2023, animals, Business, History, Science, Uncategorized

De-Extinction

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I read with interest last week the news story of a company that wants to resurrect the wooly mammoth, perhaps in ND. A fairly intact wooly mammoth tusk with all sorts of usable DNA was found in a coal mine here in the state. The company wants to use it to recreate the mammoth.

What is quite surprising to me is that the ND government is paying this company $3,000,000 to consider locating the company to ND. This a pretty fiscally conservative state, and the public reaction to the Department of Commerce spending money on this venture hasn’t been exactly supportive.

The local climate is more conducive to mammoth well-being than Texas, where the company is located. I wonder what you do with a wooly mammoth once you have de-extincted it? Let it wander around the Badlands here? Can it be fenced in at all? Raise it for meat? Have mammoth rodeos? The company thinks they can have a viable mammoth by 2028. I am glad that I will be living in Minnesota by then. I would hate waking up to find a mammoth in my yard eating the tomatoes.

What would you do with a woolly mammoth ? What would you like to see de-extincted?

36 thoughts on “De-Extinction”

  3. I’d like to see the passenger pigeon restored.
    The Smithsonian display of “Martha”, the last of billions of the species, is a sobering reflection of the destruction we humans have wreaked upon this planet.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I cannot think of a species to bring back. All I can consider in pondering the re-appearance of the Woollies, is what will those bringing it back do with it? How big would they be? Are they containable? How do these scientists plan to contain such a beast? Will it honor the North Dakota border and not wander into, say Canada? Minnesota? South Dakota?

    This appears to me to an idea that might not be something the scientists want to execute. After all, not every idea is a good, productive one. Some ideas are really fun to fantasize about but the reality? Maybe not. The history of illicit sexual affairs proves that in spades. Fantasy is one thing. The reality of it and the consequences of such behavior is often devastating. Woolly Mammoths may not be well suited to 2023 and its future.

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  6. There was once a lovely golden toad in Costa Rica that is now considered extinct. If I could bring it back, I’d probably never see one – I don’t expect to be traveling to Costa Rica – but I would like to think there was still someplace that little golden toads roamed the earth.

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  7. The problem with bringing back extinct species–if that’s actually possible–is that they went extinct for a reason, and unless the situation is changed they won’t survive. Is it cold enough for wooly mammoths to live, for example, or will they die of heatstroke? Do enough habitat and food sources exist to maintain the population without encroaching into fields and pastures? What if the creatures’ original food source is also extinct (thinking of pandas and bamboo, or koalas and eucalyptus), will they tweak the genome to eat something else, and will there be side effects from that? Will animals that took over their niches be driven to extinction in turn because their habitat and food sources have been repossessed? It seems like a stupid idea from an ecological standpoint, and that’s assuming the cloning process has zero drawbacks.

    All that said, science fiction author Eleanor Arnason wrote a novella called “Mammoths of the Great Plains” about this very subject that is worth tracking down and reading. PM Press was the publisher, IIRC.

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        1. I have two thoughts. The first is Jurassic Park. Enough said.

          Second… I binge-watched a series narrated by Pierce Brosnan about great Heists of History. With one exception (The Gardinar Museum Heist), all the great heists fell apart AFTER.. seems as if all the planning and prep work goes into the theft itself and not exactly how the “after-theft” needs to go. This seems to apply to the de-extinction question as well. ALL of CGs questions are spot-on!!

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  10. The dodo bird comes to mind… I’d be curious about that one.
    And I know many species of birds have been lost, so I wish them back…

    I too think the woolly mammoth is probably best left as is, or technically “left as isn’t”.
    And should we humans be in the business of “playing God”. But then, which side would be “playing God”?? The ones bringing it back to life, or those deciding not to when it is possible?

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  11. I agree with Linda. If there was a small species of frog or toad that could be brought back, that would be interesting. I’d also like to see bird species that have disappeared brought back.

    Wouldn’t it be better to work on habitat restoration so that current species that we really need, like native bees, don’t go extinct?

    If I was a taxpayer there, I wouldn’t like this idea any more than the conservatives!

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  12. I always thought sabre tooth tigers looked cool. Not sure how cool it would be to have them in the wild…
    Same with the mammoth.
    I was googling extinct animals. How about this one: Queen Of Sheba’s Gazelle?
    Or Lesser Mascarene Flying Fox? Madagascan Dwarf Hippopotamus?
    But no rice rats, cave rats, or giant rats. Or Anthony’s Woodrat.
    A Desert Rat-kangaroo?? A hopping rat?? Nope!

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      1. Maybe it would be cheaper than sheep’s wool, or alpaca. The world’s supply of wool would increase exponentially, bringing the price down. How would the annual wool output of a mammoth compare with, for instance, an alpaca, do you suppose?

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  15. Extinction: My love for the Minnesota Twins in anticipation of a decisive series next week against the Cincinnati Reds. I must root for the Twins to finish up winning the American League. It’s hard to cheer against the Puckett crew but I must. Lose all three games to the Reds and see you in the World Series.

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  16. Can’t we treat all creatures, the same and just exploit the heck out of them
    let a couple roam free so you can do a Jurassic Park kind of thing with tourism forum and then take a bunch of them and raise them like you do Ville or you lock them in a little room and fatten him up and then kill him so that we can all have something tasty to eat however, there is that guy who is making meat in a lab so all you need to do really is take a plug of flesh and put it in a petri dish and he can grow infinite amount of meat from that petri dish. There’s no reason to kill animals anymore to eat now we can raise steak and chicken and pork , I don’t believe they’ve done fish yet but I can’t imagine why it would be any different, but they do it all in a petri dish

    North Dakota wants to do this maybe they would enjoy giving millions of dollars and bringing over some elephants as well I don’t know if the elephant should be adverse to the North Dakota climate but I’m sure you could build some sheds for them for the 10 days he usually gets down to 20 below and acclimate them so instead of bringing back a new species to try and figure out how to deal with we could simply try and protect the ones that we have that are being coached for financial gain, and taken to the verge of extinction now

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  17. say I’m on my way to Chicago and I will be back on Sunday but I’m coming back for my youngest grandchild’s first birthday and that will conflict with the book club. Sorry to miss it. I thought we’d have a opportunity to get together. What was the Vikings playing on Thursday night and not being a conflict for me on Sunday? I believe all the rest of the book club meeting shrew until February or March will be a conflict so please keep me informed of the books and I’ll read along and if I can stick my head in online or some thing for the last hour of the meeting I will not this month but may be in november or january

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