Scientists Optimistic About Getting a Mammoth Genome Complete Enough To Clone 187
Clark Schultz writes The premise behind Jurassic Park just got a bit more real after scientists in South Korea said they are optimistic they can extract enough DNA from the blood of a preserved woolly mammoth to clone the long-extinct mammal. The ice-wrapped woolly mammoth was found last year on an island off of Siberia. The development is being closely watched by the scientific community with opinion sharply divided on the ethics of the project.
huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?
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I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?
Study up on how cloning works. You take a zygote (fertilized egg), then wipe its genetic code, replacing it with the desired genetic code. The ethics come into play int he wiping stage. If you believe that life begins at conception, you could easily view wiping the genetic code from a zygote as killing the (potential) life.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yeah, but you wouldn't be using a human zygote for this. Seems like only the 3 craziest members of PETA in the world would have an ethical problem with this...
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Well, yeah, but you wouldn't be using a human zygote for this. Seems like only the 3 craziest members of PETA in the world would have an ethical problem with this...
The ones who think eating chickens is murder are probably paying attention to this.
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The funny thing is most anti-cloning people don't have the slightest clue about that part of the process. They might protest that if they did! Most of the complaints I've heard are more of the "You shouldn't be playing God" on the religious side vs. "You shouldn't be introducing extinct species into our modern biosphere (Jurassic Park)" on the science side. I really haven't heard much banter that bothers with the specifics of how this is all accomplished.
I say we really piss people off and clone this bea
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Well, yeah, but you wouldn't be using a human zygote for this. Seems like only the 3 craziest members of PETA in the world would have an ethical problem with this...
Are you saying it's ethical to abort animals?
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Only if you eat the abortions.
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How can you "abort" a fertilized egg that isn't even in a womb?
Abort in this sense means to end. You can abort fertilized eggs by destroying them, cooking them, etc. Abort doesn't mean to remove from the womb.
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You've never eaten eggs? What do you think eggs are?
The only fertilized eggs that I know people eat are balut. And, no, I don't eat balut.
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you know when you crack an egg in the pan and there is a little spec of blood. Quite common right? Well that is a fertilized egg. More common with free range chickens, because when chickens and roosters run around loose then...chickens gonna be chickens. Fertilized chicken egg, just as delicious and I don't lay awake at night thinking about it.
Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)
You have been misinformed.
1. Commercial laying houses do NOT have roosters running around with the hens. This would be pointless and uneconomical. When you buy a dozen eggs from the store, there is a zero percent chance that they will be fertilized.
2. My family eats fertilized eggs daily. I cannot remember the last time I saw a speck of blood in an egg.
Blood specks have nothing to do with the egg being fertilized.
Re: huh? (Score:5, Informative)
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Good question, do you eat eggs?
I love chilled chicken embryo with all of the embryo's nutrients for my benefit, fried or scrambled.
I also enjoy (and can tolerate) bovine mammary gland excretions with some milled and baked oats or corn (I'm a Kix kid).
Ethics isn't questioned in these examples, they are food. What's worse, aborting chickens for fried eggs or taking the nutrition that was intended for a baby cow?
I grew up raising a small number of cows and quite a few chickens for food. "Bessie" burgers will
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I love chilled chicken embryo with all of the embryo's nutrients for my benefit, fried or scrambled.
Do you actually go to the trouble of buying/acquiring fertilized chicken eggs? Because until fertilization, they're not embryos, they're just eggs.
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He probably just has a chicken coop with a few hens and a rooster. Even some suburbanites do this since a back yard is plenty enough space for some chickens to run around as long as you supplement their diet.
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When I was a kid the eggs had embryos. Nothing ruins a pancake breakfast like cracking an egg that has gestated for a week, with a partially formed fetus coming out. Happened a couple of times (we had 30+ hens and a rooster).
I would make oatmeal instead at that point.
My dad still keeps chickens, but he doesn't have a rooster so this isn't an issue anymore. He doesn't butcher them any longer, he just collects the unfertilized eggs.
I loved raising chicks in the basement. I also enjoyed slaughter day, chic
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People Eating Tasty Animals says hell yeah. I'm sure there's a big market for mammoth if we resurrect the species, and I'm sure nothing could go wrong, like them turning into velociraptors or something.
Besides, just think of the absolutely ridiculous new cartridges you'll be able to buy. Shoulder-fired artillery, just like our ancient ancestors used to use on mammoth hunts. Flint spear, 1000 grain projectile flying at 4,000 fps, they're almost totally the same thing!
