Link (https://news.yahoo.com/scientists-reincarnating-woolly-mammoth-return-193800409.html)
QuoteThe long-dead woolly mammoth will make its return from extinction by 2027, says Colossal, the biotech company actively working to reincarnate the ancient beast.
Last year, the Dallas-based firm scored an additional $60 million in funding to continue the, well, mammoth gene-editing work it started in 2021. If successful, not only will Colossal bring back an extinct species—one the company dubs a cold-resistant elephant—but it will also reintroduce the woolly mammoth to the same ecosystem in which it once lived in an effort to fight climate change, according to a recent Medium post.
Colossal calls the woolly mammoth's vast migration patterns an active part of preserving the health of the Arctic, and so bringing the animal back to life can have a beneficial impact on the health of the world's ecosystem.
While Colossal originally hoped to reintroduce the woolly mammoth into Siberia, the company may explore other options based on the current political framework of the world.
The woolly mammoth's DNA is a 99.6 percent match of the Asian elephant, which leads Colossal to believe it's well on its way toward achieving its goal. "In the minds of many, this creature is gone forever," the company says. "But not in the minds of our scientists, nor the labs of our company. We're already in the process of the de-extinction of the Woolly Mammoth. Our teams have collected viable DNA samples and are editing the genes that will allow this wonderful megafauna to once again thunder through the Arctic."
Through gene editing, Colossal scientists will eventually create an embryo of a woolly mammoth. They will place the embryo in an African elephant to take advantage of its size and allow it to give birth to the new woolly mammoth. The eventual goal is to then repopulate parts of the Arctic with the new woolly mammoth and strengthen local plant life with the migration patterns and dietary habits of the beast.
If Colossal proves successful on reincarnating the woolly mammoth—ditto the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger—expect a variety of new ethical questions to arise on how to handle the creature and potential reintroduction issues.
That's kind of cool :nerd:
I'm not sure what I think about introducing a "cold-resistant elephant" that resembles a woolly mammoth into an ecosystem that has adapted over thousands of years in the absence of mammoths.
There's that too.
At least with big animals they're easy to erase if reintroduction proves a horrible idea.
More important is the more general implication of a successful project of this nature. The Company's biological warfare division will be in touch.
Quote from: The Brain on January 31, 2023, 04:15:04 PMAt least with big animals they're easy to erase if reintroduction proves a horrible idea.
Not necessarily. Siberia is BIG.
Alberta (and lots of other places) have problems with feral hogs. Those fuckers can be huge, but we haven't been able to come close to eradicating them.
Quote from: Barrister on January 31, 2023, 04:17:20 PMQuote from: The Brain on January 31, 2023, 04:15:04 PMAt least with big animals they're easy to erase if reintroduction proves a horrible idea.
Not necessarily. Siberia is BIG.
Alberta (and lots of other places) have problems with feral hogs. Those fuckers can be huge, but we haven't been able to come close to eradicating them.
If humanity set their mind to exterminating for instance the African elephant I'm confident we could succeed.
Same company is also trying to bring back the dodo.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/the-next-de-extinction-target-the-dodo/
Quote from: Barrister on January 31, 2023, 04:17:20 PMQuote from: The Brain on January 31, 2023, 04:15:04 PMAt least with big animals they're easy to erase if reintroduction proves a horrible idea.
Not necessarily. Siberia is BIG.
Alberta (and lots of other places) have problems with feral hogs. Those fuckers can be huge, but we haven't been able to come close to eradicating them.
These herds of woolly mammoth will greatly increase the biodiversity of the Albertan plains.
Quote from: Barrister on January 31, 2023, 04:17:20 PMAlberta (and lots of other places) have problems with feral hogs. Those fuckers can be huge, but we haven't been able to come close to eradicating them.
The cost of gun control :(
Yeah Canada may have gun control but they have no shortage of guns. They are one of the most heavily armed populations in the world.
Probably worried about the most heavily armed population in the world to their South. Tucker Carlson just said we need to invade Canada and liberate it from Trudeau so they should be prepared.
There is a feral hog problem in Missouri. In the south they grow big and fierce and smart. In the Ozarks, where the inbreeding is a problem, they are indistinguishable from men.
