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Science can now bring a species back from extinction.

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle
What has creationism done for the world so far? :sleep:

Woolly Mammoth to Be Cloned : Discovery News
Just a few quibbles...

Japan has been promising mammoths are just a few years away for a decade.
We don't have a complete genome yet.
Having a genome and having a living mammoth are worlds apart.

Making a single mammoth does not bring them back from extinction, it makes them extinct twice.
Making a herd of clones is not only cost prohibitive but still does nothing to bring them back... you won't have the genetic diversity to sustain them.

The only surrogates would be elephants, who are endangered themselves. Not only that, they are highly intelligent, highly social and willing to kill infants rather than raise them in captivity. Once your mammoth is born the mother may reject or kill it. Assuming it doesn't die on it's own.
Without a proper social structure your mammoth is going to have social disorders.
Clones have very low survivorship... the mammoth will likely die before maturity... if it makes it full term.


Not that I wouldn't love to see a living mammoth... I would likely weep at the sight of it. But I don't want it to live a short pain/illness riddled life, just to suit my fancy. Making the mammoth go extinct twice would just be cruel.

Besides, there are plenty of species near extinction now, they need our immediate help.

wa:do
 

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle
Oh, pooh!

Just rain on the parade, whydoncha? :p
Sorry... :p

I love mammoths... I made a necklace with a bit of mammoth ivory as a pendant so I could keep a bit of them with me.

But, I think the morality and the feasibility of this project is questionable.

wa:do
 
painted wolf,

Can you explain to me the purpose of the mammoth's enormous tusks? Are they for fighting off predators or other males .... ? They just seem so unwieldy.
 

Caladan

Agnostic Pantheist
You know, some Neanderthal DNA may live on in modern humans. approximately 1 to 4% of non-African modern human DNA is shared with Neanderthals.
 

Photonic

Ad astra!
Just a few quibbles...

Japan has been promising mammoths are just a few years away for a decade.
We don't have a complete genome yet.
Having a genome and having a living mammoth are worlds apart.

Making a single mammoth does not bring them back from extinction, it makes them extinct twice.
Making a herd of clones is not only cost prohibitive but still does nothing to bring them back... you won't have the genetic diversity to sustain them.

The only surrogates would be elephants, who are endangered themselves. Not only that, they are highly intelligent, highly social and willing to kill infants rather than raise them in captivity. Once your mammoth is born the mother may reject or kill it. Assuming it doesn't die on it's own.
Without a proper social structure your mammoth is going to have social disorders.
Clones have very low survivorship... the mammoth will likely die before maturity... if it makes it full term.


Not that I wouldn't love to see a living mammoth... I would likely weep at the sight of it. But I don't want it to live a short pain/illness riddled life, just to suit my fancy. Making the mammoth go extinct twice would just be cruel.

Besides, there are plenty of species near extinction now, they need our immediate help.

wa:do

Japan didn't have the material that they have now.

While that may allow them to clone it, I think you are right that the clone may have some flaws that could only be worked out through successive generations of cloning.

Which is probably cruel.

Is there another way to clone an extinct species without some tests though?
 

Awoon

Well-Known Member
Just a few quibbles...

Japan has been promising mammoths are just a few years away for a decade.
We don't have a complete genome yet.
Having a genome and having a living mammoth are worlds apart.

Making a single mammoth does not bring them back from extinction, it makes them extinct twice.
Making a herd of clones is not only cost prohibitive but still does nothing to bring them back... you won't have the genetic diversity to sustain them.

The only surrogates would be elephants, who are endangered themselves. Not only that, they are highly intelligent, highly social and willing to kill infants rather than raise them in captivity. Once your mammoth is born the mother may reject or kill it. Assuming it doesn't die on it's own.
Without a proper social structure your mammoth is going to have social disorders.
Clones have very low survivorship... the mammoth will likely die before maturity... if it makes it full term.


Not that I wouldn't love to see a living mammoth... I would likely weep at the sight of it. But I don't want it to live a short pain/illness riddled life, just to suit my fancy. Making the mammoth go extinct twice would just be cruel.

Besides, there are plenty of species near extinction now, they need our immediate help.

wa:do


The Mommy Elephant should refuse to be the surrogate.

Could anyone imagine the feeling she would have birthing a Mammoth with those big horns?
 

Engyo

Prince of Dorkness!
painted wolf,

Can you explain to me the purpose of the mammoth's enormous tusks? Are they for fighting off predators or other males .... ? They just seem so unwieldy.
One conjecture is that they were useful for clearing snow off of frozen grasses to eat.
 

Quiddity

UndertheInfluenceofGiants
painted wolf,

Can you explain to me the purpose of the mammoth's enormous tusks? Are they for fighting off predators or other males .... ? They just seem so unwieldy.

They seem more of a burden then anything.

They would make great columns for my entrace door.

The bigger the tusks the more the ladies....
 

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle
painted wolf,

Can you explain to me the purpose of the mammoth's enormous tusks? Are they for fighting off predators or other males .... ? They just seem so unwieldy.
Like elephants tusks are multi-use implements. We know they were used in fights between males due to the types of damage they sustained. And it's likely they provided a sexual selection advantage to their owners. Females have much smaller tusks.

Given their shape they also would be useful for food harvesting... by moving snow and aiding the trunk in manipulating small trees and shrubs. Since the tundra/seppe mammoths wouldn't encounter many tall trees, the tusks didn't get in the way of tree pushing, like they would for modern elephants.

And some of it may have been genetic drift.

There usually isn't a single explanation for a feature.

wa:do
 

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle
Japan didn't have the material that they have now.
They still haven't shown they actually have what they need to clone from. You can't use damaged DNA even if it's 80% intact... it's not enough.

While that may allow them to clone it, I think you are right that the clone may have some flaws that could only be worked out through successive generations of cloning.

Which is probably cruel.

Is there another way to clone an extinct species without some tests though?
yeah... we can try cloning modern endangered species. We have lots of frozen genetic material to work with. Also elephants (and mammoths) are terrible for this type of experiment due to the extraordinarily long gestation periods and the already existing problems with in vetro fertilization.

If you want to work on truly successful cloning from frozen samples you should work on species that don't take several years to produce results.
Once we can actually successfully clone still existing species we can move on to the more difficult reconstruction of an extinct one.

Cloning isn't seen as a viable option for modern endangered species... how can it be expected to bring back extinct ones?

I say get cloning to work effectively in the first place before making it more complicated.

wa:do
 
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