Scientists at Harvard announced this week that they are within two years of resurrecting the woolly mammoth. Harvard scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could resurrect a woolly mammoth, that they didn’t stop to think if they should. But they should. They definitely and indubitably should bring back from its icy 4,000-year slumber because FUCK YES!!! that’s why. Back from the Pleistocene AKA the Ice Age, the woolly mammoth is ready to stomp on the Earth with its shaggy 6-ton body and 14-foot tusks.
From the Guardian:
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.
“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.
Until now, the team have stopped at the cell stage, but are now moving towards creating embryos – although, they said that it would be many years before any serious attempt at producing a living creature.
Church said that these modifications could help preserve the Asian elephant, which is endangered, in an altered form. However, others have raised ethical concerns about the project.
You’ll see wet blankets who don’t want the woolly mammoth resurrected say, “The woolly mammoth went extinct for a reason.” To that I retort with, “You know what else nearly went extinct? The Twinkie. Then it was brought back to life and now we not only have Twinkies everywhere, but there’s even Twinkie Ice Cream.” The woolly mammoth could be the Twinkie success story of prehistoric creatures. Think about that.
Other killjoys want to poo-poo the idea of bringing back woolly mammoths will blab, “Yeah, but look what happened when we brought dinosaurs back from the dead in Jurassic Park.” To that I reply, “That’s a fucking make-believe movie. That would be as idiotic as comparing a processed cake product with something like a elaborate and complex science experiement.”