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 31, 2023, 05:30:24 PMQuote from: Barrister on January 31, 2023, 04:17:20 PMAlberta (and lots of other places) have problems with feral hogs. Those fuckers can be huge, but we haven't been able to come close to eradicating them.
The cost of gun control :(
Hogs aren't exactly a city problem. And out in the country everyone is packing :D
*edit* or what valmy said
Quote from: HVC on January 31, 2023, 06:05:26 PMQuote from: Sheilbh on January 31, 2023, 05:30:24 PMQuote from: Barrister on January 31, 2023, 04:17:20 PMAlberta (and lots of other places) have problems with feral hogs. Those fuckers can be huge, but we haven't been able to come close to eradicating them.
The cost of gun control :(
Hogs aren't exactly a city problem. And out in the country everyone is packing :D
*edit* or what valmy said
All this is just further evidence the 30-50 feral hogs guy was right :contract:
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 31, 2023, 05:30:24 PMQuote from: Barrister on January 31, 2023, 04:17:20 PMAlberta (and lots of other places) have problems with feral hogs. Those fuckers can be huge, but we haven't been able to come close to eradicating them.
The cost of gun control :(
You're not suppose to shoot the hogs in Missouri. They might vote Republican.
It's cool and all but I wonder what the business model is here and how they're funding such expensive work.
Colour me extremely skeptic on those experiments. I wonder if they're done privately because no ethics board at any public body would greenlight such a project.
Quote from: Josquius on February 01, 2023, 04:25:10 AMIt's cool and all but I wonder what the business model is here and how they're funding such expensive work.
I assume that the important mission is developing and proving the manufacture of bespoke animals, and technologies associated with this that could conceivably have a number of possible uses. The "mammoth" stuff I guess is just a headline-grabbing way to get exposure and claim a "good" cause. The juice lies elsewhere.
FWIW I have a really hard time seeing for instance Sweden allowing the introduction of wild hairy elephants/mammoths. In addition to negative effects on reindeer herding, natives' rights, logging etc, given the amount of time they've been gone they're effectively an alien species now (even if they were actual bona fide mammoths) with associated environmental concerns. As a novelty in captivity they could possibly have a place, but "creating intelligent animals" just to "keep them locked up" isn't in sync with the times. With countries like Russia anything is possible of course, but it's Russia.
Edit for messerschmitts: obviously it may simply be a con to fleece investors.
Quote from: The Brain on February 01, 2023, 04:48:34 AMQuote from: Josquius on February 01, 2023, 04:25:10 AMIt's cool and all but I wonder what the business model is here and how they're funding such expensive work.
I assume that the important mission is developing and proving the manufacture of bespoke animals, and technologies associated with this that could conceivably have a number of possible uses. The "mammoth" stuff I guess is just a headline-grabbing way to get exposure and claim a "good" cause. The juice lies elsewhere.
FWIW I have a really hard time seeing for instance Sweden allowing the introduction of wild hairy elephants/mammoths. In addition to negative effects on reindeer herding, natives' rights, logging etc, given the amount of time they've been gone they're effectively an alien species now (even if they were actual bona fide mammoths) with associated environmental concerns. As a novelty in captivity they could possibly have a place, but "creating intelligent animals" just to "keep them locked up" isn't in sync with the times. With countries like Russia anything is possible of course, but it's Russia.
Edit for messerschmitts: obviously it may simply be a con to fleece investors.
Agree that it might all be a stunt to get free publicity. And yes, there's no way that such an animal could be reintroduced in the wild, as you say they've been extinct for so long that they have become alien species. Such a thing might be indeed kept in captivity in some kind of novelty way in a zoo or a bespoke location, but there's no way it could get reintroduced in the wild.
Every time this kind of genetic engineering experiments have been feasibly mentioned in the past has been in the context of either helping species on the brink of extinction to hold on or to recover those very recently extinct because of human action. To bring back an extinct animal from so long ago is Jurassic Park material.
Quote from: Barrister on January 31, 2023, 04:17:20 PMQuote from: The Brain on January 31, 2023, 04:15:04 PMAt least with big animals they're easy to erase if reintroduction proves a horrible idea.
Not necessarily. Siberia is BIG.
Alberta (and lots of other places) have problems with feral hogs. Those fuckers can be huge, but we haven't been able to come close to eradicating them.
