WTF: Startup wants to bring the mammoth back to life
Yes, really: a startup wants to bring the mammoth back to life. How, and perhaps more importantly, why?
There are things you have to resign yourself to. One of those things is that extinction really means extinction. So we can only look at the dodos, dinosaurs and mammoths through generated images and models.
Mammoth to life
And yet, startup Colossal promises to bring the mammoth back to life. Real mammoths. Live mammoths. The project is appropriately named ‘Wooly Mammoth’ and the idea is indeed to create living mammoths. At least, they reverse evolution. We no longer have mammoths, but we do have elephants. Elephants resemble mammoths, but without the fur that made mammoths unique. Colossal wants to ‘dress’ elephants again in such a way that they get fur, by modifying the DNA. The ‘base’ will be the African elephant and even though it won’t officially become a mammoth, the gait, the fur and just about everything else comes very close to the mammoth.
Why?
Fun, playing with animals’ DNA, but genetically engineered elephants don’t make the world happy, right? No, the ‘mammoth’ who wants to bring Colossal back to life must have a purpose. That goal is to bring life back to the tundras and various polar regions. These areas have a drastically different ecosystem than thousands of years ago and placing mammoths can boost these ecosystems. It can also save the elephant, as both the Asian and African elephants have protected status due to potential extinction. Preparing the elephants like mammoths for a completely different habitat can provide new diversity for the elephants.
A somewhat bizarre project and an equally bizarre statement that ‘the mammoth comes back to life’. However, the company is dead serious. You can see how it will all happen on the Colossal website.
