8 ms·

Colossal Biosciences Aims to ‘De-Extinct’ the Woolly Mammoth

43 points by bcaulfield 3y ago

uticus 3y ago
Apart from if this should happen, what is the thought process for choosing what to "de-extinct"? Marketability (large mammal vs tiny insect excites the populace more, leading to funding)? Viability (proximity to existing species genome means less work filling the gaps, quicker to market)? Biological disruption (some species easier to control than others)? Other? Also, what geopolitical entity is willing to host the results? For example wooly mammoth might really appeal to tropical-based group, but must be hosted in sub-arctic region.
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  Probably all of the above, plus: - Availability of genetic material (for extinct animals) can be widely variable. For something like mammoths, we've been able to extract genetic material from frozen arctic samples; one would have to assume that samples as large as mammoths are more likely to draw notice and researchers than, say, a preserved mosquito (Jurassic park notwithstanding). - Proximity to existing species' reproductive biology: we know _a lot_ about how to manipulate reproductive processes in large placental mammals, and most of this sort of cloning is performed mechanically by harnessing the reproductive process of a host with similar biology (in this case presumably by implanting an embryo in a modern elephant for gestation).
- dmreedy 3y ago
  > Marketability (large mammal vs tiny insect excites the populace more, leading to funding)? Conservationists often leverage the concept of "Charismatic Megafauna"[0] to serve as splashy poster children for broader, more practical efforts. --- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_megafauna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_megafauna
salynchnew 3y ago
Weird that the Long Now project has basically made no progress on its own de-extinction efforts since 2012. However, it seems like they have made some worthwhile contributions in terms of conserving populations of existing wild pachyderms (a more useful undertaking in general, imho) by partially sequencing the elephant herpes virus, etc. https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/history-of-this-project/ https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/history-of...
nerpderp82 3y ago
Where would it live? I assume like many mammals, it needs to be raised and taught by its parents. Are they gonna drive up to the Canadian border and just dump it off?
- justrealist 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park seems like a good option
- schainks 3y ago
  There was a good Oxford style debate on NPR about whether resurrecting the mammoth is a good idea. The most interesting point I heard _against_ doing something like this was along these lines: If we were to use an elephant mother host to grow the fetus, once the mammoth is born, it is possible the herd will immediately recognize the baby as an anomaly and abandon it. Thus, this child is born into a world of suffering, not just for the herd that rejects it, but for the individual who is raised alone with no family, possibly by humans only. What will we do when the next one is born? Just put the two individuals in a space together and hope for the best? De-extincting such a creature carries additional costs we don't know how to quantify. Once that first, lonely, individual is sexually mature, will it even want to mate? Will it have the social skills to accept other future artificially-born mammoths as part of its herd? We have no way of "recreating" the social environment a mammoth would need to thrive in order to bring a self-sustaining herd of the species into balanced existence.
  - oh_sigh 3y ago
    A wooly mammoth calf will look similar enough to an elephant calf that this would not be an issue. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/13/firm-bring-back-woolly-mammoth-from-extinction https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/13/firm-bring-b...
    - nemo 3y ago
      That's a claim they made without any evidence to support it, which is a troubling trend with this team. Personally I see them as engaging in unethical behavior by their misleading statements like that one where they genuinely can't know whether the hybrid would be rejected.
satvikpendem 3y ago
I wonder how it would taste, given our ancestors' hankering for their meat.
- evan_ 3y ago
  You can find out for $30 plus shipping: https://shop.minimuseum.com/products/mammoth-meat https://shop.minimuseum.com/products/mammoth-meat "We recommend keeping it in the jar at all times as it can be fragrant when exposed."
  - arp242 3y ago
    That reminds me of the guy that cooked some giant squid that washed ashore (which had never been seen outside of carcasses when this interview was done) and ended up researching why it tasted so bitter https://youtu.be/0z5oziSqQOs?t=703 https://youtu.be/0z5oziSqQOs?t=703 So there may be some scientific value? I am NOT volunteering.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  Mix elephant meat with a generous dose of lard in a pan. My bet would be that not much different.
local_crmdgeon 3y ago
This is all very nice and they’ve made lots of announcements and raised a lot of money. Do it. Do something. Stop talking and deliver.
- echelon 3y ago