A hog is *slightly* smalller than an elephant though ;)
Hogs also breed faster than elephants.
Quote from: The Brain on February 01, 2023, 04:48:34 AMQuote from: Josquius on February 01, 2023, 04:25:10 AMIt's cool and all but I wonder what the business model is here and how they're funding such expensive work.
I assume that the important mission is developing and proving the manufacture of bespoke animals, and technologies associated with this that could conceivably have a number of possible uses. The "mammoth" stuff I guess is just a headline-grabbing way to get exposure and claim a "good" cause. The juice lies elsewhere.
Yes, it's just a proof of concept. They'll go for other animals later on. With ethics aside, they could save animals from near extinction and allow trophee hunting. Like lion breeding farms.
Yeah there are lots of animals close to extinction or recently extinct in the wild this could be used to save while their habitat and niche are sort of still intact.
To be fair on mammoth and the environment-they've been gone a long time but it wasn't that long ago you had wild herds of smaller but still big animals.
I recall hearing not too long ago of research with a practical text in South Africa (iirc) finding that soil really needed mega fauna or livestock stomping about on it to ensure its health for some reason.
No idea how this applies to different landscapes. The tundra isn't the savanna. But I would imagine there's a increasingly unfilled niche,as numbers of existing animals fall, for big animals.
I must be getting old because I think this is a terrible idea. What's the point anyway?
There have been some suggestions that the extinction of mammoths may have helped end the ice age. Let me see what I can find...
https://www.science.org/content/article/did-mammoth-extinction-warm-earth#:~:text=But%20researchers%20have%20found%20evidence,mammoths%20were%20nature's%20tree%20pruners.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-bringing-back-mammoths-stop-climate-change-180969072/
Quote from: Josephus on February 01, 2023, 03:15:21 PMI must be getting old because I think this is a terrible idea. What's the point anyway?
The reasons I just stated :P
Quote from: Josephus on February 01, 2023, 03:15:21 PMI must be getting old because I think this is a terrible idea. What's the point anyway?
There may be other reasons for reaching that conclusion :D
Quote from: Barrister on January 31, 2023, 04:09:50 PMI'm not sure what I think about introducing a "cold-resistant elephant" that resembles a woolly mammoth into an ecosystem that has adapted over thousands of years in the absence of mammoths.
It takes millions of years for an ecosystem to recover from a megafaunal extinction. Ten thousand years is just a blip.
What kind of recovery do you have in mind?
Yeah, there's nothing to "recover" from. Nature doesn't have a default state it goes back to, it evolves and changes over time and animal and plants must adapt to it.
Quote from: The Larch on February 03, 2023, 01:41:42 PMYeah, there's nothing to "recover" from. Nature doesn't have a default state it goes back to, it evolves and changes over time and animal and plants must adapt to it.
I mean 10,000 years ago North America was mostly covered in glaciers. Mammoths lived in the not-ice-covered bits like Beringia.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 03, 2023, 01:10:29 PMWhat kind of recovery do you have in mind?
I presume replacing it with another mega fauna to fill its niche? That is the only conjecture I can think of.
So maybe the idea is despite being extinct for thousands of years whatever role the Mammoth played can still be ecologically beneficial since nothing has replaced it?
But I am much more interested in the idea of quickly reintroducing recently extinct species into areas where their habitat still exists.
Quote from: Valmy on February 03, 2023, 02:25:48 PMBut I am much more interested in the idea of quickly reintroducing recently extinct species into areas where their habitat still exists.
Yeah, the reintroduction of Wolves into Yellowstone provides a good example of the benefits.
Do we have the spear technology if we need to make them extinct again?
Quote from: Razgovory on February 03, 2023, 02:59:46 PMDo we have the spear technology if we need to make them extinct again?
Spears yes, what is limited are the people with enough strength, stamina and skill to use them properly.
Quote from: The Larch on February 03, 2023, 01:41:42 PMYeah, there's nothing to "recover" from. Nature doesn't have a default state it goes back to, it evolves and changes over time and animal and plants must adapt to it.
The Canadians prairies have changed substantially after the near extinction of the bisons. I am uncertain our farmers would be happy at seeing roaming herds of bisons everywhere in their fields now...
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 03, 2023, 03:09:04 PMQuote from: Razgovory on February 03, 2023, 02:59:46 PMDo we have the spear technology if we need to make them extinct again?
