— golf clap—
I’ve read that zookeepers have to use blowtorches on elephants to burn off their hair (which in the wild would be abraded off by trees, etc.). If mammoths are similar, their fur would not be something you would want next to your skin.
Even older males see a storehouse of grain or a garden as food rather than private property. 
Then teach the mammoths to sing:
Don’t murder me,
I beg you, you don’t murder me
Ple-ease don’t murder me
in that laid-back Jerry Garcia style.
:eek:
Really? cite, please.
It was a minor point in Poul Anderson’s 1954 SF novel Brain Wave. Other than that, I got nuttin’.
I think we need to clone Mimmoths. As seen in Girl Genius.
I recall the same. Looking at Google, PETA is screaming about it; whether or not it’s actually uncomfortable for the elephant I don’t know. PETA and similar folk have trouble grasping that what’s bad for a human is not necessarily bad for an elephant; blowtorch on a human = gruesome; blowtorch on elephant = grooming, apparently.
And I think Mimmoths would be cool. And House Mammoths.
I vaguely remember that, but cannot find a cite.
I “petted” using the term loosely, an Asian elephant at the zoo. It was rather like thumping a brick wall covered in steel wool.
I wasn’t going to tell Malodorous until he tried on the boxer shorts.
You’ve ruined everything.
I have seen women who intentionally apply fire to their hair. I think it has something to do with split ends. I cut my own hair at home with a #1 comb on a clipper, so don’t take me as an authority on hair care.
As Pleonast pointed out, though, the modern elephant doesn’t have predators.
When hunting herd animals, it’s not just about whether your pack can manage to drag down an old, sick or young one; it’s also about whether the other herd members will stomp your pack into the ground when they try. Yes, caribou are bigger than wolves, but they certainly don’t have the stomping power of mammoths. I think smart wolves would quickly learn to leave mammoth herds alone.
Bears, hunting individually rather than in packs, would be even more vulnerable to a herd stomping, despite their size and strength. I seriously doubt you could rely on wolves and bears to keep the mammoth population in check. And unchecked mammoth overpopulation is not a pretty thought.
How would they use a single female specimen to create a viable wild population? For one thing, you’d also need a male specimen so you could clone a mate for the female.
Even if you had that, I wouldn’t think that 2 specimens constitute a big enough genetic pool to create a viable wild population.
I think that the most you could do with this one specimen is clone females for zoos and research.
No longer the prevailing one, it’s been partially discredited.
Or at least the “overkill or Blitzkrieg” hypothesis by Martin has been discredited.
Humans are likely at least partially to blame, maybe the major culprit.
In this GQ thread we went back and forth.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=391689&highlight=Pleistocene
Here’s some links:
Here’s more:http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/23/14624
"Understanding of the Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions has been advanced recently by the application of simulation models and new developments in geochronological dating. Together these have been used to posit a rapid demise of megafauna due to over-hunting by invading humans. However, we demonstrate that the results of these extinction models are highly sensitive to implicit assumptions concerning the degree of prey naivety to human hunters. In addition, we show that in Greater Australia, where the extinctions occurred well before the end of the last Ice Age (unlike the North American situation), estimates of the duration of coexistence between humans and megafauna remain imprecise. Contrary to recent claims, the existing data do not prove the “blitzkrieg” model of overkill. "
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conte...act/306/5693/70
One of the great debates about extinction is whether humans or climatic change caused the demise of the Pleistocene megafauna. Evidence from paleontology, climatology, archaeology, and ecology now supports the idea that humans contributed to extinction on some continents, but human hunting was not solely responsible for the pattern of extinction everywhere. Instead, evidence suggests that the intersection of human impacts with pronounced climatic change drove the precise timing and geography of extinction in the Northern Hemisphere. The story from the Southern Hemisphere is still unfolding. New evidence from Australia supports the view that humans helped cause extinctions there, but the correlation with climate is weak or contested. Firmer chronologies, more realistic ecological models, and regional paleoecological insights still are needed to understand details of the worldwide extinction pattern and the population dynamics of the species involved.
http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/c...em-overkill.pdf
“The arguements that human hunters were responsible for the extintion of a wide variety of large Pleistocene mammals emerged in Western Europe during the 1860’s… Today the overkill position is rejected for wetsern Europe but lives on in Austrailia and North America. The survival of this hypothesis is due almost entirely to Paul Martin… In North America, archaeologists and paleotologist whose work focuses on the late Pleistocene routinely reject Martin’s postiion for two prime reasons: there is virtually no evidence that supports it, and there is a remarkably broad set of evidence that strongly suggests that it is wrong. In response, Martin asserts that the overkil model predicts a lack of supporting evidence, thus turning the absences of empirical support into support for his beliefs. We suggest that this feature of the overkill position removes the hypothesis from the realm of science and places it squarely in the realm of faith. One may or may not believe in the overkill position, but one should not confuse it with a scientific hypothesis about the nature of the North American past.”
There was never any scientific evidence for the Overkill hypothesis, thus it remains a hypothesis, not a theory.
Although I see dudes point about re-introducing Wolly Mammoths to the wild, I see no problem with Wild Animal parks or zoos. That would be so cool.
You mean… a minmoth?
Think about how annoying it is to have mice in your house.
Now imagine they have prehensile noses.
Shhhh! Or they’ll all want one on a stick. Although in Girl Genius they’re spelled mimmoths.
I think lions attack elephants.
I think Discover or Animal Planet had a program fairly recently that showed a bunch of lions attacking a healthy male elephant.
Marc
Well there you go. We’ll just need to clone a few smilodons at the same time.
Elephants are indeed prey animals.
This source carries stories of elephants killed by predators although it has none at the moment.
I guess they’d be best off here, where this bloke is trying to re-create their preferred habitat in Siberia!
There’s an audio link at the foot, as well, to the broadcast programme (which had a bit more detail).