Hello all!!!! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! I certainly think I did, as I lovingly eye my new camping gear 😀 For tonight’s slight late blog post is a slightly controversial topic that I found pretty interesting; The cloning of a woolly mammoth. Many scientists believe that with a good enough DNA sample, a mammoth could be cloned from that DNA and be brought to life not too far in the future. My first thought is “Wow! That’s fantastic!”, but I’d be a little worried that governments would keep them all locked up and make them nothing but rare zoo decorations. Regardless, the idea of humans restoring a species that we caused to go extinct is a wonderful prospect. Humans have a habit of taking from nature and giving nothing back, so this could open up all sorts of possibilities 🙂
( photo:
Brett Neilson)
Recently, a mammoth carcass discovered in Siberia has the best chance to be cloned. Discovered in the ice, the carcass was surprisingly well preserved. In previous mammoth discoveries, the bodies are not well preserved, with the blood being reduced to powder and no intact DNA for a cloning. The Siberian mammoth, nicknamed “Buttercup”, was actually (forgive the term) oozing blood during the excavation. Insung Hwang, a cloning scientist at the SOOAM Biotech Research Center, said “This is definitely one of the best samples people have ever found”.
Another plan for bring back the woolly mammoth is to take parts of their DNA that include the fur and unique features, and add them to an elephant’s DNA. Instead of creating a completely authentic extinct species, it would use a genetic copy-and-paste tool called CRISPR to create a hybrid between a woolly mammoth and an regular Asian elephant. Very similar to the plot of the most recent Jurassic World movie, it would make the animal not 100% a woolly mammoth, but would be so close that it likely wouldn’t make much difference.
While it seems we will soon be able to bring back extinct species, many are skeptical if we should. A religious view is that bringing life falls under the domain of their god, and that science should stay away from the subject all together. Another view is that if we allow genetic splicing to advance far enough to create an extinct species, then what is to stop governments from creating dangerous hybrids or do the same experiments on humans? As for me personally, I think bringing back extinct animals is a brilliant idea, assuming that the new addition to the animal kingdom will not upset the current food chain too much. It would be an amazing thing to see a woolly mammoth brought back into our world, and I hope more steps are taken to protect the animals to prevent an extinction of an animal like the mammoth again.
Let me know what you think! Do you like the idea of restoring an extinct species or do you think we should leave things as they are? Talk to ya next week!
~Emrys
Wild Knights 