And besides, if we resurrect an ice ag
Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's relevant to, but not the full story of, the ethical controversy over human cloning, but we're talking about mammoths. I don't think anyone's proposing that we insert mammoth DNA into human eggs.
Super Soldiers... (Score:2)
That's relevant to, but not the full story of, the ethical controversy over human cloning, but we're talking about mammoths. I don't think anyone's proposing that we insert mammoth DNA into human eggs.
Sounds like a military project. (Not all militaries would be willing to try this, but some certainly would.)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Feebles
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Posting anonymously since I've voted on other posts: I don't think 99% of people would care that non-human cloning it erases a potential life. We end actual animal lives all the time for food, sport, or simply out of carelessness.
Concerns about cross-species surrogacy (that could kill the mother, a species with problems of its own), creating social animals with no living members of the species to acculturate it, and of course, spending millions of dollars that could (arguably) be better spent preserving ext
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Posting anonymously since I've voted on other posts: I don't think 99% of people would care that non-human cloning it erases a potential life. We end actual animal lives all the time for food, sport, or simply out of carelessness.
Concerns about cross-species surrogacy (that could kill the mother, a species with problems of its own), creating social animals with no living members of the species to acculturate it, and of course, spending millions of dollars that could (arguably) be better spent preserving extant species all seem like more likely ethical concerns.
I'm against ending animal life for sport, but support hunting for food and being good stewards of the land. I feel that animals deserve humane treatment - if you are going to harvest an animal for food, kill it in the most painless way reasonably possible.
Re: huh? (Score:2)
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Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?
Forcing an Asian elephant to be a "mother" to another species, one that might harm her.
Forcing solitary existence on what appears to be a highly social species.
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I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?
Forcing an Asian elephant to be a "mother" to another species, one that might harm her.
Forcing solitary existence on what appears to be a highly social species.
That, and often you'd need 100s of zygotes to create a few viable organisms that survive to adulthood.
Excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
For example, the cloned sheep Dolly was born after 277 eggs were used for SCNT, which created 29 viable embryos. Only three of these embryos survived until birth, and only one survived to adulthood.[11]
I think it's still worthwhile... not getting 'ethics' confused with 'morality'. But anyone who was bothered by Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion may have an issue with this.
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I don't understand... what would be unethical about this?
Forcing an Asian elephant to be a "mother" to another species, one that might harm her.
Forcing solitary existence on what appears to be a highly social species.
That, and often you'd need 100s of zygotes to create a few viable organisms that survive to adulthood.
Excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
For example, the cloned sheep Dolly was born after 277 eggs were used for SCNT, which created 29 viable embryos. Only three of these embryos survived until birth, and only one survived to adulthood.[11]
I think it's still worthwhile... not getting 'ethics' confused with 'morality'. But anyone who was bothered by Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion may have an issue with this.
Well It is a highly social animal that could live with other related animals (Asian/African elephants). Like how we keep sheep and goats or lamas and alpacas, horses and donkeys and mules together.
As for the many eggs needed things have improved since dolly. For example we can revert skin cells into a stem cell and change the stem cell into a egg now.
(http://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-researchers-make-sperm-and-eggs-from-adult-skin-cells-082613)
If making a Asian elephant carry the mammoth fetus cou
Re:huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's done daily by farmers everywhere. Where do you think mules come from?
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Seriously I don't have a problem with it because our intentions are pretty good - we want to see if it can be done and we're curious about the animal. But I can see that some people especially the crazy fundies would get upset.
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But I can see that some people especially the crazy fundies would get upset.
A proper Jesus freak doesn't believe that animals have souls so there should be no ethical dilemma for them to get enraged over.
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Exactly, it takes away from the most important question. Would it be tasty.
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The cloning could go horribly wrong yielding birth defects, or the animal could endure a lifetime of suffering due to factors like (spitballing here) not having compatible intestinal flora.
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Straight splice their DNA onto corn genes, and grow the mammoths on the praries.
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Have you never read science fiction?
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Maybe "unethical" is the wrong word...again, only speculating
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Ethics? (Score:2)
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I hear wooly mammoth is a little gamy.
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I hear wooly mammoth is a little gamy.
20,000 years of freezer burn will do that I suppose.
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Re:Ethics? (Score:5, Interesting)
I want me a dodo. Apparently they were so tasty, the islanders couldn't bear to leave a single one living.
I don't think so. According to the wiki, it probably wasn't humans eating the dodo to extinction (the meat was described as "tasteless" and pigeon was considered a superior game bird) but introducing predators (pigs, cats) to an environment where there hadn't been any before.
