I just love science – it’s 2017 and two of our biggest projects are sex bots and resurrecting dinosaurs. Which actually poses a bigger question than presented in my headline – is the woolly mammoth a dinosaur? Should it be grouped in with other prehistoric beasts of the like?
That may be a different debate for a different day.
Courtesy of The Guardian (and my boy Rick for retweeting it): “The woolly mammoth vanished from the Earth 4,000 years ago, but now scientists say they are on the brink of resurrecting the ancient beast in a revised form, through an ambitious feat of genetic engineering.
Man, what a legend. I hope that when I die and/or vanish from the Earth, I leave behind a legacy that has people wanting to resurrect me after 4,000 years! Think about it – genetic engineering has advanced to a point where we can manipulate species and kind of sort of create new ones.
I’d have loved to have been in that scientist meeting when they were like, “well – we have this genetic engineering thing down now….what do we do with it?” And, some dude stood up and was like, “we HAVE to bring back the woolly mammoth. That thing was badass af.” I’m sure everyone applauded uproariously and here we are.
Speaking ahead of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston this week, the scientist leading the “de-extinction” effort said the Harvard team is just two years away from creating a hybrid embryo, in which mammoth traits would be programmed into an Asian elephant.
Start the countdown, folks. Only two years until this thing becomes reality. Now, being the futurist that I am, I’m already wondering what else we can de-extinct. I’m thinking pterodactyls may be too big of a risk – don’t want them flying around wreaking havoc in our airways. But, maybe we can start with something a little tamer like a brontosaurus? How cool would that be? You’re just chilling in your backyard one summer afternoon, sipping on an ice cold Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and suddenly a pack of brontos comes rolling through.
And, I don’t think they’d cause as much damage as portrayed in movies. You know Hollywood always has to jazz things up a bit. But, man oh man – would there be some epic piles of shit strewn about the land.
Or, maybe we aim high and try to resurrect Elvis? Just a suggestion.
“Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo,” said Prof George Church. “Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We’re not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years.”
The creature, sometimes referred to as a “mammophant”, would be partly elephant, but with features such as small ears, subcutaneous fat, long shaggy hair and cold-adapted blood. The mammoth genes for these traits are spliced into the elephant DNA using the powerful gene-editing tool, Crispr.
Oh, wait – it’s not going to be full-on mammoth? I want full-on mammoth. I don’t want a miniature mammoth. I don’t want a simple elephant with long hair. I want the real deal. This story is kind of starting to lose me a bit.
Matthew Cobb, professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, said: “The proposed ‘de-extinction’ of mammoths raises a massive ethical issue – the mammoth was not simply a set of genes, it was a social animal, as is the modern Asian elephant. What will happen when the elephant-mammoth hybrid is born? How will it be greeted by elephants?”
LOL at Matthew Cobb thinking elephants can greet anything. Are you serious? To be a professor, you sure are stupid, Mr. Cobb. If an elephant ever greets me, I’ll kiss your ass. Unless you’ve put the talkin’ gene into an elephant, I’d bet that thing ain’t grettin’ no one.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying they can’t speak – that wouldn’t be proper science. I’m just saying I’ve never heard an elephant talk.
The woolly mammoth roamed across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America during the last Ice Age and vanished some 4,000 years ago, probably due to a combination of climate change and hunting by humans.
Honestly, I tuned out after the second Ice Age. Just seemed like a money grab – they weren’t trying to make an entertaining movie anymore. Also, shout out to humans for fucking something else up. We got rid of Surge, shut down the UAB football program, AND we contributed to the extinction of the woolly mammoth. Just not a good look on humans.
Thankfully, science is there to save the day yet again. Science FTW. Can’t wait ’til the day this is perfected and commercialized so I can go out and buy woolly mammoth and/or my very own Alf.
Stoney Keeley is the editor of the SoBros Network, Tennessee Titans Featured Analyst for Pro Football Spot, Contributor to FanSided’s Bama Hammer, and covers the WWE for WrestlingNews.co. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley, @PFSpot, @WrestlingNewsCo, @Bama_Hammer
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