  You have to hype to raise funds and hire. It also helps build a moat against competitors - it signals that the limited dollars are probably allocated and that competitors would have to expend energy working against you. The hustle is real because often 100% research in a vacuum won't attain the activation energy it needs. Another possibility is that another team watching you might quickly follow and duplicate everything you've done and scale it faster than you. Downside: if you fail, it can salt the earth for some years before a new team can start again. We all see a lot of hucksters hyping themselves up and a lot of failures that never delivered. It's why we develop a callus against hype. But if you ever need it yourself, you shouldn't shy away from it. It's useful and serves a purpose.
  - gedy 3y ago
    > It also helps build a moat against competitors Resurrecting a mammoth?
    - dekhn 3y ago
      Once you have a mammoth, who needs a moat?
ZachWick 3y ago
The fantastic documentary “We Are As Gods” about Stewart Brand spends a considerable amount of time on this topic as he is involved in many of these efforts. https://www.weareasgods.film/ https://www.weareasgods.film/
neets 3y ago
What about all those other species of Hominid?
- hnuser847 3y ago
  ^^^this. I would find this infinitely more interesting than cloning a wooly mammoth or a dinosaur.
- logdap 3y ago
  That seems like it would get really awkward fast. We'd probably have to give them full human rights (particularly if they successfully learned our language and demanded rights), but they might not be able to adapt to a homo sapien society. Also whoever funded their recreation wouldn't be able to keep them as property, but would probably try to. Mammoths are easier in this regard since we already have a framework for how to treat elephants.
- kadoban 3y ago
  I do not think we are morally sophisticated enough, as a society/species, to handle that without it going to shit.
Metacelsus 3y ago
See my take on this here: https://www.readcodon.com/p/extinction https://www.readcodon.com/p/extinction Basically, it will be quite challenging and I think they are over-promising on the timeline. They are also not even going to make a wooly mammoth, but rather a hairy elephant.
- soperj 3y ago
  At a certain point a hairy elephant becomes a wolly mammoth, like the Quagga are no longer Zebra.
  - arp242 3y ago
    That depends on the evolutionary pressures it's subjected to; it can evolve in any number of ways. The mammoth lived in an ecosystem that no longer exists: the mammoth steppes and all associated plants and wildlife. This is an important reason (perhaps even the main reason) they went extinct in the first place. This is another problem with de-extinction for some species: what do you do with the animals once you've got them? For mammoths it's an open question if they could survive in the wild even if they're exact clones of the original, and even more so if they're "hairy elephants". Either way, whatever will happen with these "hairy elephant", they most likely won't evolve in to mammoths as they existed 20,000 years ago.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      I was just at the La Brea Tar Pits this weekend and wondered if the shorter tusks of elephants were an adaptation resulting from ivory harvesting. There is recent discussion of tuskless elephants due to poaching. They went from 15 to 9̶1̶ 51 percent of certain populations over the course of 15 years!
      - wahern 3y ago
        I think the numbers went from 15% to 33%, with 91 being the number of female elephants in the sample group. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/female-elephants-are-evolving-to-go-tuskless-but-may-be-killing-males-180978938 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/female-elephants-a... Per that article, tuskless male elephants don't survive, usually not even to birth.
pvaldes 3y ago
I thing that mammoth is a really poor choice for de-extinction. I would wish to be wrong, but is not a really well matured plan.
- atlantic 3y ago
  How about the auroch? Its extinction is much more recent, so presumably the available DNA is in much better shape.
  - tmtvl 3y ago
    When talking about recency, how about the dodo or great auk?
    - atlantic 3y ago
      I suggested the auroch because it was a keystone species in many European ecosystems up until recently. So it could have a major impact on any rewilding project.
  - jbotz 3y ago
    What available DNA? We have some really well-preserved frozen mammoths as DNA sources... frozen aurochs, not so many. Or any, that I know of.
    - atlantic 3y ago
      Yes, but DNA has a half-life of around 500 years. So there is a considerable difference between an animal that went extinct in the 1600s, and another 4000 years ago.
- suzzer99 3y ago
  Megalodon instead?
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Charismatic gigafauna I bet a non-negligible portion of their funding comes from people who want to shoot one and have a trophy that few or no others are able to obtain.
m3kw9 3y ago
They should go big and do a dinosaur
- digitalsushi 3y ago
  can a dinosaur live in our less oxygen rich air
joshuahedlund 3y ago
Does this provide any new information or updates to any of the previous posts about Colossal’s mammoth plans over the last several years? It just sounds like a press release for Nvidia to highlight their connection to it. (I get a little more cynical every few months I see something about Colossal without any actual updates…)

43 points by bcaulfield 3y ago

Apart from if this should happen, what is the thought process for choosing what to "de-extinct"? Marketability (large mammal vs tiny insect excites the populace more, leading to funding)? Viability (proximity to existing species genome means less work filling the gaps, quicker to market)? Biological disruption (some species easier to control than others)? Other? Also, what geopolitical entity is willing to host the results? For example wooly mammoth might really appeal to tropical-based group, but must be hosted in sub-arctic region.

