'Closer than people think': Woolly mammoth 'de-extinction' is nearing reality — and we have no idea what happens next
'Closer than people think': Woolly mammoth 'de-extinction' is nearing reality — and we have no idea what happens next
Scientists are getting very close to bringing a few iconic species, like woolly mammoths and dodos, back from extinction. That may not be a good thing.
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The world they lived in is long gone along with the food they ate and the rest of their species. It seems almost cruel to bring them back.
Not that long gone—the last relict population on Wrangel Island only died out about 4000 years ago. That's (barely) within historic time. There are probably islands in the Canadian and Siberian Arctic that could still support them (and have no or few human inhabitants).
I see two big issues. First of all, not all knowledge among elephants is transmitted genetically, and I expect mammoths were the same. Who will the new ones learn from? They'll have to redevelop best practices for dealing with their environment from scratch.
Secondly, global warming. This seems like about the worst possible time to bring back an ice-age-adapted critter. We'd be better off transferring the effort spent on this project into de-extincting the thylacine, a more recent loss which doesn't have that specific issue.
I’m fairly certain they are working on the thylacine as well?
Different group, I think, and not as close to success. The thylacine has a better chance at long-term survival if we do bring it back, though—it isn't an ice age creature, and it was surviving despite competition from other creatures in a similar niche until humans started aggressively hunting it down.
I think the mammoths have a really good shot actually. Siberia seems like it will be perfect for them
It's not that long gone. There were still mammoths around when the pyramids were built. Plus there's still huge swaths of tundra and taiga that they could live on, with a lot of the same plants, even if it's quite a bit warmer.
In the grand scheme of things the pyramids were built relatively recently, but I'd still consider it quite long ago
Measured in human life it’s long ago. measured at universal scales, it was nothing.
A good measurement for human timescales is the age difference between a child and their grandfather (~50 years, basically one generation of oral tradition).
The mammoths died out 80 grandfathers ago.That's an interesting unit of measure for sure. I do get what you're saying--that's sort of the limit to where some knowledge can reach.
Not advocating for restoring the mammoth, but this is a dangerous line of argument.
With climate change and ongoing mass extinctions, many current species are or will soon be in the same situation that re-introduced mammoths would be—and you could use the same argument to say that trying to preserve them is cruel so we should kill off any current species facing environmental stress.
They were here pretty recently, their food is still here. It was cruel that we extincted them.
Nah. It’s still the same place. They died out within the time frame of completely modern humans.
Well pumpkins and avocados still exists at least and apparently they were grazers.
It's worse when you consider the state of the world and the warming. They'd have about 20 sq\km of land capable of supporting them and they'd have to share it with those psychos, polar bears.