As I understand it, the problem with the dodo is that there aren't any frozen carcasses from which to get intact DNA. I heard a carcass was found in a cave not too long ago, and was more preserved, but last I heard it was up in the air as to whether it could be done.
As to the ethics, why not? We breed animals to be pets, how is this different? I'm told that there is only one species of ferret in the world, for instance, that can still fend for itself in the wild.
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I assume there are tons more when aggregated across global subspecies of ferret.
(Caveat: I'm not in my area of expertise. I happen to know someone who knows a lot about ferrets, but I can only parrot what I think I remember her saying.) If you consider the entire weasel family, yes, but of the species (subspecies?) that is considered "ferret", my understanding is that there is only one variety (the black footed ferret?) that still exists in the wild. I'm told that among other things, domestic ferrets have lost their homing instinct, and get lost very easily outdoors.
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Wasn't that a Frank Zappa album?
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That wasn't the case with our ferret. She would run all over the place and end up right back at her pen when it was time to sleep (which was most of the time).
Hell house cats are about as tame as they come, right? But cats turn feral after a certain amount of time without a fixed home. Hell I had a cat, since birth, that always ran off at night in Korea but would walk down the street, roof top to roof top, as I walked home from work then sit in the front door waiting for me to come in the house. When w
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"Why not?" isn't a reason, granted. But it is a valid question. Enlarged, it might be "what is unethical about bringing back an extinct species?" Especially, reportedly in the case of the mammoth, when early man had a hand in the species becoming extinct.
As to breeding pets, I make absolutely no apology for that. My pets are companions, and live close to me, in a pack or flock or whatever, not in some remote place to be occasionally visited.
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Unethical? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm curious about why one would consider this unethical? That nature had her shot and declared these animals unfit for habitation on the earth, perhaps? That this could open the door to more widespread tampering with genetics? We interfere with the "natural order" all the time, most especially when it comes to our own comfort and survival. I'm sort of curious why people would suddenly start worrying about bringing extinct animals back to life. I'll admit I haven't given this a lot of thought yet, but my initial reaction is that it seems like a fascinating opportunity if we can pull it off.
Maybe someone that opposes this on ethical grounds could enlighten me.
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Because they are mentally deficient and equate high-roading with worth.
Re:Unethical? (Score:5, Informative)
Not saying I agree, but from a link in the article:
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Thanks for posting an actual response to this!
I feel that artificial insemination is essentially the same thing, and that's conventionally accepted, and even encouraged in everything from ranching to rescuing species. Would the author have the same qualms about inseminating the elephant to increase elephant numbers? I suspect not. The only difference with mammoths is that we extincted them thousands of years ago.
The ethical concerns I would focus on (not that I am the arbiter of ethical concerns or anyth
Unethical not to? (Score:2)
I'm curious about why one would consider this unethical? That nature had her shot and declared these animals unfit for habitation on the earth, perhaps?
Actually I understood that early humans had an large role in causing mammoths to go extinct. So, if anything, wouldn't it be unethical not to reverse the damage we caused? This is our first chance to revive a species which we probably caused to go extinct in the first place.
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It has less to do with ethics and more to do with being dangerous if this gets out of hand IMO. I have no qualms with the ethics of cloning a single mammoth. I have grave concerns with the idea of cloning and re-introducing an extinct species to the planet, regardless of if it is mammoths or sabre tooth tigers or anything else.
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Rabbits, weeds, insects, and velociraptors can easily get out of hand. Giant, slow-breeding mammals are easily culled if needed. We've nearly wiped out entire species of large mammals before because of over-hunting. The dangers of them over-populating are probably about the same as the danger of modern elephants over-populating. That is, extremely low.
Besides which, we've learned plenty of painful lessons about the dangers of releasing new animals into new territories. I don't think anyone (well, anyon
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I'm curious about why one would consider this unethical?
Didn't see a good answer to this, so I'll take a crack at it.
The problematic issue I see is that there's no longer an ecosystem adapted to their presence to put them into. Perhaps you don't immediately see what problems it could possibly cause to reintroduce them to, say the Canadian plains, but people also didn't see how it could cause problems to introduce kudzu to the American South [wikipedia.org] or rabbits to Australia [wikipedia.org]. Both of those turned out to be an utter disaster.
