The Mammoth Cometh: NYT Magazine longread on bringing back extinct animals

[crazy canuck]

Seeing real live mammoths would be cool as hell.  A silly bird?  Pass.

Seeing flocks of them that are miles wide and hundreds of miles long taking half a day to pass would be a cool as hell sight.

I would think that many birds would put a strain on other species, eating more food, taking more nesting space. Probably as those pigeons declined other specie's numbers surged.

I think the main issue isnt so much that other wild species filled that ecological niche but rather we took up that space and so much of what would have been their natural habitat has become urban.

[Admiral Yi]

The story told about passenger pigeons in 1491 is that Native Americans slaughtered them because they were competing for the same food.

[crazy canuck]

The story told about passenger pigeons in 1491 is that Native Americans slaughtered them because they were competing for the same food.

If the natives slaughtered them then they did a piss poor job since by the 19th century their numbers are estimated to have been 1-2 billion.

[Valmy]

The story told about passenger pigeons in 1491 is that Native Americans slaughtered them because they were competing for the same food.

If the natives slaughtered them then they did a piss poor job since by the 19th century their numbers are estimated to have been 1-2 billion.

Well yeah something really bad started happening to the natives right after 1491 that allowed the Pigeons to bounce back in a big way.

[crazy canuck]

The story told about passenger pigeons in 1491 is that Native Americans slaughtered them because they were competing for the same food.

If the natives slaughtered them then they did a piss poor job since by the 19th century their numbers are estimated to have been 1-2 billion.

Well yeah something really bad started happening to the natives right after 1491 that allowed the Pigeons to bounce back in a big way.

Something bad happened yes.  But the Passengers were always there in large numbers until railways allowed hunters to transport large amounts of the  meat to market.  It took killing on an industrial level to reduce their numbers.

[grumbler]

Something bad happened yes.  But the Passengers were always there in large numbers until railways allowed hunters to transport large amounts of the  meat to market.  It took killing on an industrial level to reduce their numbers.

Thanks for sharing your memories. 

[CountDeMoney]

Great Auk specialist John Wolley interviewed the two men who killed the last birds, and Ísleifsson described the act as follows:

The rocks were covered with blackbirds [referring to Guillemots] and there were the Geirfugles ... They walked slowly. Jón Brandsson crept up with his arms open. The bird that Jón got went into a corner but [mine] was going to the edge of the cliff. I caught it close to the edge – a precipice many fathoms deep. The black birds were flying off. I took him by the neck and he flapped his wings. He made no cry. I strangled him.

There is a soul-hollowing sadness in that simple passage. 
They deserve to be brought back.  They weren't ours to take away.

[The Brain]

I prefer the stool pigeon.

[crazy canuck]

I prefer the stool pigeon.

Ironically the phrase stool pigeon originates from the method used to hunt the Passenger.

[jimmy olsen]

Fuckin' metal!

These artificial wombs they're developing can be used for our clone armies!

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2017/0216/Scientists-We-can-clone-a-woolly-mammoth.-But-should-we

Scientists: We can clone a woolly mammoth. But should we?

Gene editing technology may literally open up a shortcut to resurrecting the woolly mammoth, but some scientists argue doing so would be risky and unethical.

Charlie Wood

February 16, 2017 —This is not your parents' "Jurassic Park."

Harnessing the power of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool, a team of Harvard researchers is slowly coaxing woolly mammoth-like traits out of normal elephant cells. But recent claims that they're close to creating a hybrid embryo have raised questions regarding the ethics of the procedure.

The ethical issues range from questions of practicality – Should we risk impregnating an endangered elephant with an experimental embryo? – to an ethical Pandora's box: Would the ability to bring species back from the dead derail conservation efforts?

But geneticist George Church says he believes letting the research continue would produce the benefits that go beyond the chance to see an extinct creature, suggesting the reintroduction of the woolly mammoth might mitigate climate change.

Except, it wouldn't be a mammoth, exactly.

"Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo," said Dr. Church, reported the Guardian. "Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We're not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years."

The phrase "mammoth cloning" may conjure up images of scientists extracting amber-bound DNA and incubating it in frogs as in the 1993 film "Jurassic Park," but it means something quite different to Church.

Instead of re-creating an extinct organism, his team is trying to create a hybrid "mammophant." Starting with the woolly mammoth's closest living relative, the Asian elephant, Church uses the CRISPR precision gene editing tool to snip and splice in mammoth genes, granting mammoth-like characteristics such as a shaggy coat, extra fat, and cold-resistant blood.

"The list of edits affects things that contribute to the success of elephants in cold environments. We already know about ones to do with small ears, subcutaneous fat, hair, and blood," Church explained to New Scientist.


So far, with samples from a remarkably well-preserved 2013 find as a DNA guide, the team has accomplished 45 of these edits. If their goal were to perfectly re-create the mammoth genome, they'd still have thousands to go.

