[HN Gopher] Colossal Biosciences Aims to 'De-Extinct' the Woolly...
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Colossal Biosciences Aims to 'De-Extinct' the Woolly Mammoth
Author : bcaulfield
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-05-16 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.nvidia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.nvidia.com)
| pvaldes wrote:
| I thing that mammoth is a really poor choice for de-extinction. I
| would wish to be wrong, but is not a really well matured plan.
| atlantic wrote:
| How about the auroch? Its extinction is much more recent, so
| presumably the available DNA is in much better shape.
| tmtvl wrote:
| When talking about recency, how about the dodo or great auk?
| ZachWick wrote:
| The fantastic documentary "We Are As Gods" about Stewart Brand
| spends a considerable amount of time on this topic as he is
| involved in many of these efforts.
|
| https://www.weareasgods.film/
| salynchnew wrote:
| Weird that the Long Now project has basically made no progress on
| its own de-extinction efforts since 2012.
|
| However, it seems like they have made some worthwhile
| contributions in terms of conserving populations of existing wild
| pachyderms (a more useful undertaking in general, imho) by
| partially sequencing the elephant herpes virus, etc.
|
| https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/history-of...
| neets wrote:
| What about all those other species of Hominid?
| logdap wrote:
| [dead]
| hnuser847 wrote:
| ^^^this. I would find this infinitely more interesting than
| cloning a wooly mammoth or a dinosaur.
| kadoban wrote:
| I do not think we are morally sophisticated enough, as a
| society/species, to handle that without it going to shit.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| Where would it live? I assume like many mammals, it needs to be
| raised and taught by its parents. Are they gonna drive up to the
| Canadian border and just dump it off?
| justrealist wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park seems like a
| good option
| schainks wrote:
| There was a good Oxford style debate on NPR about whether
| resurrecting the mammoth is a good idea. The most interesting
| point I heard _against_ doing something like this was along
| these lines:
|
| If we were to use an elephant mother host to grow the fetus,
| once the mammoth is born, it is possible the herd will
| immediately recognize the baby as an anomaly and abandon it.
| Thus, this child is born into a world of suffering, not just
| for the herd that rejects it, but for the individual who is
| raised alone with no family, possibly by humans only. What will
| we do when the next one is born? Just put the two individuals
| in a space together and hope for the best?
|
| De-extincting such a creature carries additional costs we don't
| know how to quantify. Once that first, lonely, individual is
| sexually mature, will it even want to mate? Will it have the
| social skills to accept other future artificially-born mammoths
| as part of its herd? We have no way of "recreating" the social
| environment a mammoth would need to thrive in order to bring a
| self-sustaining herd of the species into balanced existence.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| A wooly mammoth calf will look similar enough to an elephant
| calf that this would not be an issue.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/13/firm-
| bring-b...
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Are you judging that from the one photo of a 10,000 year
| old preserved carcass that looks like a baby elephant?
|
| I don't know what features elephants use to tell their
| calves apart, but in an alternate universe I would bet that
| elephants would say the same about a 10,000 old preserved
| carcass of a baby Homo Habilis and us.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Yes, and from being somewhat familiar with the behavior
| of elephants. I'm not saying my hunch has any basis to
| it, but if I was thinking about investing in Colossal
| Biosciences, calf rejection from the birth mother would
| be very low on my list of concerns.
|
| In that alternate universe, I suspect that 99% of mothers
| would not just leave their newly birthed baby out in the
| elements to die if it happened to be a homo habilis
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Is there any evidence of this sort of acceptance between
| African and Asian elephants (say, in zoos)? I wouldn't be
| surprised if that had been attempted, and they appear
| further removed from one another than mammoths and Asian
| elephants are.
| technothrasher wrote:
| There was a zoo crossbred elephant. I think Motty was its
| name. It didn't survive long after birth. But it shows
| that African and Asian elephants will breed at least,
| which implies they'd probably raise a mismatched calf.
| nemo wrote:
| That's a claim they made without any evidence to support
| it, which is a troubling trend with this team. Personally I
| see them as engaging in unethical behavior by their
| misleading statements like that one where they genuinely
| can't know whether the hybrid would be rejected.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Sure - I was just providing the link so one could see
| what a wooly mammoth calf might look like. Elephants are
| extremely bonded and very caring of their/their group's
| young, they take care of sick or injured elephants in
| their group - clearly there is no evidence for how an
| elephant would behave but I have my suspicion that a
| mammoth calf born would be readily accepted.
| schainks wrote:
| Is an optimistic suspicion _enough_ to risk inflicting a
| lifetime of suffering if our suspicion was completely
| wrong on multiple levels? Even if the genes we splice
| work as expected, do we know they correctly produce an
| individual who can correctly socially mature?
|
| And of course, my next favorite argument from the anti-
| resurrection team was, "ok, we've produced a herd of
| socially functioning individuals who can reproduce and
| grow their own population. How long until we start using
| them for food again or straight up industrially farming
| them?"
