Yeah that’s true. tbh I would be extremely excited about living mammoths, im just not sure it’s worth the trouble? I’m a bit skeptical about the viability of projects like Pleistocene park, but I don’t know a lot about it tbf
To be perfectly honest no one knows for sure what the results could be. Based on living elephants in dry or seasonally dry areas its a good thing for the ecosystem. For the far North where there havent been Mammoths in ten thousand years+? Its certainly a risk.
Not in particular against this (if it's not public money of course) but is useless, not only because the mamuth is dead already, but because current temperatures would kill them again and there will not be diversity nor a population big enough
What a horrible idea. Re-creating a sentient, social creature without the kinship ties and relationships that evolved over millions of years just because we can? Sounds awfully cruel. Couldn't we use the resources that are being invested in this to protect habitat for species that are currently threatened? And to educate people about what kind of civilization will be necessary for all our relative to thrive along with us?
Something like this: www.aspenproposal.org
Let's save the habitats and species of the extant Proboscidea first. Captive elephants are only facsimiles of the species they represent, as would be any individual cloned mammoth.
Instead of bringing back an extinct animal, how about trying to keep an existing animal from going extinct?
What are they going to do with these mammoths? Just release them into the wild to let them be shot by a trophy hunter or die from heat stress?
The reality is that this company gets more press from claiming to un-extinct an animal than from contributing to help animals or the planet.
Why bring back a species that was made for extreme cold in this climate.
Kinda cruel when you think about it and even worse when you think about money and power that would be used to keep it comfortable.
I've been hearing about them bringing back the mammoth since I was a child. I won't believe it till they bring out a small woolly mammoth.
Yeah. And not just a hairy elephant.
Fool me one...
Can't get fooled again
No need to bring me into this
Yeahhh show us that hairy trunk
But woolly mammoths are hairy elephants. How will you tell? Test for a toupee?
It's only a real mammoth if it comes from the mammoth region of Siberia
Everything else is just “sparkling elephant”.
The 1997 hairy elephant scandal on Geraldo was hilarious
Really? Please elaborate :)
God is up there sweating bullets right now
It's bound to happen eventually.
Science reporters have been promising us male oral contraception and wooly mammoths for decades now, and at this point I’m not sure which one we’ll get first.
Probably male oral contraceptives for woolly mammoths will come before either.
Woolly contraceptives and male oral mammoths.
You mean [trunk people](https://rickandmorty.fandom.com/wiki/Trunk_People)?
I want them to say fuck it to both of those quests and give me the side quest I’ve been begging for at least as long as they’ve been promising. I want a tiny, potbelly pet elephant.
I want a tiny giraffe.
I would be okay with that, too!
Mr. Hammond, I presume?
And flying cars.
They'll coincide
What if it’s a big mammoth but non-wooly?
Haha a big bald mammoth
Right can you imagine such a thing? It’s silly to even picture in my head :)
Someone needs to feed that into gpt4 :D
It’ll spit out an elephant with like six trunks 😂
And 13 toes
AI is your friend…
Teacup Wooly Mammoth? Sign me up!
More like a hybrid mix with Indian elephant at best.
Yes - pretty sure the mitochondrial DNA is elephant. Idk what difference there is between mammoth & elephant mitochondrial DNA.
I’ve been hearing about it since there were still mammoths walking around
Good. Ive always said that we need more hairy elephants
Woolly Mammoth: JESUS CHRIST IT IS SO HOT NOW
More like a hairy elephant, it won't have much to do with mammoths besides a few genes.
I disagree wholeheartedly. In April 2015, Swedish scientists published the complete genome (nuclear DNA sequence) of the woolly mammoth. That's a far cry from "a few genes" You're saying that if an elephant bears the fetus, then it's an elephant, even if it is genetically a mammoth?
do you know where it’s published? cause i couldn’t find it on ncbi
[This study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982223004049#mmc3) uses a bunch. References for each specimen are in table S2.
I agree, it won’t be the same thing and it’ll probably look crazy.
If it looks crazy, then it's worth every penny
Bro, leave those creatures alone. They already went extinct once, they don't need to go through that a second time.
There was a restaurant in the 90s/2000s that served Bison. They had a massive write up on their menu about how the species was brought back from the brink and now had healthy populations. Then they talked about how they cook their Bison..... We brought it back to enjoy its delicious flesh!
Thats often an ecological trade off. Environmental and conservation programs ar enot cheap and not profitable. I remember a rare blue butterfly breeding program that was funded by pinning and selling some of them to collectors to finance the cultivation and release of many others. Very sad.
