Woolly mammoth back from extinction

A much discussed topic. I personally find it interesting. If we could clone the tasmanian tiger, we would I guess. Because 'we' are the reason it is gone.
Some people think the early men brought the mammoth to extinction, so why not make up for our fault.
And maybe we can learn from all these cloning-efforts so it can benefit the cloning of rare animals.

To think of Jurassic Park:

John Hammond: 'I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before...'
Dr. Ian Malcolm: 'Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.'
John Hammond: 'Condors! Condors are on the verge of extinction...'
Dr. Ian Malcolm: 'No...'
John Hammond: 'If I was to create a flock of condors on this island, you wouldn't have anything to say.'
Dr. Ian Malcolm: 'No. Hold on. This isn't some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or, or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction. '
 
This is a great topic I definitely think we should clone extinct animals.... just as soon as we are sure we have protected all the species that are not extinct.
 
This topic is around for decades. I would say, all ethics of mammoth husbandry are talked over, only no possibility of mammoth. ;) Very scientific! ;)
 
Surely we should be forcusing on cloning animals that we have caused too go extinct, like the tazmanian tiger, quagga, javan tiger, golden toad, carribean monk seal, that sort of thing?
 
I think it boils down to initial economics. There is money (big assumption on my part, but I would not doubt it is there) to bring back something like a mammoth. People want to see something big and charismatic that no one has ever seen before.

It is kind of analogous to the NASA missions to the Moon. Did we need to do them, no. Should we have done them? Abso-freakin-lutely! The technology that humankind gained from pushing science to its limits is immeasurable.

If we are able to clone a long extinct animal like a Mammoth, think of the ramifications it will have for current critically endangered species. The technology to clone animals like the Northern White Rhino or the Thylocine or the Bluebuck will come down in price and we can begin to rectify the mistakes that were made.

We are humans, it is our destiny to figure out how the world works.
 
As someone who loves proboscideans I would LOVE to see a live mammoth. In Ventura County, California where I live there was a species of pygmy mammoth that lived on the Channel Islands islands off of the coast (Channel Islands National Park - The Pygmy Mammoth (U.S. National Park Service)), and it would be wonderful to see a live one rather than just skeletons.

I hope that mammoths and other species can be brought back from the dead by cloning.

An equally difficult task that is equally (or more) important is trying to sustainably conserve the living proboscideans and at least some of their habitat. I hope that we will be able to clone a mammoth, but also keep their living relatives from needing to be cloned.
 
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LizardInsanity said:
I'd personally love to see the day a thylacine walks again. Or any extinct animal for that matter.
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I remember that there was an effort from an Australian natural history museum to put together the thylacine genome from DNA fragments from the existing preserved individuals as the first step in cloning them. Does anybody know if this project is ongoing?

Update: apparently the project that I was thinking of ended in failure, but there has been some success in sequencing some parts of the genome and playing around with them in some cloning exercises (still far from actually cloning the investigators say).
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/05/20/2249769.htm
 
jbnbsn99 said:
I think it boils down to initial economics. There is money (big assumption on my part, but I would not doubt it is there) to bring back something like a mammoth. People want to see something big and charismatic that no one has ever seen before.

It is kind of analogous to the NASA missions to the Moon. Did we need to do them, no. Should we have done them? Abso-freakin-lutely! The technology that humankind gained from pushing science to its limits is immeasurable.

If we are able to clone a long extinct animal like a Mammoth, think of the ramifications it will have for current critically endangered species. The technology to clone animals like the Northern White Rhino or the Thylocine or the Bluebuck will come down in price and we can begin to rectify the mistakes that were made.

We are humans, it is our destiny to figure out how the world works.
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I generally agree on this point, however I agree that the quote made by Animal is also true. If we need this mammoth cloning in order too save species that we've caused too go extinct+that are on the brink of extinction then so be it.

David, I may be mis-understanding your post, but are you suggesting we should release mammoths in the wild?
 
Cat-Man said:
David, I may be mis-understanding your post, but are you suggesting we should release mammoths in the wild?
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Hi Cat-man. I'm saying that we need to conserve the living elephants too, as well as cloning mammoths.
 
The environments where Mammoth's once lived has changed so much it would be problematic if we released them to areas such as Europe, Russia, Etc. Their niche has been filled and they will either die or push other species out.

I think it will be a valuable conservation message as well. We have to right our wrongs.
 
Has their former niche been filled? Or has the habitat changed because there are no more mammoths?