Spears yes, what is limited are the people with enough strength, stamina and skill to use them properly.
Looking at the internet, there is no shortage of Republican-minded people who believe in the Spartan ideal of society. I say if need be, we start with them. Give them spears and send them mammoth hunting like a true North American Spartan would do.
Quote from: viper37 on February 03, 2023, 06:13:54 PMQuote from: The Larch on February 03, 2023, 01:41:42 PMYeah, there's nothing to "recover" from. Nature doesn't have a default state it goes back to, it evolves and changes over time and animal and plants must adapt to it.
The Canadians prairies have changed substantially after the near extinction of the bisons. I am uncertain our farmers would be happy at seeing roaming herds of bisons everywhere in their fields now...
And what does that have to do with what I said?
I'm concerned that mammoths are dead for a reason. Like the dodo, the mammoth could be a danger to our way of life.
Incidentally different mammoth project I think but I regularly think about this Atlantic article from a few years ago about bringing them back:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/pleistocene-park/517779/
Especially this bit:
QuoteClimate change may have played a supporting role in these extinctions, but as our inventory of fossils has grown, it has strengthened the case for extermination by human rampage. Most telling is the timeline. Between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago, during an ocean-lowering glaciation, a small group of humans set out on a sea voyage from Southeast Asia. In only a few thousand years, they skittered across Indonesia and the Philippines, until they reached Papua New Guinea and Australia, where they found giant kangaroos, lizards twice as long as Komodo dragons, and furry, hippo-size wombats that kept their young in huge abdominal pouches. Estimating extinction dates is tricky, but most of these species seem to have vanished shortly thereafter.
It took at least another 20,000 years for human beings to trek over the Bering land bridge to the Americas, and a few thousand more to make it down to the southern tip. The journey seems to have taken the form of an extended hunting spree. Before humans arrived, the Americas were home to mammoths, bear-size beavers, car-size armadillos, giant camels, and a bison species twice as large as those that graze the plains today. The smaller, surviving bison is now the largest living land animal in the Americas, and it barely escaped extermination: The invasion of gun-toting Europeans reduced its numbers from more than 30 million to fewer than 2,000.
The pattern that pairs human arrival with megafaunal extinction is clearest in the far-flung islands that no human visited until relatively recently. The large animals of Hawaii, Madagascar, and New Zealand disappeared during the past 2,000 years, usually within centuries of human arrival. This pattern even extends to ocean ecosystems. As soon as industrial shipbuilding allowed large groups of humans to establish a permanent presence on the seas, we began hunting marine megafauna for meat and lamp oil. Less than a century later, North Atlantic gray whales were gone, along with 95 percent of North Atlantic humpbacks. Not since the asteroid struck have large animals found it so difficult to survive on planet Earth.
:(
The conclusion that megafauna were wiped out by humans as their environments became more human-friendly (and humans developed things like sewing that let them prosper in colder climates) is not, insofar as I know, at all controversial. Humans are incredibly efficient hunters.
Quote from: grumbler on February 05, 2023, 08:27:45 PMThe conclusion that megafauna were wiped out by humans as their environments became more human-friendly (and humans developed things like sewing that let them prosper in colder climates) is not, insofar as I know, at all controversial. Humans are incredibly efficient hunters.
There are those who want to emphasis climate change as the primary cause of the extinction. Personally, I don't buy it. Climate Change didn't stop at the ocean and wait until people developed boats to get to Cuba before it wiped out the mega fauna there. I've even seen the claim that comet hit North America and destroyed the mega fauna rather than the obvious answer: Human beings over hunted the environment like they do everywhere.
More mammoth related publicity stunts by another biotech start-up.
QuoteMeatballs made with mammoth DNA created by Australian food startup
CNN — Woolly mammoth remains, with fur and tissue still in tact, are regularly found entombed in Arctic permafrost. Their discovery has allowed scientists to sequence the mammoth genome and learn intriguing details about the lives of these extinct Ice Age giants.
Now, some of that information is being used to grow an approximation of mammoth meat in a lab.
Vow, an Australian cultured meat startup, has made what it describes as a mammoth meatball. The project's goal, according to the company, is to draw attention to the potential of cultured meat to make eating habits more planet friendly. On Tuesday, the meatball will join the collection at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave — a museum of science and medicine in the Netherlands.
