Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/19/cloning-extinct-animals-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen.html
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Not Sure If Serious, but… basing your complaints on the science depicted in B-Movies doesn’t install me with a huge desire to go along with your concerns.
And yeah, I’d like to see a living woolly mammoth.
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As I have said during a discussion on the very topic of bringing back the woolly mammoth : “What will it eat and where?”
If you cannot fathom how much food a single mammoth needs, then you are not understanding ecology and biology and therefore should stay away from cloning.
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Maybe it will eat cloning scientists?
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You would just have to feed it like they do elephants in the zoo.
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While I am not at all certain that de-extincting a huge, out-of-time herbivore is a good idea, and certainly that the money spent could be more productively put elsewhere, I do think this is a bit of an overstatement? The two comparisons are existential level crises, this is a perhaps misdirected science experiment.
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It might be a nice change of pace to worry about being eaten by an escaped saber-toothed tiger than Putin starting WWIII.
/s
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Yeah. I know for sure humans can survive the presence of every extinct animal from the last couple million years – because however dangerous sabertooth cats and cave bears might seem, we already outcompeted them. I have no guarantees that we can survive a world as warm as the Cretaceous.
If you learn anything from genre films, maybe it should be plain just how bad it is to downplay something scientists have all been warning us to take seriously for the last 50 years.
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How many species have gone extinct in my lifetime? Quite a few IIRC. If they want to de-extinct something why not pick some of these? They have a lot better chance of surviving because they are from a time that was closer to now. Plus returning insects, birds, small mammals is a lot less dangerous than going straight for T-Rex or Woolly Mammoths. I mean maybe not being able to say “as dead as a Dodo” could be fun.
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I read an article just the other day that some group is trying to de-extinct the dodo! So … “dead as a dodo” may soon have a snarky, ironic meaning!
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I’m much more concerned about the dangers of ancient viruses and bacteria emerging from melting permafrost than I am about the dangers presented by resurrecting a few species of megafauna that would probably still be around today if we hadn’t hunted them to extinction.
A mammoth can be taken down by a handful of dedicated humans with pointy sticks. A long-dormant plague agent? Probably not so much.
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Already happening…genetically engineering giant sheep to give trophy hunters something new to kill.
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Still, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea… I’d prefer they work to save animals near extinction…
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At least we’ve been making good progress on the California Condors since that movie came out!
Well, good for everyone except that one homeowner…
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like all cops are good guys and they always get the bad guys?
Like nerdy, nice guys always find love?
Seriously, lets not judge real life based on cliche movie tropes
The wooly mamoth was picked because it is big and attention grabbing. Ecologically and practically, it isn’t a good choice of species. But this post comes across as anti-science fear mongering that is trying to make people less informed
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It’s not just a B moviie. It’s the work of author Michael Crichton who has provided a running commentary on sorts of challenges to modern society such as feminism and global warming and …um, yeah, maybe we shouldn’t…
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I feel like they are much larger than elephants though and were from a traditionally different environment. So I suspect they would need a lot more food and figuring out exactly what that food should be is problematic but you could probably make do with what they feed elephants.
There are still places on earth that have very similar ecology to the places where mammoths once roamed, so I don’t think that would be an insurmountable issue. Backers of these projects have been setting aside land in Siberia for exactly that reason.
(Which is not to say there aren’t other serious issues that may prove insurmountable.)
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This post is even more fuzzy-headed than the earlier “should humans have the same rights as pets for euthanasia?” post (short answer: no, if what you actually mean is humans should be able to choose their own time to die rather than have others choose it for them). Movies have plots where resurrecting some extinct animal leads to bad things, and in real life there are people trying to genetically reconstruct extinct animals, so bad things will happen! But we won’t say what those might be.
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Well cloning mammoths would be bad for the mammoths I expect.
Welcome back to the planet! There’s nowhere for you to live, no herd to learn from and protect you, the planet is warmer this time round, and billionaires will want to hunt you. But hey, progress!
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