[1]: https://defector.com/what-kind-of-future-does-de-extinction-...
[2]: https://defector.com/do-not-be-bamboozled-by-the-new-fluffy-...
I doubt the efficacy of creating mammoth like creatures, or elephants that have mammoth traits. We’re talking about recreating an ice age creature that, ostensibly we hunted into extinction. But with climate change and a warming planet, even if we were successful in recreating mammoths, where would such a creature live? James Hansen, who testified to congress in 1988 and informed the public about climate change, recently said that the Paris goal of keeping warming under 2 degrees Centigrade is pretty much dead. At 2 degrees we’ll be seeing ice free arctics at-least once per decade. With that future, there’s simply not going to be any habitat for these creatures to live in.
Also, Proboscideans existed in many climate zones through various climactic periods. They're not narrow specialists.
Mammoths just happen to capture the imagination, representing the ice age. Megafaunal extinction. Ancient hunters. Rewilding. Etc.
OOH... any hairy elephant they produce will be "mammoth enough" for most. Elephant + Hairy = Mammoth. It won't be the same species/subspecies as extinct mammoths, but it'll be a mammoth.
OTOH, any number of edits will be insufficient for others. It won't be the extinct species, just an artificial hybrid.
IMO... this is one that's best left as a fantasy. The moment there a little herd of resurrected mammals exist in a zoo as real life animals is the moment the mystique will dissipate.
> The only way you will ever see a living mammoth is if our physicist friends finally crack time travel. I am a mere geneticist, but my understanding is that this remains very much in the realm of fiction. Perhaps in the meantime we could direct our scientific excitement and energies towards real problems, things on which millions of lives depend, rather than on this mammoth circus of macabre fantasy and moral bankruptcy.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/06/woolly...
All well known and well studied mutations
Inducing Parkinsonian symptoms or removing limbs is very different from some cosmetic changes. Maybe they also need to be kept in cooler environments or something, but assuming they accommodate that, this doesn't seem cruel to me.
Just to be clear, I've killed quite a few mice in my time (traps, poison, cat) when they become nuisances. I'm not sentimental about them at all, but I do draw the line at actual cruelty.
I don't especially judge you for it. Well, maybe for the poison since that can get into the food chain. But I also don't think you have some kind of moral high ground compared to these researchers.
I have never claimed any high moral ground, just that the deaths I'm talking about are quick, rather than them (or any animal) being bred to suffer.
Biology is hard to understand, because it is not logical in the same way that maths is. Our bodies contain untold amounts of traces of ancient bottleneck events that are no longer relevant, but the adaptations are still with us.
Some folks thought to develop some semi-lethal virus in a lab in Wuhan because "we can/why not" and we know what happened next. Many of us have watched every Resident Evil movie or the 12 Monkeys.
Steve Gibson keeps saying "what could possibly go wrong". Our (commoners'/plebes') fates have historically been determined by warmongers, "hawks", ruthless immoral people who play chess with real humans.
I am not surprised that something will definitely happen. I will be surprised on the "when". I am semi-prepared for the morons to eliminate 90% of the world's population some way or another. I just hope that if/when that happens either "I go out" it will be quick and painless, or I will have the chance to 'activate my plan' and perhaps live a simple life in a forest away from the destruction.
I, for one, welcome our hairy, cancer-free, super-intelligent mammoth-mice overlords.
I've seen those crazy videos of mice breeding unchecked inside a granary. It's freaking scary. Imagine the fleas! No thank you.
And now they've got better hair than me? Science is out of control! (j/k)
TBF, the mice already have better hair than me, but that's beside the point.
FUN FACT OF THE DAY: Listening to LOTR with my kids, I made a joke that "Gimli, son of Gloin" was really "Gimli, son of Gloin, son of Groin" (having no idea what Gloin's father's name was), and when my son read the full timeline at the end of LOTR, Gloin's father really was named Groin, so now, in my family, it's "Gimli, grandson of Groin". Enjoy!
Related news:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/harvard-scientist-george-church...
> Church was partly funded from 2005 to 2007 by the nonprofit Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation.
My impression from previous info released by Colossal is that the plan is to take isolated fragments of mammoth DNA and put those back into elephants. They haven't been able to recover a full mammoth genome, but they've been able to recover many fragments that include cold adaptations, and long hair is just one of them. The result won't be a mammoth, but it would be part-way there and, perhaps, something that could actually live in the far North.
They face a lot of sticky challenges though. Last I read anything on their work, they were hoping to use artificial wombs rather than surrogate elephant mothers due to ethical concerns. Elephants often grieve for dead newborns, and genetically engineered mammoth-elephant hybrids are more likely to die shortly after birth than not. Bringing hybrids to term in elephant mothers would be inhumane. However, their website now mentions plans for using surrogate elephants. What's going on there? A lot of this work also involves collaboration with Russia, which can't be easy right now, ethically or practically.
The end goal is still laudable though. Restoring the mammoth steppe, if done in time, could help keep massive amounts of methane locked in permafrost, reducing the impact of global warming. It's a moon-shot, but not impossible.
It's not looking like any creature on Earth is going to need more hair for quite a few centuries, if not longer.
Maybe my balding head will be a benefit after all :-)