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Extinct Mammoth, Coming To a Zoo Near You
Techmeology writes "Professor Akira Iritani of Kyoto University plans to use recent developments in cloning technology to give life to the currently extinct woolly mammoth. Although earlier efforts in the 1990s were unsuccessful due to damage caused by extreme cold, Professor Iritani believes he can use a technique pioneered by Dr Wakayama (who successfully cloned a frozen mouse) to overcome this obstacle. This technique will enable Professor Iritani to identify viable cell nuclei, and transfer them to egg cells of an African elephant which will carry the mammoth for a 600 day pregnancy."
Pleistocene park, coming soon to a zoo near you. Doesn't quite have the same ring as "Jurassic" though.
Still I am willing to bet that this creature, if created, will be called "Manny", after our Ice Age mammoth movie star... any takers?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I recall the time they found those fossilized mosquitoes and before long they
were cloning DNA
Now I'm being chased by some irate velociraptors
Well believe me...This has been one lousy day
Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild
Someone shut the fence off in the rain
I admit it's kind of eerie
But this proves my chaos theory
And I don't think I'll be coming back again
Oh no
I cannot approve of this attraction
'Cause getting disemboweled always makes me kind of mad
A huge Tyrannosaurus ate our lawyer
Well I suppose that proves...they're really not all bad
Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild
Someone let T. Rex out of his pen
I'm afraid those things will harm me
'Cause they sure don't act like Barney
And they think that I'm they're dinner not their friend
Oh no
Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild
What a crummy weekend this has been
Well this sure ain't no E-ticket
Think I'll tell 'em where to stick it
'Cause I'm never coming back this way again
Oh no...Oh no
Fuck that, I can't wait until one of these things goes nuts and starts goring the fuck out of everything.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
I can do without the giant sloth, short nosed bear, dire wolves or the saber tooth tigers.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I can't. I don't even know what wine goes with elephant, let alone what wine goes with mammoth.
A warning. Like refer madness was a warning.
So who will be the lucky lady to carry for the first Neandertal born in 25,000 years?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Okay, time to be pedantic. And while the good professor is at it, why not breed some Neanderthals, sabre-toothed cats, or my personal favorite, the hugest of the post-Dinotopian behemoths, the Indricotherium?
lighten up and have a drink
I shall have a 3,400-year-old Mesoamerican beer.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
'Cause they might be yummy!
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Excellent. I could use a baby mammoth to help with the dishes.
Eh...It's a living.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Try a nice Chianti. (At least it pairs well with liver and fava beans.)
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
If this was an insect or small animal that might escape and breed you could have a point, but we're talking about a MAMMOTH. I seriously doubt they're going to manage to sneak off and start breeding in the wild without anybody noticing.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
think of all the damage kudzoo is doing in habitats where it is non-native.
The mammoths will eat all the kudzu.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
If my theory is right and there is an ingredient in Mammoth meat that makes our species sane!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Know what would be cool? Create a new park in northern Canada and release some mammoths there. They would, of course, need enough forage. But once they begin to thrive, bring back sabor tooth tigers to control the mammoth population.
Cool idea overall, but the sabre-toothed tiger part is unnecessary. The most effective predator of the woolly mammoth is still available.
-=Steve=-
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I and my marauding hordes of test lab animal liberators will let the mammoths loose on the modern world one dark night. Run like the wind and be free, FREE, Manny! mwuhahahaha!
Mimmoth infestations, on the other hand, are all-but-impossible to eradicate.
Naw, she's too busy running for President and taping her reality show.
This is a little different than insects or plants which invade non-native habitats. Insects, plants, small mammals, etc. all reproduce quickly, and can evade humans easily because of their small size. A few seeds fly around and suddenly there's an epidemic of kudzu, for instance.
Mammoths are very, very large, as should be obvious by their name. They're not going to sneak aboard a cargo ship without being noticed, and then go hide in the wild somewhere and reproduce like rabbits. If anything, they probably have an even longer gestation time than elephants, which already have a ridiculously long gestation time (which is part of why they're going extinct; they can't reproduce fast enough to make up for human predation, even though it's been massively reduced in recent decades).
