NIMBY!
Do the neighbors know what's going on? Once informed, I predict a quick end to this enterprise.
Entrepreneur plans to resurrect woolly mammoths
51–60 of 97 posts
Re: Entrepreneur plans to resurrect woolly mammoths
#52What’s the line from Jurassic Park? “They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”
No, hold on. This isn't this isn't some species that was obliterated by deforestation or or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs ah ah had their shot, and Nature selected them for extinction.
I thought this was more applicable.
Re: Entrepreneur plans to resurrect woolly mammoths
#53Trying to resurrect extinct species while we actively try to make the existing ones extinct is absurd.
Actually, it's a good way practicing how to restore those as well. There's less at stake with already extinct species. We've wiped out plenty of species already and we probably have a growing amount of DNA to play with. I take it as a given that there will be a lot more species disappearing over the next decades. So, any early successes with this will be helpful. Once we clean up the planet in a few centuries, we'll be able to restore ecosystems this way potentially. A key thing for that is figuring out how to get genetic diversity to avoid inbreeding becoming a thing.
Re: Entrepreneur plans to resurrect woolly mammoths
#54Eh, it's hard for me to not be cynical about this given the number of times I've heard this exact headline throughout my life. When I was a little kid I saw on a TV program that "these scientists are working on bring back wooly mammoths and experts agree that we could see living wooly mammoths in the next 3 years". > Can mammoths really reverse climate change? > Colossal say that they want to 'rewild extinct species…
> > It is argued that the giant herbivores such as mammoths maintained these open grasslands by keeping encroaching forests at bay, and as a result helped cool the planet. > That seems like pure nonsense and perhaps a way to market their goofy experiment to gullible journalists. The effect of mammoths can be true AND it can be "a way to market their goofy experiment to gullible journalists". We've seen significant ch…
Individual statements here may be true on some level (e.g. 'large mammals maintain grassland', 'steppe climates sequester carbon'), but that doesn't make the broad conclusions true. We can't just rewild the Great Steppe, we grow our food there now!
Anyways, ecosystems are complex. Here in Scotland we have a proliferation of deer, which no longer have any predators except cars and posh men with guns. No new trees with them around. They are also destroying peatlands, which I imagine are a much better carbon sink than grassland.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/29/huge-ris...
Re: Entrepreneur plans to resurrect woolly mammoths
#55Mammoth is literally the hardest animal to do this for. Why not the dodo? Or anything smaller/with a faster generation time. I guess that wouldn't bring in investors and reporters...
We have much more experience cloning mammals than birds.
Re: Entrepreneur plans to resurrect woolly mammoths
#56Trying to resurrect extinct species while we actively try to make the existing ones extinct is absurd.
At a minimum, maybe it’s shit timing to resurrect an animal better for colder weather.
Re: Entrepreneur plans to resurrect woolly mammoths
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose that begins to ask the question of what it means to be a wooly mammoth. If it fills the ecological niche of an , and it looks like and has many of the same genes as an , is it not an ? There's a bit of sci-fi fun in Neal Stephenson's wonderful "Seveneves"[0] where people are trying to re-populate the earth with animals after a planet-wide extinction event. They originally tried to make exactly the same wolv…
I forgot about that part!
I think many of us skimmed the last third of Seveneves.
Re: Entrepreneur plans to resurrect woolly mammoths
#58Mammoth is literally the hardest animal to do this for. Why not the dodo? Or anything smaller/with a faster generation time. I guess that wouldn't bring in investors and reporters...
who wants to eat a dodo? no thanks.
apparently a lot of sailors because that's how they went extinct
Re: Entrepreneur plans to resurrect woolly mammoths
#59Re: Entrepreneur plans to resurrect woolly mammoths
#60I have doubts as to the survivability of any 'mammoth' produced. The ancient animals were part of an ecosystem long extinct. Their gut biome for instance is long gone. While they might gestate something and even bring it to term, it could die in days because it can't live in this world without a parent mammoth to donate its biome.