And they aren't the only team taking this alternative cloning approach. Researchers in Chile are also trying to engineer a dinosaur out of a chicken by rolling back certain genes.

Church's team says they're only a couple years away from the next step, making the edits in an elephant embryo and studying its viability. The researchers believe they could turn skin cells of the highly endangered Asian elephant into embryos using cloning techniques.


And that's the easy part.

Once they have a mammophant egg ready to go, they'd need a way to carry it to term. Ethics prevent using real Asian elephants as surrogate mothers because of their endangered status and high degree of intelligence, but Church has other plans.

"We hope to do the entire procedure ex-vivo," or outside a living body, he told The Guardian. "It would be unreasonable to put female reproduction at risk in an endangered species."

Some say the technology to grow a hybrid animal inside an artificial womb won't be possible this decade, but The Guardian reports that Church's lab is hard at work on the problem, already able to incubate a mouse embryo for ten days, about half of its gestation period.

Even if Church succeeds in overcoming all the technical hurdles, some wonder if the mammoth should be resurrected at all.

As Matthew Cobb, professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, told The Guardian: "The proposed 'de-extinction' of mammoths raises a massive ethical issue – the mammoth was not simply a set of genes, it was a social animal, as is the modern Asian elephant. What will happen when the elephant-mammoth hybrid is born? How will it be greeted by elephants?"

Church argues that the mammophant would join the fight against global warming, thus bringing concrete benefits to humans all over the planet.

"They keep the tundra from thawing by punching through snow and allowing cold air to come in," said Church. "In the summer they knock down trees and help the grass grow."

While such behavior could help keep greenhouses gasses locked in the permafrost, we'd need to get pretty good at mammophant cloning to bring back enough of the beasts to populate Canada and Siberia. Plus, as is often the case with geoengineering schemes, the effects would be uncertain. Scientists aren't even sure whether the original loss of mammoths caused some climate change, or if the climate change killed the mammoths. In addition, there's no guarantee that the helpful stomping behaviors are genetic, instead of taught by long-vanished mammoth parents.


And climate may not be the only unintended consequence. Other researchers worry developing such Lazarus-technology would endanger current conservation efforts. "De-extinction just provides the ultimate 'out'," said wildlife biologist Stanley Temple in a BBC interview. "If you can always bring the species back later, it undermines the urgency about preventing extinctions."

Rather, we should focus on keeping the Asian elephant alive, paleobiologist and mammoth expert Tori Herridge wrote in a 2014 opinion piece for The Guardian.

"Sometimes the ice age world is so real to me that my throat aches and my eyes sting a little when I think about what we've lost, the animals we will never see," she wrote. "But here's the irony – if we feel like that about the mammoth, just think how our kids might feel about the elephant if we let it become extinct. We really ought to be focusing on that, and doing everything we can to stop it from happening."

[LaCroix]

I think it's pretty awful to bring back animals who can't be taught to communicate at length with mankind. (i.e., maybe neanderthals are OK) they'd just get enslaved and be forced to live in unnatural conditions. humans are animals and live in unnatural conditions, but this works for us because we understand what's going on and have created it for ourselves. this also works for domesticated animals because we made them ours.

bringing back wild animals and forcing them to live on earth is like taking elephants from the wildlife and throwing them in zoos. what purpose does it serve to exploit them like that? we're already forced to exploit tons of animals by "saving" them from extermination (again, for our benefit rather than theirs).

[dps]

Great Auk specialist John Wolley interviewed the two men who killed the last birds, and Ísleifsson described the act as follows:

The rocks were covered with blackbirds [referring to Guillemots] and there were the Geirfugles ... They walked slowly. Jón Brandsson crept up with his arms open. The bird that Jón got went into a corner but [mine] was going to the edge of the cliff. I caught it close to the edge – a precipice many fathoms deep. The black birds were flying off. I took him by the neck and he flapped his wings. He made no cry. I strangled him.

There is a soul-hollowing sadness in that simple passage. 
They deserve to be brought back.  They weren't ours to take away.

Only species to be driven to extinction in the name of science.  Yeah, science owe 'em one.

[Ed Anger]

*makes note to self not to use the phrase "Fucking Metal"*  Irredeemably tainted.

[LaCroix]

every species goes extinct for some reason or another. mankind is nature. mankind's development and domination of the planet is nature. I watched a documentary on elephants the other day and came to the conclusion that the extermination of wild species is a good thing for them, if things reach a point where they can no longer live on earth in their natural habitat.

some dude in the documentary talked about how the extinction of animal species "before their time" was a bad thing. what does that even mean? if they became extinct through (1) mankind's progress or (2) dying off in an ice age, what difference does it make for the individual member of that species? there's no going back on progress, and it's just going to get worse for wildlife.

[Eddie Teach]

*makes note to self not to use the phrase "Fucking Metal"*  Irredeemably tainted.

At least he didn't say "wicked awesome!" this time.