A Bioscience and Genetics Company Wants to Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth

It’s okay, they have good intentions. And good intentions mean everything will work out fine, right? Wait..who’s that in the back saying something about the road to hell? It’s obvious you’re a Luddite who doesn’t understand that science is always right and if we can do something, we should absolutely, positively do it. If you understood what’s going on here, obviously you’d agree that we should mess around with genetic reengineering a little more and see what happens next. So, listen very carefully and I’ll explain the mammoth hybrid theory to you. Yes, it’s a theory. Not everyone has joined the cheer squad on new pseudo-mammoths roaming around in the arctic and whether they would actually be the global-warming transformation they’re being theorized to be.

“Gee, the lack of humility before nature that’s being displayed here, uh… staggers me.”

— Dr. Ian Malcolm

As shown above, I’ve added some quotes from Jurassic Park to this article for added amusement. I thought about making the quotes a quiz. Who said this? A very smart Harvard scientist who wants to “de extinct” the woolly mammoth to help stop climate change or a character in Jurassic Park? But then I realized it might be too scary if everybody — including scientists — flunked the quiz. Instead, I’ll just give you the Jurassic Park quotes and the layperson, non-scientist explanation about this whole woolly mammoth thing, because we all know it’s important to read stuff from people who don’t really know what they’re talking about but can make jokes. I’ve got a Twitter account AND a Facebook account. I know how it works. Here goes.

The melting of the arctic permafrost is said to be one of the greatest threats to the earth because it releases a massive amount of greenhouse gases that are frozen — basically locked into — the ice. During the Pleistocene Epoch when woolly mammoths and other large animals like bison and horses were roaming around, the tundra was grassy steppes. The grazing herbivores kept the trees and bushes down by making them their breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The mammoth woolly mammoths (see what I did there?) helped maintain the grasslands by doing woolly mammoth things like digging up the earth and knocking down trees, and pooping wherever they wanted, which fertilized the grasslands. Plus, their big feet tromped through the snow and ice, letting the chill seep down deep into the permafrost and helping to lock into the ice the stuff we don’t want to escape now. This makes me wonder if the methane we don’t want to escape from the permafrost includes ancient woolly mammoth farts. I bet it does.

The guess is that when mammoths and some other animals bit the dust (may they rest in peace until scientists find their frozen, preserved carcasses and steal their DNA to create new species, amen) there was nothing left to stop larger plants and forests from popping up, and those forests started doing those things that are great for the rainforest, but apparently a death knell to the arctic tundra. Don’t ask me why. I’m not a scientist. But I don’t feel bad about that because even the scientists aren’t sure about all this. If I were a scientist, I’d give you an educated guess on whether the carbon they’re trying to lock into the permafrost includes ancient mammoth poop and, if so, why they’re not worried about new kind-of-mammoths pooping up the place and increasing climate change.

“That is one big pile of shit.”

— Dr. Ian Malcolm

Sorry for the poop jokes — sort of. They were too hard to resist.

Anyway, the mammoths went extinct 10,000 years ago (for the most part; there were pockets of survivors that lasted longer), but scientists are not exactly sure how the whole mammoth echo system worked. They’re guessing. Educated guessing by very smart scientists, but still guessing. It’s important to keep in mind that all the postulations are based on guessing (and some facts, and some guessing about facts), when you’re trying to decide whether it’s a good idea to make a designer version of a six-to-fifteen-ton extinct animal, depending out what kind of recovered mammoth DNA you want to splice with Asian elephant DNA to get your f̵r̵a̵n̵k̵e̵n̵e̵l̵e̵p̵h̵a̵n̵t̵ woolly mammoth. If people are pissed off over genetically modified corn, you can assume they might also have something to say about genetically modified elephants roaming around, who may decide they’d rather live in Florida and drink margaritas than spend all day tearing down trees in the Alaskan tundra.

Fighting Climate Change with Mammoths

The theory is that if we bring back woolly mammoths, they will stomp around eating trees and brush, and we’ll eventually get a new (based on the old) ecosystem of tundra grassland steppes. The new, not-really-mammoths will help maintain the new ecosystem by doing all the previously mentioned things to help keep the carbon sequestered in the permafrost, instead of the permafrost melting and all the global-warming nastiness being allowed back into the atmosphere to make things warmer. Because trees are good for the rainforest but not for the tundra. This has something to do with the differences in biomes. I feel smarter now that I’ve said the word biomes. You should try it.

“The question is, how can you know anything about an extinct ecosystem? And therefore, how could you ever assume that you can control it?

— Dr. Ellie Sattler

To create the woolly mammoth climate change heroes, the company, Colossal, is planning on editing the DNA of Asian elephants to make embryos with mammoth hair and tendencies, including a layer of insulating fat, shaggy hair, and smaller ears that will help the genetically engineered faux-mammoths to survive the nippy arctic. They’re going to try to design the animals so that they won’t be a target of ivory poachers, by not gene-editing mammoth tusks into the elephant DNA. But it makes you wonder. If the original mammoths had tusks when they were helping to maintain the grassy tundra, isn’t it possible the new mammoths will need them? If someone expects you to be knocking down trees to save the planet, maybe they shouldn’t gene edit into oblivion the tools you might need to do that?