There is an initiative to restore steppe habitat in Russia through the re-introduction of animals to Siberia. Some of species once roamed this region and others are species similar to extinct species. If mammoths were re-created and introduction to the wild, similar results could occur.

Pleistocene Park: Restoration of the Mammoth Steppe Ecosystem
 
I'd imagine things like musk ox, caribou, and moose have taken over the niche. The mammoth would probably force them to leave. The habitat has probably changed to like less seed dispersal by the mammoths or climate change.
 
How about using the money on saving species that haven't gone extinct yet but are well on the way before spending money on the ones that are already gone? Cloning is immensely expensive. You could make 10s of conservation projects (100s if focusing on small non-migratory species, like frogs) for animals that are on the way to become extinct for the price it would cost to clone and revive a single extinct species. Or should we wait until the species that are heading for extinction have become extinct and then start a revival program with cloning for them? About the least cost-effective way to preserve nature and in an economic where it is likely there will be fewer money for conservation.
 
jbnbsn99 said:
If we are able to clone a long extinct animal like a Mammoth, think of the ramifications it will have for current critically endangered species. The technology to clone animals like the Northern White Rhino or the Thylocine or the Bluebuck will come down in price and we can begin to rectify the mistakes that were made.
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The price of cloning has fallen and will continue to fall but (for now) it remains extremely expensive. The misunderstanding is that cloning one extinct species will make it much easier to clone others. Unfortunately it is a bit more complex and it apppears tecniques and success is very species (or at least group-) specific. Good results in one species doesn't necessarily make it easier in another, if unrelated.

Since no one has mentioned it I would point out that one extinct taxon already has been cloned: Pyrenean ibex (Spanish ibex race) was cloned in 2009. They got almost 300 embryos and implanted about 50. One survied to birth but died a few minutes later. This was a comparably "easy" cloning because of earlier experiance with cloning sheep and goat, close relatives of ibex. If someone absolutely wants to spend the wild amount of money on cloning an extinct animal instead of saving species that are heading to extinction, obvious candidates would be aurochs or kouprey (could use the experiance gained from already cloned water buffalo, gaur and domestic cattle) or tarpan (could use the experiance gained from already cloned horse and mule). If people want to clone mammoth they might want to try elephant first!
 
As I understand it, it isn't a case of choosing an animal that has gone extinct and reproducing it, but rather looking at what we have sufficient DNA for and also a suitable host species. Mammoths have been found frozen and I believe the dna is quite good, the foetus can also be carried by an elephant as a very similar species.
One of the criticisms of the thylacine project was that no living animal is similar enough to develop it. We'd need another large marsupial carnivore, and we just don't have any.
Personally I think that any extinct animal being reproduced would bring a lot of funding and interest which could in turn be used to help preserve living creatures.
 
Devi said:
As I understand it, it isn't a case of choosing an animal that has gone extinct and reproducing it, but rather looking at what we have sufficient DNA for and also a suitable host species.
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Actually, it is a choice. They spend lots of money on finding DNA that is thousands of years old. For the examples I mentioned in my last post they could visit a major museum and extract much younger DNA from large bones. Femur or mandible is a common choice. A standard procedure that often is used in taxonomic DNA work. Most taxonomic discussion about the kouprey in the last 5 years has been based on DNA samples extracted like this from specimens that are around 100 years old. Yes, if someones actually tried to get a complete DNA sequence from the specimens it would be harder, more expensive (still much cheaper than the mammoth) and the sequence would have some holes. These holes could be filled out based on close relatives (e.g., banteng). Exactly like the holes in the DNA sequences of the mammoth will be filled out by modern elephant DNA. Aurochs, kouprey and tarpan all have close living relatives that are the same size (closer than mammoth and modern elephant), i.e. suitable carriers exists. But I do agree on the points raised about the thylacine. The only chance of successful cloning of it would be when scientists also mastered artificial fetal development = artificial uterus aka "pregnancy in a test tube". There are scientists that work on that but they're some distance from the goal.

A secondary question specific to the mammoth: Let's assume they get the DNA and make the embryos. Because of the basis the success rate would almost certainly be lower than cloning attempts based on animals that are not extinct, which is a few percent at most. For something like this they would certainly only use female elephants that are in the optimum reproductive age as carriers. These would have to be taken out of any normal elephant breeding programmes during the attempts. That means they would need 10s of females and these would have to be kept under highly controlled conditions. Where are they going to get that many female elephants that are in the optimum reproductive age?
 
condor said:
Where are they going to get that many female elephants that are in the optimum reproductive age?
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There are many countrys in asia where you can get from the elephant-work-camps pretty cheap young females.
 
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