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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 the

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.
      - jonhohle 3y ago
        Sorry, the number I had was 51% from New Scientist - https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294549-female-african-elephants-evolved-to-lose-tusks-due-to-ivory-poaching/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294549-female-african-...
        wahern 3y ago
        Ah. TIL male African elephants must have tusks to be viable, but male Asian elephants can be tuskless, and in some regions up to 90% of male Asian elephants can be tuskless (per https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/asian-elephant https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/asian-elephant). Regarding the female African elephant percentage discrepancy, both of which seem to be pulled from the same paper, it seems 33% refers to new born and 51% refers to all females.
Maursault 3y ago
It's just such a waste of time, resources and talent, when it would be vastly better, and presumably easier, to stop the extinction of vaquita, black rhinoceros and other subspecies, saola, tiger species, leopard species, elephants and sub-species, gorillas and subspecies, orangutang, and hundreds of species of fish, frogs and insects. We don't need fake mammoth. Save the vaquita. And save the Amazon Rainforest, and whatever is left of every other forest.

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.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      Sorry, the number I had was 51% from New Scientist - https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294549-female-african-elephants-evolved-to-lose-tusks-due-to-ivory-poaching/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294549-female-african-...
      - wahern 3y ago
        Ah. TIL male African elephants must have tusks to be viable, but male Asian elephants can be tuskless, and in some regions up to 90% of male Asian elephants can be tuskless (per https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/asian-elephant https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/asian-elephant). Regarding the female African elephant percentage discrepancy, both of which seem to be pulled from the same paper, it seems 33% refers to new born and 51% refers to all females.

Maursault 3y ago

It's just such a waste of time, resources and talent, when it would be vastly better, and presumably easier, to stop the extinction of vaquita, black rhinoceros and other subspecies, saola, tiger species, leopard species, elephants and sub-species, gorillas and subspecies, orangutang, and hundreds of species of fish, frogs and insects. We don't need fake mammoth. Save the vaquita. And save the Amazon Rainforest, and whatever is left of every other forest.