I personally think successfully resurrecting the Thylacine and reintroducing it longterm to Tasmania would be a better aim over all these comments on Mammoth cloning
Advantages:
- smaller (but still a macro-sized animal)
- multiple surrogate options rather than just African Elephants
- the ecosystem would be better with its capstone apex predator back
- it only died out so recently that it has footage from zoos
Unlike the elephant / mammoth pairing, there aren't any marsupials similar to Thylacine (as far as I know). What surrogate options did you have in mind?
It would die immediately due to global warming, or it would be killed for its horns by traditional medicine maniacs. But could be a good source of textiles and perhaps protein. It was a source of protein back in ita day.
I'm more interested in mastodons, their smaller, temperate climate cousins. Fits better with our warmer world. And so cute.
They used to range across this whole (North American) continent. I just giggle at thinking the havoc they'd cause let loose in northeastern forests again.
Curiously, it turns out that elephants eating fauna actually promotes plant and tree growth. I remember reading something (ca 2007?) about the possibility that reintroducing elephants to the American Southwest could lead to reforestation of areas that are currently desert.
Which, of course, doesn’t really provide good justification for de-extinctifying the mammoth (although as I say this, I wonder if they might acually play a role in preserving the permafrost, as per this recent Science Friday story: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/becoming-earth-how-li... )
Pleistocene Park and albedo. I don't think you've got this exactly right, it's about grassland, not forest. Also forest is supposedly bad for permafrost, raising temperature slightly.
> Pleistocene Park is a truly fascinating and daring experiment in the far Arctic, in Siberia, run by the Zimovs, Sergey and Nikita Zimov, a father and son scientific team, and their families. And they have this theory that large megafauna in the Pleistocene, things like mammoths and mastodons and bison, these large grazing animals, co-evolved with the grasslands that existed at the time. And so the grazers and the grasses maintained and sustained each other.
> These large animals would trample the trees and shrubs that would otherwise compete with grass, and the grass would provide these grazers with this rapidly regenerating vegetation that they could continually graze on. But it went further than that in their estimation, because, together, the grasses and the grazers, according to their theory, were helping to keep the permafrost frozen.
> So, for example, the grazers, just by being so large and by walking through these grasslands, were stripping away these insulating layers of snow, which allowed these frigid temperatures to penetrate deeper and keep that permafrost frozen. And grasses, just by virtue of being lighter, paler in color than trees, reflect more light and heat back to space. So they’re also keeping the land cooler. And so their idea is to bring back large grazing animals to Siberia, to recreate some version of these ancient Pleistocene grasslands, and thereby counteract the thawing of permafrost to some extent.
Woolly mammoths were a geoengineer species that have no living proxy. Bringing them back is definitely a controversial project, but there's a case to be made that de-extincting the woolly mammoth could help prevent permafrost from melting.
Of how many animals would we need genetic material from? are there enough dna available that it would be possible?
if all animals will be clones, genetic diversity will be a problem. hopefully there is enough material available. seeing mammoths die out in real time would be more heartbreaking
Maybe this is what it'll take to seriously combat global warming. Filling zoos with wooly mammoths, and then extorting us into dropping global temperatures to keep them alive.
Unless we're headed for a Day After Tomorrow situation. Then it might be the mammoths keeping us in zoos
Readit News
Advantages: - smaller (but still a macro-sized animal) - multiple surrogate options rather than just African Elephants - the ecosystem would be better with its capstone apex predator back - it only died out so recently that it has footage from zoos
https://colossal.com/mammoth/
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a42708517/s...
They used to range across this whole (North American) continent. I just giggle at thinking the havoc they'd cause let loose in northeastern forests again.
How about the woolly rhino while we're at it? Maybe open a zoo in Death Valley to house 'em.
Obviously we need to bring the mammoths back, if we want to fix the global climate.
https://doctorspaghetti.org/pastafarians-pirates-and-climate...
Harrr!
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-58709069
Which, of course, doesn’t really provide good justification for de-extinctifying the mammoth (although as I say this, I wonder if they might acually play a role in preserving the permafrost, as per this recent Science Friday story: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/becoming-earth-how-li... )
> Pleistocene Park is a truly fascinating and daring experiment in the far Arctic, in Siberia, run by the Zimovs, Sergey and Nikita Zimov, a father and son scientific team, and their families. And they have this theory that large megafauna in the Pleistocene, things like mammoths and mastodons and bison, these large grazing animals, co-evolved with the grasslands that existed at the time. And so the grazers and the grasses maintained and sustained each other.
> These large animals would trample the trees and shrubs that would otherwise compete with grass, and the grass would provide these grazers with this rapidly regenerating vegetation that they could continually graze on. But it went further than that in their estimation, because, together, the grasses and the grazers, according to their theory, were helping to keep the permafrost frozen.
> So, for example, the grazers, just by being so large and by walking through these grasslands, were stripping away these insulating layers of snow, which allowed these frigid temperatures to penetrate deeper and keep that permafrost frozen. And grasses, just by virtue of being lighter, paler in color than trees, reflect more light and heat back to space. So they’re also keeping the land cooler. And so their idea is to bring back large grazing animals to Siberia, to recreate some version of these ancient Pleistocene grasslands, and thereby counteract the thawing of permafrost to some extent.
if all animals will be clones, genetic diversity will be a problem. hopefully there is enough material available. seeing mammoths die out in real time would be more heartbreaking
Unless we're headed for a Day After Tomorrow situation. Then it might be the mammoths keeping us in zoos