One foresees things might just possibly go wrong here and there.
“Even now, as we survey the carnage, we must reflect that this project might well have gone flawlessly, had not generations of paleontologists held an unaccountably unexamined consensus that the mammoth resembled the elephant in vegetarian diet and lengthy breeding cycle.”
About time.
So Mammoth is going to be in Humanity’s menu once more?
Teach your children well.
I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t a McMammoth already in the works.
“Sure, that’s how it starts - oohs, aahs. But later there’s running and screaming.”
:dubious: That’s just like some people. Here we have a major breakthrough in mad science impending, and all you can think of is the most low, cheap, vulgar possibilities, completely overlooking the artistic potential of mammoth porn.
This can’t end well.
Yes - Percy, the Man-eating Mammoth is what I first thought of.
The article says that the scientists involved plan to discuss, after the egg is created and before it is implanted “whether to display it (the hoped-for living mammoth) to the public”. How much discussion would that take? It seems impossible to me that something this amazing would not be exhibited.
Depends on if they’re planning to birth it and immediately vivisect it to figure out how it ticks.
Hard to exhibit a bleeding specimen/almost-corpse, especially if it’s a furry baby one. People get all up in arms about those things.
I told my husband about it, and he read the article and responded “I hope they find a BIG elephant momma.”
I even heard his voice when I read that. You win!
Assuming they actually manage to birth something, it won’t really be a mammoth. Higher animals are their behaviors as well as just their bodies. The creature may look like a mammoth but it will act like the elephant that is its surrogate mother and from which it will learn its behaviors. For those animals, like many fish, reptiles, and amphibians, which are independent right from hatching you could do something like this and get a product that actually replicates the ancient animal both in appearance and behavior.
Oh come on, that was a given with a professor from ‘Kinki University’ involved…
One of the difficulties elephants have is traveling the last four feet through the birth canal with the umbilical cord severed.
I hate when that happens.
There are so few elephant breeding programs that are actually successful, also… makes you wonder where they are planning to find an elephant breeding program that won’t have a problem wasting valuable cycles doing trial & error IVF treatments on their breeding stock.
In the United States I think there’s only two or three elephant breeding programs (that aren’t zoos) that have actually produced calves.
Ooh! I hope they can figure out a way to shrink them down into lap dog sized mini mammoths!