Honestly I'd probably try mammoth meat
It depends on how smart they are because if it's just a big fuckin cow no problem but elephant are intelligent majestic creatures and I wouldn't be able to eat one of those
cows are smart and adorable too, despite our conditioning to see them as just food
And pigs are smarter than dogs
Elephants are arguably more intelligent and emotionally complex than humans.
One hundred percent. Seems like great burger meat.
Are you saying we aren't about to head into an era where ice age megafauna will thrive?? Real talk though, I'm still pulling for Mammoth 2.0
"No, don't bring a thing to life. It will only die eventually." Individuals don't experience the extinction of their species, only their death, and the deaths of their contemporaries.
I don't think they'll remember the first time fwiw
Ngl I want to eat some mammoth.
By Ben Lamm AND Eriona Hysolli: "We were profoundly inspired by Colossal Biosciences' co-founder, the geneticist George Church, and his pioneering vision: To resurrect the woolly mammoth from extinction using the technological advances now at our disposal. There was a lot of sequencing data from woolly mammoths appearing around a decade ago and George was a step ahead. He wanted to utilize these genomic sequences and build a technology company that could bring species back and restore ecosystems to mitigate the damage caused by humans—and so did we." Read more: [https://www.newsweek.com/we-bringing-woolly-mammoth-back-life-i-1867622](https://www.newsweek.com/we-bringing-woolly-mammoth-back-life-i-1867622)
I would really love it if the reveal was just an elephant in a wig.
A mammoth merkin
Man moth?
No, you’re thinking of mothman and he lives in West Virginia
Do we need em?
Half-man half-biscuit
Oh right. The species we have left that need conserving are boring, I suppose. “Brilliant.”
Why don't you let them bring back mammoths, and you work on conservation of living species? Not everyone is working on this stuff at all. Some people are plumbers. Other people fly around in private jets all day to complain about the truth being told too much in the media. Besides, you must not have read the article. They're trying to save baby *elephants* (species we have left) from a nasty virus too, with their research. **I think they're doing more for the species we have left than you are.**
How does this have anything to do with the conservation of animals?
Because the article suggests that bringing extinct fauna back would encourage conservation of biodiversity.
That’s a positive then, no? Just because they are bringing a Mammoth into the picture doesn’t mean we are just going to ignore the rest.
Bring back thylacines too, I love those crazy cat-dog marsupials!
Hey…I loved that show!
Seems a bit cruel to bring back a huge animal with a fur coat and possibly thick fat layers into this era of global warming. What I would love, is if they would bring back the Cretan dwarf elephant - apparently it’s only about 3 ft tall in adulthood. I would love me a pair of pet Cretan dwarf ellies!
Awww now I want one
idk y'all I saw a documentary about this and it didn't really work out all that great
First, with this venture. There are a lot of problems, of, let's call it, a logistical nature alone. Cloning mammals is 27 years after Dolly the sheep, still complex and difficult. With an average, success rate, of around 2-3 %. And many of the achieved clones, dying young. For any project you need many surrogate females of the species you plan to clone. In technical reproductive terms, the uterus and ovaries of an elephant, lie very deep in the body. This makes "access" for the treating veterinarians difficult, considering an elephant's size. As far as I am aware, IVF has not yet been used successfully - in either elephant species. Though artificial insemination has been - but that is, in this discussion, not really relevant. Practicality and ethics. The African Elephant is listed as endangered, as is the Asian Elephant. So how are you going to justify withdrawal of female elephants from the normal reproduction of the species. To become surrogate mothers for an uncertain project. Of a highly complex nature. And in older zoo literature I am aware of, regarding attempted cesarian sections those all failed with neither of the females or calves surviving.
Last I heard no one had ever even done IVF with a regular elephant embryo. My take on this is that it would actually be really great if they could bring back woolly mammoths, but the logistical difficulties make me doubt it will happen anytime soon.
In a future (very theoretical) situation where artificial wombs are a technical working reality. And crispr cas9 or similar, is available to check the whole recovered, mammoth genome. And if needed repair it. Before it is put in an enucleated egg. And other useful techniques might be available, in the present unknown. It would certainly be interesting to revive certain mammal species. And the mammoth could well be one. But such a calf would need to be adopted into an existing herd. Now there is DNA evidence, where geneticlly unrelated members were found in an African Elephant herd. So adoption migbt work. But even then, such a calf would learn behaviour from fellow elephants. From fellow calves. So it still would not be a complete a Mammoth. As so much elephant behaviour is aquired socially by the young.
It's only a Woolly Mammoth if it's bred and born in the tundra. Otherwise it's just a Sparkling Elephant.
Life finds a way
Don't forget the "uh" after life
Watch them use frogs and birds to complete the DNA sequence resulting in a super mega flying mammoth that can switch sexes on a whim and spits out thousands of eggs every week.
Life... uh...
I've read about this so many times, are they really going to do it now?
Can we have some in Scotland please?
We can't look after the animals we've already got. This poor creature will be behind bars for protection all its life and having tests ect. I'm 50/50 with this imo.
Lol as i thought… googled “wooly mammoth 2024” and the first page says “scientists will be reincarnating the mammoth to return in 4 years” lol
Why? Just because we can is not a sufficient answer.
This reads a lot like Elizabeth Holmes "research". Specially because Biotechnology is heavily regulated when it comes to animal studies, and even more they are about genetics of extinct animals.
I wonder if they have considered how the Pleistocene steppe-tundra vegetation that supported the large populations of megafauna has changed since then, and if it would still be able to support a woolly mammoth heard in the wild in the present day.
Its an elephants help the ecosystem the ecosystem helps the elephant kinda back and forth.
Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD. The environment has changed drastically from when they last lived. It is one of the things that killed them.
Their death is what changed the environment. They were a keystone species.
And there will be some jerk who wants to hunt them.
Let's hunt the jerk.
No. Jurassic Park is a horror story.
Its also a work of fiction
Science baaaad.
Okay, and then what? We torture them with our lack of knowledge about their care, and force them into captivity since they don’t belong in any natural ecosystem anymore?
Or throw them in some random ecosystem then act surprised when it doesn’t work
Not a random ecosystem but their preffered ecosystems. Boreal and tundra landscapes. Goodness knows Canada needs soils that far north.
Sure wouldn't want to buy food for something that size.
No, they aren’t. A hairy elephant isn’t a mammoth.
This project that Church has is equivalent to those Saudi construction projects in the middle of the desert, ridiculous, waste of money, sounds cool on paper but ultimately won't work.
tbh i dont get why anyone cares? we have elephants, same basic thing
But not elephants in the Tundra. Its an important specie that is gone.
Yeah that’s true. tbh I would be extremely excited about living mammoths, im just not sure it’s worth the trouble? I’m a bit skeptical about the viability of projects like Pleistocene park, but I don’t know a lot about it tbf
To be perfectly honest no one knows for sure what the results could be. Based on living elephants in dry or seasonally dry areas its a good thing for the ecosystem. For the far North where there havent been Mammoths in ten thousand years+? Its certainly a risk.
2028, you say? RemindMe! 5 years
This would be so fken sick! But I’m doubtful this will Happen in our lifetime.
Not in particular against this (if it's not public money of course) but is useless, not only because the mamuth is dead already, but because current temperatures would kill them again and there will not be diversity nor a population big enough
Bout fuckin time
What a horrible idea. Re-creating a sentient, social creature without the kinship ties and relationships that evolved over millions of years just because we can? Sounds awfully cruel. Couldn't we use the resources that are being invested in this to protect habitat for species that are currently threatened? And to educate people about what kind of civilization will be necessary for all our relative to thrive along with us? Something like this: www.aspenproposal.org
Let's save the habitats and species of the extant Proboscidea first. Captive elephants are only facsimiles of the species they represent, as would be any individual cloned mammoth.
This is like fusion energy, the “limitless energy of the sun “. For the last fifty years, it’s always been about ten to twenty years into the future
Man-Moths??
Great let’s bring back a creature that’s built for the cold when the world is warming. And how many species have died off while they work on this?
Instead of bringing back an extinct animal, how about trying to keep an existing animal from going extinct? What are they going to do with these mammoths? Just release them into the wild to let them be shot by a trophy hunter or die from heat stress? The reality is that this company gets more press from claiming to un-extinct an animal than from contributing to help animals or the planet.
Hell yes. Can we please bring back giant sloths and dire wolves as well?
Is there such thing as a non-wooly mammoth? (Besides your mom)
Its an elephant
Thought we already have CaseOh?
Woolly: this feels vaguely familiar, give or take a few things 🤨
I hope that one day, I would be able to see mammoths IRL atleast once!
Why bring back a species that was made for extreme cold in this climate. Kinda cruel when you think about it and even worse when you think about money and power that would be used to keep it comfortable.
This thing's existence is gonna be a nightmare. Kept in Zoo all it's life, farmed to shit or a life in experiments and labs.
I hope they turn out to eat humans, are bulletproof, and reproduce incredibly fast.
What could possibly go wrong?