Way back in 2003, when I was a
young child, I was watching a show on Discovery kids where a scientist
would answer questions that kids sent in. I don’t remember the exact the question
but some kid asked about a mammoth found preserved in ice. And the scientist guy, I
think he was a scientist he was wearing a lab coat talked about cloning a mammoth and how in
a few years we might have mammoth clones. Well it's been nearly 20 years and…. And its not like there was one off hand mention
in the early 2000s followed by radio silence, I feel like the idea of cloning mammoths has
always been around. And it comes up every few year. So my question is what is the hold
up here, where are all the mammoth clones? Yeah, this is what we want. Now there are more than just species of mammoth, research is constantly updating but right
now it seems there are 10 recognised species. They came in a variety of sizes with
the smallest being the dwarf mammoth, Mammuthus creticus, that from the Greek island of
Crete and was 1 meter tall and 300kg in weight. The largest was the steppe Mammoth that reached a
height of up to 4.5m (14.7 feet) at the shoulder, with tusks extending as long as 4.9m and probably
weighed somewhere between 10 - 14 tonnes. Putting that into context an African bull elephant
can grow up to 3.9m (12.7953) at the shoulder and can weigh up to 7 tons.
Despite the closeness in size mammoths are actually more closely related
to Asian elephants than African elephants. Moreover, Asian elephants and mammoths are more closely related than Asian
elephants and African elephants. It’s sort of an important point as Indian elephants will need to play a
role in bringing mammoths back. So how do you bring them back, There are actually a few different ways. Actual cloning, i.e Take the egg of a female elephant, take out
the nucleus and replace it with the nucleus from a Wooly Mammoth. Then the calf would have the
genes of a wooly mammoth. Researchers at the Kyoto University of Japan did plan on doing this but
to date we haven’t found a viable mammoth cell and apparently most scientists think that
a cell wouldn’t survive the frozen areas were we find the best preserved mammoths.
So this might not be very promising. Another method might be A.I or artificial insemination. Take an elephant egg
and combine it with a sperm cell from a frozen woolly mammoth. Then the elephant should give
birth to a hybrid. If you make enough hybrids and breed them, after some generations
you could get a mostly pure mammoth. Now whether or not the embryo would survive
the gestation period, which lasts two years is unknown but, that’s not the main problem.
The big problem is that after deep freezing sperm cells from mammals only last 15 years, so I
guess that method has to be thrown out the window. The third and perhaps most promising method is
gene editing. Some teams are working on taking DNA from frozen mammoth carcasses and replacing
the elephant genes with woolly mammoth genes. The resulting animal would still be more
of an elephant with some mammoth traits, like the long hair, small ears,
extra fat and warmer blood. See have referred to the potential
creature as a mammophant. One of the big names in this
field is George M. Church. American geneticist, molecular engineer,
and chemist. In 2015 he and his team were able to copy some woolly mammoth genes
into the genome of an Asian elephant. In September 2021 Church and his team launched a
startup called Colossal, they raised 15 million in funds and their mission is to bring back the
woolly mammoth, or make the mammophant I guess. Now 15 million is a lot of money but is
it enough to fund a big project like this? “$15 million would likely be
enough to produce an embryo, getting to a calf will require more funds.” He estimates that we could have a living specimen
in a few years . Heard that before pal. But to be more precise he said within about six
years, so mark your calendar I guess. However, so far we’ve been
preoccupied with whether or not this is something we could do rather
than if its something we should do. A few concerns have been raised in
regards to bringing back a mammoth. For one, elephants and mammoths are pretty
social animals so bringing back a few or even just one could be cruel for an
animal that needs to be in a group. Some feel that all the time and money
and other resources should be going into protecting endangered elephants instead.
We also don’t know if the embryo will survive or what a hybrid calf needs to have a healthy life.
Are these things being accounted for? You can read more about plans on the Colossal
website, which is pretty well designed I have to say. Going through the pages we can find out
more about the plans to bring back a mammoth. What the… Like apparently they are
using an African elephants to “eliminate extra pressure on the Asian
elephant” According to the website African elephants are threatened while Asian elephants
are endangered. Aren’t they both endangered. But also as African elephants are bigger it might
be easier for one of them to deliver the embryo. But anyway, going back to should we one
of the reasons they list on the website for bringing back the mammoth
is to combat climate change. Apparently when the mammoths went
extinct thousands of years ago a bunch of shrubs and plants grew
over what was previously grassland. If the mammoths came back they could trample
shrubs, knock over trees and fertilise the grass. Grassland might reflect more
light and keep the ground cooler. On the site it also says the work could help
save modern day elephants from extinction. Perhaps the technology of de extinction could be
used to bring back more species in the future, even species that are alive
today that might go extinct. Hard to say really. I wonder how
many mammoths would be needed to make a serius dent in the grasslands and also, I haven’t seen this mentioned but if the mammoths
have the large ivory tusks we expect will that mean they’ll need protection from poachers too.
So what do you think, should we do it?