I think the dangers here are non-existent. Elephants already have a very hard time in the wild; these things aren't going to get out and take over. Even if a couple of mammoths did manage to escape somehow (that'd be a massive security oversight wouldn't it?), it would be easy to find and recapture them within the 2 years or whatever it takes them to make a single baby mammoth. It'd be pretty hard to not notice a woolly mammoth running loose anywhere near humans. These animals are just going to be a curiosity, probably confined to zoos, and I think it's great that it might really happen.
The danger is if this same technology is used to "resurrect" other, much smaller extinct species. What would happen, for instance, if they brought back some prehistoric insects that were alive when the dinosaurs were around? That really could have problems like what you're talking about, because insects (even large ones) grow and reproduce very, very quickly, but are small enough to escape human confinement pretty easily, and then be very hard to track down and exterminate once in the wild.
Or what if they brought back the passenger pigeon, or the dodo bird?
She couldn't hit the broad side of a ... well, mammoth.
Hide him in a library.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Hannibal 2: The Carthaginianing
They're crossing the Alps and this time THEY'RE WARM
Ice Cream has no bones.
Modern cloning techniques don't have a fantastic success rate (~10% last time I checked; 30% from TFA). Even then, there doesn't seem to be an excess of surrogate mothers (African elephants, in this case.) Even harvesting the necessary eggs from the African elephants is tricky -- it's an invasive procedure, and operating on something the size of the elephant is no easy task.
Even assuming that all goes well, cloned animals are known to suffer from compromised immune function and generally short lifespans. Many of these problems are an effect of the cloning process and any offspring will not suffer the effects (as we've seen with some sheep). However, given the size of the Mammoth, I can imagine it taking no less than a decade to reach sexual maturity (as with African elephants). Even then, to avoid some of the detrimental effects of the cloning process, you'd also need a Mammoth of the opposite sex...
In short: While it's cool and technically in the realm of possibility, there are still a tremendous number of sizable hurdles in the way.
Actually, that's Cenozoic Park 2. In the first one, the mammoths will be on an island, terrorizing a group of tourists or visitors. Why mammoths (being herbivores) would terrorize anyone, I don't know, but I'm sure Hollywood will come up with some weird explanation for that. Maybe something about some saber-tooth tiger genes getting in there accidentally, creating vicious saber-tooth mammoths.
The major thing that comes to mind is that were bringing a creature back when it's native diseases now have 100k+ years of evolution on them. They'll have to keep it in a bubble.
Then again it seems a dwarf species existed until around 1700BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth
That's expected from my Slashdot foe. There are many reasons why, in the novels, Clarice joined him. There are reasons why he got off on insanity rather than cold-blooded murder. Learn to read, not just watch the movies, then come back and tell me that Lecter had "no redeeming qualities whatsoever."
Its okay. If elephants get wiped out we can wait a few centuries and then implant elephant embryos into mammoth's so they can get their revenge.
A mammoth on a slippery slope would be very amusing to watch! Let's do it!
Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
You realize you're quoting Jeff Goldblum, right?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that people lived at the same time as mammoths right? That we have cave paintings of hunting them? If they were superlethal to us, we'd know.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How did this get modded up?
There things used to be alive. If they had dire consequences on X population, X wouldn't be here today. They went extinct extremely recently. As in still freezer fresh.
The Japanese are rapidly going through the earths supply of whale meat. I guess they just want something to replace that by the time whales are extinct.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
What bacteria will come from this animal that haven't been around since they are extinct?
Dude, the spontaneous creation theory for life went out of fashion around the time of Pasteur. The only bacteria this mammoth will possess are ones that are present in our world today. While the mammoth's own micro-environment will no doubt favor the growth of certain specific bacteria as part of its normal flora, it will be no more dangerous than turtles and chickens which carry Salmonella sp (responsible for typhoid, amongst other things), or armadillos which carry Yersenia pestis (responsible for bubonic plague aka black death).
While having your back scratched regularly by an armadillo is not a good idea, the presence of the pathogen in the environment does not automatically mean epidemics. There are a couple cases of bubonic plague even in US every year, FYI.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I don't believe in karma, but prove it.
What is presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.