There May Be a Few Problems with the Plan

Colossal just received $15 million dollars in funding from a group of investors, including Silicon Valley venture capital firms and Tony Robbins, who really wants to help the new woolly mammoths to live healthier, wealthier, more fulfilling, passionate, and purposeful lives. Bless his heart, he sounds nice. But $15 million dollars doesn’t go that far, I’m betting, in the realm of de-extinction of very large animals. Artificial wombs have been proposed, and a full-term elephant pregnancy is 22 months. That’s a lot of expensive womb storage. They haven’t definitively ruled out using live elephants, and that’s a lot of elephant Airbnb rentals. And elephant food. And actual elephants.

“Don’t you see the danger inherent in what you’re doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun.”

— Dr. Ian Malcolm

There was a study recently done on a 17,000-year-old woolly mammoth tusk. It showed that over the 28-year lifespan of the male mammoth who was carrying the tusk around attached to his head, the animal walked tens of thousands of miles, back and forth across what is now Alaska. That’s going to mean a lot of space will be required to have herds of woolly mammoths out there saving the planet by turning the tundra back into grassy steppes and keeping the carbon captured. Millions of square miles in places such as Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland, Iceland, and Scandinavia. It’s about five thousand miles from Alaska to Florida sunshine and margaritas. What if the de-extincted mammoths learn to walk in a straight(er) line?

There’s a human factor, too. Inuits — the indigenous people of the Tundra — number 180,000 in the United States, Canada, Russia, and Greenland. Is anybody asking them whether they want their native lands rewilded to herds of almost-but-not-really mammoths with no tusks, and with no elephant parents to keep them in line? Elephants are well known for strong mother-child bonds, but the Asian elephants that may be used as surrogate wombs can’t be shipped to the Arctic. Who’s going to teach the woolly mammoths to be woolly mammoths? Who’s going to show them the woolly mammoth ropes?

“The world has just changed so radically, and we’re all running to catch up. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions but look… two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?” — Dr. Alan Grant

You know those cute videos you see on Facebook and Twitter of weird animal pairs like a dog whose best friend is a donkey, or a squirrel who likes to hang out with the family cat? Maybe the caribou or the polar bears can look out for the new, parentless elemammoths. (I made that word up from elephant and mammoth put together. Using two things to make another thing makes me feel powerful. I might be getting the appeal of this gene-smushing, playing-God scenario.) There’s evidence that mammoths and polar bears lived together during the last ice age. That would make for some really cute youtube videos and social media posts. Has anyone checked into that?

There’s Already a J̵u̵r̵a̵s̵s̵i̵c̵ Pleistocene Park

There’s already a Pleistocene Park in Russia, where a Russian ecologist has been studying the permafrost since the 1980s and worrying about the carbon dioxide and methane that could seep into the atmosphere if we allow it to melt. He and his son have 20 square kilometers of land, with plans to expand. There, they do things like knock down trees and bring in large herbivores such as reindeer, bison, elk, and Bactrian camels, to see what their effect on the landscape may be, as science tries to emulate the environment of the grassland tundra of the Ice Age, when mammoths roamed the earth.

“We’re gonna make a fortune with this place.” — Donald Gennaro

Colossal and the Russian ecologist have a friendly, unofficial agreement that Pleistocene Park could host some of the future science-designed mammoths. I think we should double-check to make sure all the Jurassic Park movies were released in Russia.

The Bottom Line

While they’re working toward future herds of faux-mammoths roaming the future grassland steppe tundra, Colossal hopes to also be creating new and profitable biotechnologies, including tools that would supplement traditional conservation approaches. I don’t know what this means exactly, but I know a bottom line when I see one. There’s a lot of talk of it really being about increasing the earth's biodiversity, but the cantina scene from Star Wars was full of biodiversity, and maybe we should make sure we know a little more about what we’re doing before we start doing it. Scientists experimenting with gene-splicing, t̵w̵e̵r̵k̵i̵n̵g̵ tweaking genomes, and melding different species together that had common ancestors but split into separate species 6 million years ago, might not be on everybody’s top ten list lately. What happens if one of the new woolly mammoths falls in love with a pangolin or visits a wet market? Or we decide that mammoths need bat wings?

Companies want to make money. That’s a given. We’re a capitalist country. But if Colossal never manages to make a hybrid calf (6-year estimate) or a self-sustaining frankenherd (estimated as taking decades to establish), they’re probably still going to come up with some other things that maybe someone should be paying attention to before they’re released to impact our biomes. (See? I remembered that word and used it again, so I feel even more non-scientist smart than I did before.) What if we decide we should make hippogriffs? (They do seem pretty cool.) Or maybe we need flying parrot jaguars so they can soar over the rainforests and call out people who are harming the trees?

“God help us, we’re in the hands of engineers.” — Dr. Ian Malcolm