Aren’t Indian elephants more closely related to them, though?
As cool as it would be to see a real live woolly mammoth, I would far rather all that money and effort be used to protect actual endangered elephants right now.
Possibly the science used to recreate the mammoth would teach us things that would help elephants.
What would help elephants is to kill the poachers, stop the black market for ivory, and to stop destroying their habitat. None of which require any new science. Just basic policework, legitimate land registries, and imprisoning a few corrupt fatcats in a few places.
That’s my reading. Maybe the size helps? I suppose they could still use an Asian egg for the closer mitochondrial DNA.
Zactly.
I’ve been intrigued about ideas to establish elephants (and other fauna) in North America. Increasing the geographical extent of species is a great way to make their extinctions less likely. But there’s obvious risks as well.
Here’s a book I enjoyed on this topic: Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive History’s Most Iconic Extinct Creature, by Ben Mezrich.
While I agree that it makes far more sense to help elephants, Mezrich’s book does make some interesting points about how the mammoth’s former biome would be improved (in the sense of making it more habitable for the animals living there currently, or who used to live there and aren’t extinct) by bringing these creatures back. Also, the science is fun to read about.