
The Woolly Mammoth's Last Stand - gwern
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/science/woolly-mammoth-extinct-genetics.html
======
Pica_soO
Basically there is no adaption that works against bad circumstances that adapt
to you - besides intelligence. We might wipe out all bigger life-forms where
we go- but in our shadow, intelligent life might grow. Arras able to do take
out orders from unoccupied flats. Foxes able to open trash cans. Wild boars,
planting ambrosia to keep allergic humans at bay. Algae and Fungi able to eat
electricity and plastic. Nature has a nice come back swing. Not very Disney,
but nothing is.

~~~
duncan_bayne
As a child I read a science fiction story about a distant future Earth where
sapience was the best survival strategy for complex life.

/me Googles

[http://variety-sf.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/raymond-z-
gallun-s...](http://variety-sf.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/raymond-z-gallun-seeds-
of-dusk.html)

I remain indebted to my parents for their excellent collection of books, to
which I had access at a young age.

------
thriftwy
Let's clone a Mammoth! Why aren't we.

Most of nothern megafauna was destroyed anyway (mostly not by humans, but
climate change) and we should probably bring it all back. Replace swamps with
steppes.

~~~
bamboozled
To start with, we're wiping out pretty much any natural habitat it might may
able to survive in at an alarming rate. Along with that of the polar bear and
elephants etc.

We seem to also have a pretty good habit of causing countless other species to
go extinct, so maybe if we learn to look after the species we have, we can get
a new pet?

So why invest bringing back something back that will just get made extinct
again?

~~~
thriftwy
Nope! Siberia (especially Northern) is basically an uninhabited land. We can
surely host a lot of mammoths and wooly rhinos there.

Why can't we have a new pet _now_?

~~~
ktRolster
From what I've read, the hard part isn't cloning, we already have that
technology. The hard part is growing it in a womb, where the baby is bathed in
various chemicals at various times in its progression, and where the
temperature has to be exactly right. Where do you attach the umbilical cord?

Do you know what the body temperature of the womb a pregnant mammoth is? Tough
question.

~~~
yorwba
Unless we figure out a way to make artificial wombs, our best bet is just to
use an elephant for that. Since mammoths are unlikely to differ much in terms
of body temperature and nutrient requirements, the problems you mention won't
be much of an issue.

More problematic would be immune system incompatibility, which could lead to
the mammoth or its elephant mother being killed by the other's immune system
response. But I think we have a way to deal with that when it happens in
humans, so there should be a workaround.

Anyway, first you need to get some cells with mammoth DNA to divide often
enough. Before you have that, those other problems don't really matter much.

~~~
ktRolster
_Since mammoths are unlikely to differ much in terms of body temperature and
nutrient requirements, the problems you mention won 't be much of an issue._

Everything I've read suggests it will be a huge issue.

~~~
yorwba
Could you point me to where specifically you have read that? Every article I
can find on the internet seems to assume that using an Asian elephant as the
surrogate mother will be as easy (i.e. very hard) as if we had living mammoths
to carry the clone.

~~~
ktRolster
I sent an email to the team at MIT back in 1997 when the mammoth clone news
first started hitting the rounds (maybe it's older, I don't know).

Even getting a hybrid asian/african elephant baby to survive is very
difficult. How big would a mammoth baby be at birth? Could it even fit in the
womb?

All that said, if someone does manage to clone mammoths, that will be very
cool.

~~~
RugnirViking
Just to clarify: Are you suggesting that mammoths were bigger than elephants
are now? That would be interesting