"We need to start rethinking how we get our food. My biggest hope for this project is ... that a lot more people across the world begin to hear about cultured meat," said James Ryall, Vow's chief scientific officer.
Creating 'mammoth meat'
A wonderfully wacky publicity stunt, the meatballs aren't intended for human consumption. Even calling the creation mammoth meat is a bit of a stretch. It's more like lab-made lamb mingled with a tiny amount of mammoth DNA.
Scientists working on the project didn't have access to a frozen stash of mammoth tissue on which to base their efforts. Instead, they focused on a protein present in mammals called myoglobin that gives meat its texture, color and taste, identifying the DNA sequence for the mammoth version in a publicly available genome database.
They filled in gaps in the mammoth myoglobin DNA sequence using information from the genome of an African elephant. The scientists inserted the synthesized gene into a sheep muscle cell, which was then cultured, or grown, in a lab.
The team was eventually able to produce about 400 grams of mammoth meat.
"From a genomic point of view, it's only one gene amongst all the other sheep genes that is mammoth," said Ernst Wolvetang, a professor and senior group leader at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland, who was part of the project. "It's one gene out of 25,000."
Ryall said the mammoth myoglobin did change the physical appearance of the sheep muscle cells. Though our Stone Age ancestors hunted and presumably feasted on mammoth, Ryall and Wolvetang both said they had not tasted the meatballs.
"Normally, we would taste our products and play around with them. But we were hesitant to immediately try and taste because we're talking about a protein that hasn't existed for 5,000 years. I've got no idea what the potential allergenicity might be of this particular protein," Ryall said.
"That's one of the reasons why we're not offering this as a product. It's not going to go up for sale, because we've got no idea about the safety profile of this particular product," he added.
Cultured vs. the real thing
Advocates hope cultured meat will reduce the need to slaughter animals for food and help fight the climate crisis. The food system is responsible for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, most of which result from animal agriculture.
Vow hopes to soon get regulatory approval in Singapore, the first country to approve cultured meat, to sell lab-made quail meat it has developed. In the United States, the FDA has said that lab-grown chicken is OK for human consumption.
The carcasses of mammoths, which went extinct about 5,000 years ago, have been found so well preserved in permafrost, they still had blood in their veins.
Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University's Centre for Paleogenetics who sequenced the world's oldest mammoth DNA, knows what mammoth meat actually tastes like.
During a field trip to the Yana River in Siberia in 2012, Dalén said he tried a small piece of frozen meat taken from partial carcass of a baby mammoth. While he said couldn't see great scientific value in the meatball project, were they to ever go on sale, Dalén said he would definitely taste one.
"Without doubt I would love to try this!" he said. "It cannot possibly taste worse than real mammoth meat."
I don't know why but I find that quite upsetting :(
Leave mammoths alone!
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 30, 2023, 06:24:08 AMI don't know why but I find that quite upsetting :(
Leave mammoths alone!
Something for your therapist?
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 30, 2023, 06:24:08 AMI don't know why but I find that quite upsetting :(
Leave mammoths alone!
It's not proper mammoth meat, it's lamb meat that has been fidgeted with.
Quote from: garbon on March 30, 2023, 06:35:22 AMQuote from: Sheilbh on March 30, 2023, 06:24:08 AMI don't know why but I find that quite upsetting :(
Leave mammoths alone!
Something for your therapist?
:lol: We will explore.
I like how we discover how to bring mammoths back and the first thing we do is make them into meatballs.
Quote"Normally, we would taste our products and play around with them. But we were hesitant to immediately try and taste because we're talking about a protein that hasn't existed for 5,000 years. I've got no idea what the potential allergenicity might be of this particular protein," Ryall said.
"That's one of the reasons why we're not offering this as a product. It's not going to go up for sale, because we've got no idea about the safety profile of this particular product," he added.
Pretty lame excuse for the obvious reason it's not practical.
I could see mammoth meat really taking off with some health nuts insisting it's humans proper natural diet or something.
Quote from: Josquius on March 30, 2023, 08:45:37 AMI could see mammoth meat really taking off with some health nuts insisting it's humans proper natural diet or something.
It's going to fit in nicely with the paleo diet. :cool: