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And even if you clone a perfect mammoth on your first try, then what? We know elephants are very intelligent, emotional, and social animals. I see no reason to
by arp242 2y ago
And even if you clone a perfect mammoth on your first try, then what?
We know elephants are very intelligent, emotional, and social animals. I see no reason to assume mammoths are significantly different. And of course what they're working aren't even mammoths, more like "hairy elephants".
Cloning a single hairy elephant and keeping it in captivity would consign it to a miserable life of loneliness. It would be nothing short of cruel.
So you managed to clone a herd of hairy elephants, then what do you do with those? The mammoth steppes they once roamed no longer exist. There is no ecosystem to save or improve because that ecosystem is gone. That's what they meant with "what's gone is gone".
Can you just re-introduce them to the wild? These are huge animals that need a lot of space. Other animals and people live there. You can't just have a bit of land; you need a huge amount of it.
Cloning mammoths is just dumb. None of the logistics really work out and a bunch of mammoths spending miserable lonely lives in zoos is basically the best-case outcome we can hope for and after a few decades of this everyone will all realize it was pointless and mammoths will be extinct once more. All these notions are rekindling a lost ecosystem are nothing more than flights of fancy.
For some other animals there is perhaps a slightly better case to be made; I don't know. But for mammoths the case is pretty bad.
- anon84873628 2y agoThe goal of the project is absolutely to release them into the wild. And their historical range is still largely empty of humans. There is enough space for everyone if we are willing to do it.
- pvaldes 2y ago> Cloning a single hairy elephant and keeping it in captivity would consign it to a miserable life of loneliness Easily solvable if you put it with other elephants. Small elephants bond also with humans.
- seszett 2y ago> Easily solvable if you put it with other elephants. Would it be that easy? Imagine a handful of wild humans, having never had any contact with other humans, no education or anything, just put somewhere and left to themselves. How many centuries would they need to even develop an actual language? They might very well be totally unable to cooperate or survive at all, without a preexisting society to guide them. Even if they don't have societies as developed at humans do, I can imagine the same would happen to different degrees with elephants, mammoths, dolphins, crows even.
- Dylan16807 2y ago> Imagine a handful of wild humans, having never had any contact with other humans, no education or anything, just put somewhere and left to themselves. > How many centuries would they need to even develop an actual language? https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-nicaraguan-sign-language https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-nicaraguan-sig... https://www.nature.com/articles/34646 https://www.nature.com/articles/34646 I'd say less than 0.1 centuries.
- pvaldes 2y agoNeo-mammooths obviously will learn the language of their modern elephant mothers without any effort.