Resurrecting the Mammoth

[jkahane]

While searching for news about dinosaurs and the like today, I came across this tidbit over on Yahoo News...

Researchers aim to resurrect mammoth in five yearsTo say that I am leery about this is an understatement, but I think I'm more than a little bit shocked about this. Even if this were possible, I am reminded of the comments made by Abby

Comments

[elizalavelle]

It freaks me out a lot. I see the positive in being able to revive a species but there are a lot of negatives. Look at what happens when a species goes extinct, there can be a huge impact on the eco system. Introducing old species again may unbalance things. Not to mention the Jurassic Park ways things like this can go wrong... :S I'm with you.

[jkahane]

While I do see the positive aspects of this, I see more negative ones than positives.

This is not to say that I wouldn't kill to see a live mammoth somewhere, mind you. :)

[lil_shepherd]

Mammoths are just elephants, so I doubt there would be a Jurassic Park or even a Primeval scenario.

It wouldn't be totally Mammoth anyway, for various technical reasons, and there are a lot of species around in labs (and the farmyard) that have genetic material inserted from elsewhere. I seriously doubt that we are going to be overrun by mad mammoths!

[jkahane]

Oh, I understand what you're saying about it here. When it comes right down to it, for me personally, this just feels so... wrong.

[lil_shepherd]

It doesn't feel wrong to me, but then my thought process runs thus; considering the number of species we've exterminated in the past 100,000 years, bringing one back can't do much harm. It's not as if they breed like rabbits.

[jkahane]

Granted that's a good reason to bring one back. But why mammoth? Why not something more recent that we wiped out? Why not make it worthwhile to someone other than scientists who just want to do this because it's cool?

[baron_waste]

To my mind, the biggest problem is where we'd put them. This isn't like the old days, you know, when maybe one million humans wandered the earth in tribes. Now seven billion people are crammed onto this one mudball, and there's scarcely room for elephants, let alone mammoths.

[jkahane]

You raise an excellent point here, mate. :) But I'm sure the Japanese are planning for this. After all, they've got this in a five-year plan, so... :(

[innocent_man]

Are they really planning to reintroduce the species, or just clone a few and see what they're like? The articles I read didn't make me think there would be herds of mammoth in our future.

And science ain't about "shoulda." It's about "coulda." That's what makes it awesome.

(More seriously, "it went bad in a movie once" is a pretty lousy reason to quit the experiment, innit?)

[jkahane]

I'm not saying that it's a bad thing without qualifiers here, you guys, it's just that it sounds more like something they're doing for the wrong reasons, is all.