Lab-grown woolly mammoths could walk the Earth in six years

[silisili]

I'm not a paleontologist or anything, but it seems rather cruel to bring back an ice age creature, well adapted to frigid temperatures, into a world we've basically been heating since their disappearence. Especially considering climate change is thought to be one of the reasons for their extinction in the first place.

[xyzwave]

When Tim Ferriss interviewed Stewart Brand on this [1], it sounded like the intention was to introduce them to the far north which is both closer to their natural habitat, and far away from people. Sounds in-line with the article here.

Relevant snippet from Brand:

> Eventually, the rest of that story is that woolly mammoths could be part of the revival of what used to be called the Mammoth Steppe, which is the grasslands of the far north, which was once the largest biome on Earth … what [Mammoths] are good at is knocking down trees. Knocking down trees is good because it turns a closed-canopy forest into mosaic, and a mosaic is a much richer ecological environment for all kinds of species.

1. https://tim.blog/2018/02/03/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts...

[thatjoeoverthr]

Shave them and sell the wool. They’ll be buzz cut mammoths.

[edmcnulty101]

Geologically speaking the Earth is on the tail end of an ice age and has been way hotter than it has been today. I'm sure a mammoth would thrive in places like Alaska and Canada.

[dotnet00]

Kind of like a Roko's basilisk situation

[seanhunter]

I bumped into Ben Lamm by coincidence at a business dinner (he was having dinner at the next table at a really small place and instead him and his party just joined us as a big group) and he was talking about Collossal. The weird thing is he wants bring back multiple extinct species and to recoup the investment by essentially running zoo exhibits. So you would pay to go see the wooly mammoth or whatever. I love that this exists and would love them to succeed but the plan seems pretty out there.

[remarkEon]

I mean, it's not really that out there. Michael Crichton wrote a book about the idea in 1990.

[HillRat]

I’m a bit skeptical about the chances of this overall, but Ben’s a showman, so it’s a good fit for his enthusiasm. Wishing him luck.

[remarkEon]

>“Our goal is in the successful de-extinction of inter-breedable herds of mammoths that we can leverage in the rewilding of the Arctic. And then we want to leverage those technologies for what we’re calling thoughtful, disruptive conservation,” Lamm told CNBC.

What ecological benefits would de-extincting mammoths and re-introducing them to the Arctic bring? Genuinely curious.

[dotnet00]

Given our previous fairly mixed results with introducing foreign species into new habitats where they can flourish, this sounds like it'd most likely be pretty bad for the current ecosystems there.

[mytailorisrich]

I'm not sure that the Arctic needs "rewilding", it is still a wild environment. What's definitely needed is protecting it.

Mammoths were adapted to the ice age while we are in a climate warming crisis... apparently they lived in steppes called "mammoth steps" that are very rare today [1]. So realistically this would just be a tourist attraction a la Jurassic Park.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_steppe

[mishkovski]

> If these revived woolly mammoths eventually repopulate the Arctic, they would take down small trees and help repopulate the grasses they thrive on, Church said. Those grasses reflect sunlight better than the dark trunks of the conifer trees that live there. In addition, the woolly mammoths tamp down the snow, making it less insulating.

Those grasses would cool the ecosystem, in turn reducing the release of trapped methane gas from melting permafrost, a major contributor to global warming.

[mrlonglong]

Why should we do this? The planet is warming, they won't be able to keep themselves cool enough with all that hair.

[cykros]

Climate != weather. Warmer global temperatures don't mean that it will be warm everywhere. It's hardly an out there idea to suggest that climate change could likely result in a new ice age (see: The Day After Tomorrow).

[sys_64738]

Don't they watch the movies? Does this ever end happily?

[ljw1001]

Sadly, they will be extinct again in 60.

[rubyist5eva]

Jurassic Park was a warning you fools

[hulitu]

Yes, but look how cute they are.

[qihqi]

This artificial womb thing it talked about might be the solution to truly eliminate gender inequality. Oh Brave New World!