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Well, we could just euthanize the mammoth. These concerns
| didn't stop us from cloning dolly, or doing hundreds of
| other genetic experiments. Or millions of other instances
| of animal testing.
| mc32 wrote:
| There are observed cases of mammals raising a different
| species of mammal, including wet-nursing them, so it does not
| seem to be the problem it's purported to be.
| zachruss92 wrote:
| Starting in Siberia, Pleistocene Park.
|
| Interesting question. I know the'll IVF an elephant (this is
| speculation) which I assume will raise it to an extent (though
| they could bottle feed I guess... thats a lot of milk).
| Mammoths are pack animals so I guess they'll need a bunch of
| them before they're released.
|
| https://colossal.com/pleistocene-park-return-of-the-mammoths...
| sn0wf1re wrote:
| If it is anything like an elephant, it would live in a herd.
| Just bringing a single one into this world seems somewhat
| cruel.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I wonder how it would taste, given our ancestors' hankering for
| their meat.
| evan_ wrote:
| You can find out for $30 plus shipping:
|
| https://shop.minimuseum.com/products/mammoth-meat
|
| "We recommend keeping it in the jar at all times as it can be
| fragrant when exposed."
| arp242 wrote:
| That reminds me of the guy that cooked some giant squid that
| washed ashore (which had never been seen outside of carcasses
| when this interview was done) and ended up researching why it
| tasted so bitter https://youtu.be/0z5oziSqQOs?t=703
|
| So there may be some scientific value? I am NOT volunteering.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Mix elephant meat with a generous dose of lard in a pan. My bet
| would be that not much different.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| This is all very nice and they've made lots of announcements and
| raised a lot of money.
|
| Do it. Do something. Stop talking and deliver.
| echelon wrote:
| You have to hype to raise funds and hire. It also helps build a
| moat against competitors - it signals that the limited dollars
| are probably allocated and that competitors would have to
| expend energy working against you.
|
| The hustle is real because often 100% research in a vacuum
| won't attain the activation energy it needs. Another
| possibility is that another team watching you might quickly
| follow and duplicate everything you've done and scale it faster
| than you.
|
| Downside: if you fail, it can salt the earth for some years
| before a new team can start again.
|
| We all see a lot of hucksters hyping themselves up and a lot of
| failures that never delivered. It's why we develop a callus
| against hype. But if you ever need it yourself, you shouldn't
| shy away from it. It's useful and serves a purpose.
| gedy wrote:
| > It also helps build a moat against competitors
|
| Resurrecting a mammoth?
| uticus wrote:
| Apart from if this should happen, what is the thought process for
| choosing what to "de-extinct"? Marketability (large mammal vs
| tiny insect excites the populace more, leading to funding)?
| Viability (proximity to existing species genome means less work
| filling the gaps, quicker to market)? Biological disruption (some
| species easier to control than others)? Other?
|
| Also, what geopolitical entity is willing to host the results?
| For example wooly mammoth might really appeal to tropical-based
| group, but must be hosted in sub-arctic region.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Probably all of the above, plus:
|
| - Availability of genetic material (for extinct animals) can be
| widely variable. For something like mammoths, we've been able
| to extract genetic material from frozen arctic samples; one
| would have to assume that samples as large as mammoths are more
| likely to draw notice and researchers than, say, a preserved
| mosquito (Jurassic park notwithstanding).
|
| - Proximity to existing species' reproductive biology: we know
| _a lot_ about how to manipulate reproductive processes in large
| placental mammals, and most of this sort of cloning is
| performed mechanically by harnessing the reproductive process
| of a host with similar biology (in this case presumably by
| implanting an embryo in a modern elephant for gestation).
| dmreedy wrote:
| > Marketability (large mammal vs tiny insect excites the
| populace more, leading to funding)?
|
| Conservationists often leverage the concept of "Charismatic
| Megafauna"[0] to serve as splashy poster children for broader,
| more practical efforts.
|
| ---
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_megafauna
| Metacelsus wrote:
| See my take on this here: https://www.readcodon.com/p/extinction
|
| Basically, it will be quite challenging and I think they are
| over-promising on the timeline. They are also not even going to
| make a wooly mammoth, but rather a hairy elephant.
| soperj wrote:
| At a certain point a hairy elephant becomes a wolly mammoth,
| like the Quagga are no longer Zebra.
| arp242 wrote:
| That depends on the evolutionary pressures it's subjected to;
| it can evolve in any number of ways.
|
| The mammoth lived in an ecosystem that no longer exists: the
| mammoth steppes and all associated plants and wildlife. This
| is an important reason (perhaps even the main reason) they
| went extinct in the first place.
|
| This is another problem with de-extinction for some species:
| what do you do with the animals once you've got them? For
| mammoths it's an open question if they could survive in the
| wild even _if_ they 're exact clones of the original, and
| even more so if they're "hairy elephants".
|
| Either way, whatever will happen with these "hairy elephant",
| they most likely won't evolve in to mammoths as they existed
| 20,000 years ago.
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