InitialLastName 3y ago
Probably all of the above, plus: - Availability of genetic material (for extinct animals) can be widely variable. For something like mammoths, we've been able to extract genetic material from frozen arctic samples; one would have to assume that samples as large as mammoths are more likely to draw notice and researchers than, say, a preserved mosquito (Jurassic park notwithstanding). - Proximity to existing species' reproductive biology: we know _a lot_ about how to manipulate reproductive processes in large placental mammals, and most of this sort of cloning is performed mechanically by harnessing the reproductive process of a host with similar biology (in this case presumably by implanting an embryo in a modern elephant for gestation).
dmreedy 3y ago
> Marketability (large mammal vs tiny insect excites the populace more, leading to funding)? Conservationists often leverage the concept of "Charismatic Megafauna"[0] to serve as splashy poster children for broader, more practical efforts. --- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_megafauna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_megafauna

salynchnew 3y ago

Weird that the Long Now project has basically made no progress on its own de-extinction efforts since 2012. However, it seems like they have made some worthwhile contributions in terms of conserving populations of existing wild pachyderms (a more useful undertaking in general, imho) by partially sequencing the elephant herpes virus, etc. https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/history-of-this-project/ https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/history-of...

nerpderp82 3y ago

Where would it live? I assume like many mammals, it needs to be raised and taught by its parents. Are they gonna drive up to the Canadian border and just dump it off?

justrealist 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park seems like a good option
schainks 3y ago
There was a good Oxford style debate on NPR about whether resurrecting the mammoth is a good idea. The most interesting point I heard _against_ doing something like this was along these lines: If we were to use an elephant mother host to grow the fetus, once the mammoth is born, it is possible the herd will immediately recognize the baby as an anomaly and abandon it. Thus, this child is born into a world of suffering, not just for the herd that rejects it, but for the individual who is raised alone with no family, possibly by humans only. What will we do when the next one is born? Just put the two individuals in a space together and hope for the best? De-extincting such a creature carries additional costs we don't know how to quantify. Once that first, lonely, individual is sexually mature, will it even want to mate? Will it have the social skills to accept other future artificially-born mammoths as part of its herd? We have no way of "recreating" the social environment a mammoth would need to thrive in order to bring a self-sustaining herd of the species into balanced existence.
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  A wooly mammoth calf will look similar enough to an elephant calf that this would not be an issue. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/13/firm-bring-back-woolly-mammoth-from-extinction https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/13/firm-bring-b...
  - nemo 3y ago
    That's a claim they made without any evidence to support it, which is a troubling trend with this team. Personally I see them as engaging in unethical behavior by their misleading statements like that one where they genuinely can't know whether the hybrid would be rejected.

satvikpendem 3y ago

I wonder how it would taste, given our ancestors' hankering for their meat.

evan_ 3y ago
You can find out for $30 plus shipping: https://shop.minimuseum.com/products/mammoth-meat https://shop.minimuseum.com/products/mammoth-meat "We recommend keeping it in the jar at all times as it can be fragrant when exposed."
- arp242 3y ago
  That reminds me of the guy that cooked some giant squid that washed ashore (which had never been seen outside of carcasses when this interview was done) and ended up researching why it tasted so bitter https://youtu.be/0z5oziSqQOs?t=703 https://youtu.be/0z5oziSqQOs?t=703 So there may be some scientific value? I am NOT volunteering.
pvaldes 3y ago
Mix elephant meat with a generous dose of lard in a pan. My bet would be that not much different.

local_crmdgeon 3y ago

This is all very nice and they’ve made lots of announcements and raised a lot of money. Do it. Do something. Stop talking and deliver.

echelon 3y ago
You have to hype to raise funds and hire. It also helps build a moat against competitors - it signals that the limited dollars are probably allocated and that competitors would have to expend energy working against you. The hustle is real because often 100% research in a vacuum won't attain the activation energy it needs. Another possibility is that another team watching you might quickly follow and duplicate everything you've done and scale it faster than you. Downside: if you fail, it can salt the earth for some years before a new team can start again. We all see a lot of hucksters hyping themselves up and a lot of failures that never delivered. It's why we develop a callus against hype. But if you ever need it yourself, you shouldn't shy away from it. It's useful and serves a purpose.
- gedy 3y ago
  > It also helps build a moat against competitors Resurrecting a mammoth?
  - dekhn 3y ago
    Once you have a mammoth, who needs a moat?

