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Comment by loufe | Hacker News Reader

I think it's a world of difference bringing back a species for which we have actual DNA, instead of creating a "wooly-mammoth-like" creature via guesswork. I'm not opposed to the effort, if privately funded, just weird to consider the pointlessness of it in my eyes.

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Not necessarily pointless - it could help mitigate climate change, by re-creating 'mammoth steppe' across much of Siberia. From Smithsonian (2018): "Can Bringing Back Mammoths Help Stop Climate Change?" [1] (Full disclosure: I am a supporter of the Long Now Foundation which has advocated for mammoth reintroduction to reduce climate change. [2]

1.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-bringing-b... 2.https://longnow.org/ideas/reviving-woolly-mammoth-solve-clim...

Preposterous. I used to claim playing computer games was "educational" back in the day, but it sure didn't convince my immediate ancestors who had clear views on the value doing homework instead.

There are a myriad of semi-effective ways to mitigate climate change, both at the individual level and corporate/political level.

Breeding up a load of Wooly Mammoths ain't one of them.

They seem to have quite a lot of actual wooly mammoth DNA. In the linked document:

> The final dataset consists of 23 woolly mammoth genomes (22 Late Quaternary and one Middle Pleistocene), with 13 at medium coverage (2.3–4.13) and 10 at high coverage (10.4–28.63)

The efforts to make dinosaur like things more fits your description.

> The efforts to make dinosaur like things more fits your description.

They sell grow your own kits at a country store near you

Personally I’m curious how they taste. A Mammoth burger could be succulent for all we know.

Doubt we’re much closer to that. When was the last time you had an Elephant burger? Definitely the closest alternative that isn’t really accessible today for a bunch of good reasons.

What are the good reasons? I assume we're talking about a situation where we could create the elephants "on demand", like with these mammoths.

I'm wondering as well, there should be sufficient supply of those dying old age or accidents to have at least some going around. The long gestation cycle and comparatively long time to maturity reasonably make them inefficient, but still some supply would be expected.

Well for one, a rate limiting factor is gestation period which is proportionally long for elephants.

You’d probably be better off farming Homo sapiens or maybe reviving some other species of homo. Put them in gestational pods to harvest their metabolic heat energy. Maybe run mental simulations of various things via neural link.

https://www.bbcearth.com/news/elephant-gestation-period-long...

"Better off" doesn't mean much. We would be better off doing neither of these, but being better off is not the goal - the goal is to eat an elephant or a mammoth.

Seems like the gestation period would make it more of a luxury.

Like the mammoth, other species of homo disappeared when sapiens arrived. Like the cousin comment’s conjecture that mammoth might be very good eating, maybe these other species were likewise delectable.

Sure, if that is so, then it might be an option too. Though I have never heard about that, while children are singing campfire songs about mammoths... Marketing matters - "Eat a prehistoric human" doesn't sound as cool as "taste the food of the prehistoric human"

You need to have seen the film "The Matrix" to get the joke.

Oh I got that part of a joke, but that doesn't mean I don't want to continue discussing :)

Do we need a good reason? It sounds really cool, and I dont see why not.

Untold misery on a new species we brought back from extinction.

Species don't experience misery, individuals do. We farm billions of animals every year, how could a few individuals of a de-extinct species living a mostly free and protected life pose a moral issue?

Given what we know about elephant intelligence and community, I'd be morally horrified by any level of systematic and ongoing "farming" of elephants for food. You may rightly accuse my of getting ahead of myself for extending the same feelings towards the mammoth for which we know less, but nevertheless I feel the same about them at the moment.

Of course, but this not what we are talking about. The gp objects to de-extinctioning the mammoth per se, not to farming it for food. As if the recreated mammoths would feel some unbearable sadness at the thought of being out of their time, or as if they missed their dead relatives from 10000 years ago.

I totally get this. Each person has to decide, where do I draw the line? My girlfriend won’t eat octopus, for instance, but is fine with beef or pork.

Choosing to eat piglets and veals instead adult octopuses at the end of their life cycle seems unfair and immoral.

Possibly but humans basically hunted Mammoths into extinction and they consumed them to the last bite. They must have been delicious compared to elephants. Just like different breeds of cow or pigs, etc, have vastly different marbling, flavor, and texture. Humans ate them out of existence they must be good eating!

I can’t think of many historical scenarios where a human was faced with the decision between hunting an elephant and hunting a mammoth.

> Possibly but humans basically hunted Mammoths into extinction

No, they didn’t. It’s a myth.

https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/humans-did-not-cause-woolly-mammot...

>> Definitely the closest alternative that isn’t really accessible today for a bunch of good reasons.

"Today, all species of elephant are hunted specifically for their meat. This occurs notably in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. During ivory hunts by poachers, meat may be taken as a by-product for eventual sale, or to feed the hunting party. As of 2007, wildlife experts expressed concerns that the major threat to elephants may become the demand for meat rather than the ivory trade. Organisations such as the WWF and TRAFFIC are campaigning to reduce consumption levels as this, along with the ivory trade, leads to as many as 55 individuals being killed a day."

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_meat

"Mammoth burgers" are basically here (and have been for over a century). Siberian explorers have eaten frozen mammoth. The Atlantic, "What Happens to Meat When You Freeze It for 35,000 Years". And a startup demo'd a mammoth meatball last year.[2]

1. [archive link] https://archive.is/QkS7J 2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-massive-meatb...

How does an elephant burger taste? I'd imagine mammoth would be even more difficult to come by.

On the heat period, probably horrible

My grandfather knew. It was not unheard of when he and his father mined gold in the early 20th century. At least that’s the family lore. He died around the time I was born, so I never got to question and went with firsthand knowledge.

Why does "privately funded" make a difference?

Presumably because they would be opposed to tax money being used to fund a project that they consider pointless.

That seems short sighted. I live in Denver, CO. I consider it pointless to fund roads on the east coast. I'm never going to drive on them.

That's silly. Goods arriving at East coast ports travel via systems I have no clue about.

Cloned wooly mammoths aren't a public good like roads

Was landing on the Moon a public good?

Science often brings unexpected fruit. Cloning woolly mammoths may as well.

And so does blowing wind. You never know. Where do you put the limit? Pouring a trillion dollars into war sure has more benefits, like local hiring, finding out about microwaves, cheaper petrol, etc. But is pouring a trillion dollars into that, a good thing?

The moon landing was a propaganda stunt against the USSR. We have no need to revive literal mammoths.

The sense of pointlessness in this case isn't "I'll never take advantage of those roads", it's "this feels more like someone wanting to cosplay Jurassic Park than it does a serious effort to do something useful for biodiversity".

Pointless, and for a certain category of people (on all sides of the political spectrum), a "moral" issue. The right doesn't want people to play God (the same religious types who think IVF is a sin, or embryonic stem cells are murder). The left side of things, invoking nature as a god, using a similar argument (or fears of unknown results).

I don't know if it's pointless, and there's plenty of room for "pointless" research (because we learn so much in the process). But I do wonder if it's prudent. I think it's cool either way.

> Why does "privately funded" make a difference?

Because is not subject to political time of four years intervals. Politicians lie often about where the funds will arrive, or change their minds after a while. I you can afford it, is much safer this way.

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