Their living cousins, the Elephants are known t
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Was anyone seriously considering releasing them into the wild, though? That's not at all what I had in mind certainly. We well understand the danger of transplanting species at this point - I learned about feral pigs destroying Hawaii's rainforests many years ago. My parents live on a small lake, and the homeowners there have to battle foreign weeds annually that threaten to swallow up everything else. Yeah, many people, especially scientists, now well understand the dangers of throwing new species into
Re:Unethical? (Score:5, Interesting)
- Intentionally creating a life from incomplete DNA which may not end up producing a complete, healthy, and happy animal.
The whole point of the article is they're optimistic about extracting enough samples to get the complete DNA, so that's a non-issue.
- Then using that animal for an endless barrage of scientific testing throughout its life.
You phrased that to be inflammatory, while ignoring the realities of the situation. Elephants in zoos aren't subjected to some ridiculously invasive regimen and a mammoth wouldn't be either. They are very large, very powerful animals. You don't casually stick a needle into one of them. Invasive testing is something you keep to a minimum, because the animal is in a position to object when it's conscious, and sedating it is difficult and dangerous. So the "endless barrage" in question means a whole lot of stool and urine samples, and not so much with the vivisection.
- Creating an animal that normally lives a social life and forcing upon it total isolation from its species.
One hopes they would make more than one. And if they don't, the question becomes, how accepting of visibly different but roughly the right shape members is an elephant herd? If the answer is "accepting", then that's no problem. (And I'm curious to know the answer to that question.)
- Forcing an elephant to give birth to another species and all the potential health/safety and emotional problems that could cause for the elephant.
Either you're underestimating the power of motherly love, and she will accept her offspring regardless of its appearance, or you overestimate the attachment elephants have for their offspring, and she will reject an apparently "defective" offspring without trauma. I suspect she would accept her offspring. Baby elephants are actually quite hairy, as babies go, and get less hairy as they get older. If instead her baby gets furry, I don't think she'll object. As for health/safety, she'd be the best cared for pregnant elephant in history.
Unless there's real, valuable science that can be done that will justify the potential traumas that could be caused, it seems like a dumb idea.
This strikes me as one of those experiments that falls into the category of "we don't know; let's try it and find out." Is it real, valuable science? We have no idea. We might learn any number of things about genetics, gestation, fetal development, and a raft of other complicated biological things. Or we might learn nothing much. We won't know until we try it. I suspect developing elephant ultrasound will be useful elsewhere, if nothing else. Somebody will learn something, even if it's just engineering.
obligatory Jurassic Park quote: (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.
--- Dr. Ian Malcolm
God, schmod! I want my monkeyman! (Score:2)
Plus, Brundlefly, they're not carnivorous. No problemo.
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Aperture Science. We do what we must, because we can.
-GlaDOS.
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Dear Dr Ian Malcom,
Could you please shut the fuck up already with your constant, preachy whining?! We are all sad that the T-Rex couldn't do his job properly and rid us of your hollier-than-thou attitude when it had the chance!
Regards,
Readers of Jurasic Park book
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Joe Smallpox
That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
North Korea just anounced they've already cloned one (and T-Rex as well).
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FTFY [theguardian.com]
I can see the curiosity aspect.. (Score:2)
But seriously, it's like installing Linux on a 1990's Palm Pilot. Sure, you can probably pull it off, but wtf are you going to do with it after you give yourself a pat on the back? Is it really worth the investment? Can't you be spending your time doing something more productive?
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Can't you be spending your time doing something more productive?
Consider that any successful experience in cloning anything adds to our knowledge base about cloning. By perfecting cloning, we can do a lot more than just bring back extinct species. We could, for example, grow entirely new organs cloned from your body to replace damaged or failing ones, organs that could be transplanted into you without fear of tissue rejection. Further, the practice of being able to reliably modify cells at the genetic level can lead to all sorts of other benefits in medicine, biology,
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Sure, I get that. I guess I'm just wondering why a Mommoth, as opposed to, I dunno, a human, is so valuable in a cloning exercise.
Re:I can see the curiosity aspect.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, I get that. I guess I'm just wondering why a Mommoth, as opposed to, I dunno, a human, is so valuable in a cloning exercise.
Part of the answer may be, you can make a lot of mistakes cloning a mammoth without people getting too upset.
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+1. Thank you. People will be so excited to see a live Mammoth that if they fuck it up, they'll just think of it as a failed circus show, not a failed life.
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because "they" are already talking about reducing the human population to 500 million by 2050.