ZachWick 3y ago

The fantastic documentary “We Are As Gods” about Stewart Brand spends a considerable amount of time on this topic as he is involved in many of these efforts. https://www.weareasgods.film/ https://www.weareasgods.film/

neets 3y ago

What about all those other species of Hominid?

hnuser847 3y ago
^^^this. I would find this infinitely more interesting than cloning a wooly mammoth or a dinosaur.
logdap 3y ago
That seems like it would get really awkward fast. We'd probably have to give them full human rights (particularly if they successfully learned our language and demanded rights), but they might not be able to adapt to a homo sapien society. Also whoever funded their recreation wouldn't be able to keep them as property, but would probably try to. Mammoths are easier in this regard since we already have a framework for how to treat elephants.
kadoban 3y ago
I do not think we are morally sophisticated enough, as a society/species, to handle that without it going to shit.

Metacelsus 3y ago

See my take on this here: https://www.readcodon.com/p/extinction https://www.readcodon.com/p/extinction Basically, it will be quite challenging and I think they are over-promising on the timeline. They are also not even going to make a wooly mammoth, but rather a hairy elephant.

soperj 3y ago
At a certain point a hairy elephant becomes a wolly mammoth, like the Quagga are no longer Zebra.
- arp242 3y ago
  That depends on the evolutionary pressures it's subjected to; it can evolve in any number of ways. The mammoth lived in an ecosystem that no longer exists: the mammoth steppes and all associated plants and wildlife. This is an important reason (perhaps even the main reason) they went extinct in the first place. This is another problem with de-extinction for some species: what do you do with the animals once you've got them? For mammoths it's an open question if they could survive in the wild even if they're exact clones of the original, and even more so if they're "hairy elephants". Either way, whatever will happen with these "hairy elephant", they most likely won't evolve in to mammoths as they existed 20,000 years ago.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    I was just at the La Brea Tar Pits this weekend and wondered if the shorter tusks of elephants were an adaptation resulting from ivory harvesting. There is recent discussion of tuskless elephants due to poaching. They went from 15 to 9̶1̶ 51 percent of certain populations over the course of 15 years!
    - wahern 3y ago
      I think the numbers went from 15% to 33%, with 91 being the number of female elephants in the sample group. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/female-elephants-are-evolving-to-go-tuskless-but-may-be-killing-males-180978938 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/female-elephants-a... Per that article, tuskless male elephants don't survive, usually not even to birth.

pvaldes 3y ago

I thing that mammoth is a really poor choice for de-extinction. I would wish to be wrong, but is not a really well matured plan.

atlantic 3y ago
How about the auroch? Its extinction is much more recent, so presumably the available DNA is in much better shape.
- tmtvl 3y ago
  When talking about recency, how about the dodo or great auk?
  - atlantic 3y ago
    I suggested the auroch because it was a keystone species in many European ecosystems up until recently. So it could have a major impact on any rewilding project.
- jbotz 3y ago
  What available DNA? We have some really well-preserved frozen mammoths as DNA sources... frozen aurochs, not so many. Or any, that I know of.
  - atlantic 3y ago
    Yes, but DNA has a half-life of around 500 years. So there is a considerable difference between an animal that went extinct in the 1600s, and another 4000 years ago.
suzzer99 3y ago
Megalodon instead?
anigbrowl 3y ago
Charismatic gigafauna I bet a non-negligible portion of their funding comes from people who want to shoot one and have a trophy that few or no others are able to obtain.

m3kw9 3y ago

They should go big and do a dinosaur

digitalsushi 3y ago
can a dinosaur live in our less oxygen rich air

joshuahedlund 3y ago

Does this provide any new information or updates to any of the previous posts about Colossal’s mammoth plans over the last several years? It just sounds like a press release for Nvidia to highlight their connection to it. (I get a little more cynical every few months I see something about Colossal without any actual updates…)