[HN Gopher] Lab-grown woolly mammoths could walk the Earth in si...
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Lab-grown woolly mammoths could walk the Earth in six years
Author : FeaturelessBug
Score : 18 points
Date : 2022-07-23 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Don't they watch the movies? Does this ever end happily?
| remarkEon wrote:
| >"Our goal is in the successful de-extinction of inter-breedable
| herds of mammoths that we can leverage in the rewilding of the
| Arctic. And then we want to leverage those technologies for what
| we're calling thoughtful, disruptive conservation," Lamm told
| CNBC.
|
| What ecological benefits would de-extincting mammoths and re-
| introducing them to the Arctic bring? Genuinely curious.
| mishkovski wrote:
| > If these revived woolly mammoths eventually repopulate the
| Arctic, they would take down small trees and help repopulate
| the grasses they thrive on, Church said. Those grasses reflect
| sunlight better than the dark trunks of the conifer trees that
| live there. In addition, the woolly mammoths tamp down the
| snow, making it less insulating.
|
| Those grasses would cool the ecosystem, in turn reducing the
| release of trapped methane gas from melting permafrost, a major
| contributor to global warming.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Given our previous fairly mixed results with introducing
| foreign species into new habitats where they can flourish, this
| sounds like it'd most likely be pretty bad for the current
| ecosystems there.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I'm not sure that the Arctic needs "rewilding", it is still a
| wild environment. What's definitely needed is protecting it.
|
| Mammoths were adapted to the ice age while we are in a climate
| warming crisis... apparently they lived in steppes called
| "mammoth steps" that are very rare today [1]. So realistically
| this would just be a tourist attraction a la Jurassic Park.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_steppe
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Jurassic Park was a warning you fools
| qihqi wrote:
| This artificial womb thing it talked about might be the solution
| to truly eliminate gender inequality. Oh Brave New World!
| silisili wrote:
| I'm not a paleontologist or anything, but it seems rather cruel
| to bring back an ice age creature, well adapted to frigid
| temperatures, into a world we've basically been heating since
| their disappearence. Especially considering climate change is
| thought to be one of the reasons for their extinction in the
| first place.
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| Shave them and sell the wool. They'll be buzz cut mammoths.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Kind of like a Roko's basilisk situation
| xyzwave wrote:
| When Tim Ferriss interviewed Stewart Brand on this [1], it
| sounded like the intention was to introduce them to the far
| north which is both closer to their natural habitat, and far
| away from people. Sounds in-line with the article here.
|
| Relevant snippet from Brand:
|
| > Eventually, the rest of that story is that woolly mammoths
| could be part of the revival of what used to be called the
| Mammoth Steppe, which is the grasslands of the far north, which
| was once the largest biome on Earth ... what [Mammoths] are
| good at is knocking down trees. Knocking down trees is good
| because it turns a closed-canopy forest into mosaic, and a
| mosaic is a much richer ecological environment for all kinds of
| species.
|
| 1. https://tim.blog/2018/02/03/the-tim-ferriss-show-
| transcripts...
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Geologically speaking the Earth is on the tail end of an ice
| age and has been way hotter than it has been today. I'm sure a
| mammoth would thrive in places like Alaska and Canada.
| seanhunter wrote:
| I bumped into Ben Lamm by coincidence at a business dinner (he
| was having dinner at the next table at a really small place and
| instead him and his party just joined us as a big group) and he
| was talking about Collossal. The weird thing is he wants bring
| back multiple extinct species and to recoup the investment by
| essentially running zoo exhibits. So you would pay to go see the
| wooly mammoth or whatever. I love that this exists and would love
| them to succeed but the plan seems pretty out there.
| remarkEon wrote:
| I mean, it's not really _that_ out there. Michael Crichton
| wrote a book about the idea in 1990.
| blamestross wrote:
| The only big difference is that dinosaurs and (less so)
| mammoths would have a horrible time adapting to modern
| atmosphere and climate
| bryankaplan wrote:
| Life finds a way.
| blamestross wrote:
| _Looks at diversity of fossil record pointedly_
|
| _looks at extant life pointedly_
|
| Sure, some life finds a way, but 99.99% of it doesn't.
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| > Life finds a way.
|
| This is -- famously -- almost completely untrue.
| HillRat wrote:
| I'm a bit skeptical about the chances of this overall, but
| Ben's a showman, so it's a good fit for his enthusiasm. Wishing
| him luck.
| [deleted]
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Why should we do this? The planet is warming, they won't be able
| to keep themselves cool enough with all that hair.
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