A paper came out just today talking about an immediate solution to dealing with two billion: insinuating live pathogens into vaccines (which they already do); now they're talking about inserting ebola genetic material into live influenza, engineering an AIRBORNE, HIGLY VIRULENT and 70% FATAL chimera which will absolutely solidify our position as the most self-destructive species ever to have occupied the universe.
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Think about it - proposing something that is going to destroy the fortunes of both Republican and Democrat donors, not to mention the oil and gas profits of Russian kleptocrats and the export markets that fund the Chinese Communist Party. Which
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Honestly I suspect that the amount of kids that would be amazed into heading for a life of science by this alone would make it worthwhile.
Nothing captures kids imagination quite like dinosaurs, mammoths and such so whatever the direct scientific value, the value of increasing the amount of future scientists out there with the inspirational value of doing this is probably greater than anything in history, even more so than the moon landings I suspect.
What would they taste like? (Score:3, Interesting)
Did not evolve for mammoths (Score:2)
Given that our ancestors evolved to eat these animals
We evolved in Africa which was not known for its large Woolly Mammoth population. While we did eat them, perhaps even to extinction, I don't think you can say that we specifically evolved to eat mammoths. It was more an opportunistic relationship: they were large chunks of fresh meat wandering through a frozen landscape and we were hungry.
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Elephants? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems surreal that we are talking about resurrecting Mammoths while their close genetic kin are still in a pretty harsh decline. Perhaps we should be trying to store sequences of good cross section of the remaining elephants so that in some future century we can dust off the old thumb drives and bring them back with enough genetic diversity to properly re-introduce them somewhere.
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Or we could just increase the policy of using attack helicopters to hunt down poachers. It's win-win, the pilots get first class training in finding targets in a vast landscape using various sensing equipment, and the poachers are given something real to worry about.
Some poachers have even been using helicopters themselves so there's also ample scope for air defence training there for fast jets and such too.
That way we don't have to worry about them going extinct (and the massive knock on effects to their e
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Or we could just increase the policy of using attack helicopters to hunt down poachers. It's win-win, the pilots get first class training in finding targets in a vast landscape using various sensing equipment, and the poachers are given something real to worry about.
Some poachers have even been using helicopters themselves so there's also ample scope for air defence training there for fast jets and such too.
That way we don't have to worry about them going extinct (and the massive knock on effects to their ecosystem) in the first place. You're killing two birds with one stone- dealing with the poaching problem whilst getting your military some real training that simultaneously does something useful. Far better than classic contrived military exercises that often bare little resemblance to the real thing and just burn resources for not much benefit.
This has been a very successful policy in the countries that have attempted it thus far, and it should be ramped up. Turn poachers from the hunter who hunts illegaly with overwhelming force into the hunted that is hunted legally with overwhelming force and they soon stop.
You're right. Ever since Norway implemented this policy, there hasn't been a single elephant death in their territory due to poaching.
You know, you SAY that... (Score:2)
Mmmm (Score:2)
I guess the Spanish king sponsors this effort?
chronological FUBAR! (Score:2)
Woolly mammoths didn't evolve until 60-someodd million years AFTER the K-T event which KILLED THE DINOSAURS! So just how exactly is cloning a frozen corpse going to help us clone something which has been petrified into ROCK over millions of years?
Passenger Pigeon will come first (Score:3)
A team called Revive & Restore is in the process of cloning the extinct passenger pigeon [nytimes.com].
They're getting close to finishing the passenger-pigeon DNA sequence. That's the easy part though, next they will have to inscribe the genome into a living cell and produce a viable embryo, and from that a living offspring.
Keep in mind the passenger pigeon only became extinct in 1914, which is fairly recent compared to the wooly mammoth.
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I look forward to a giant Wooly Mammoth rampaging down the streets of Seoul, knocking down buildings and stomping cars all while carrying some scantily clad hot women with his trunk and being chased by a little boy shouting "Giant Elephant!, Giant Elephant!".
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I shudder to think what this giant Wooly Mammoth intends to do with those scantily clad hot women...
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Clearly he's rescuing her from tentacle rape at the hands of a giant octopus - this is Japan after all ^^
Re:Exciting! (Score:4, Funny)
I hope something comes of this.
I predict at least one South Korean cavalry division mounted on war-mammoths.
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...Can we do this cloning at Fukishima? I hear it's quiet this time of year.
Fantastic idea. I'm sure when the giant mutated god-mammoth/wolly-zilla discovers that our ancestors may have been responsible for it's species extinction all will be fine.
Hopefully, unlike elephants, mammoths do forget.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
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We have plenty of very cold places in the world