|
Post by Dan on Jan 18, 2011 0:48:28 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Blade-of-the-Moon on Jan 18, 2011 4:50:29 GMT
They've been talking about doing this for awhile..and there are plenty of frozen mammoths..heck some northern tribes find one on occasion and eat it . I'm surprised it took this long though. I'm all up for cloning dinosaurs or more likely retro-volving birds into them. If a mammoth is made, and it lives, it will still be a long while before you can see one in a zoo. Honestly overly hairy elephants don't appeal to me the same way a T-Rex would....just sayin'.
|
|
|
Post by DinoLord on Jan 18, 2011 19:48:21 GMT
I'm betting a Battat dinosaur that this thing will die within a year if it is cloned within 5 years.
|
|
|
Post by Blade-of-the-Moon on Jan 19, 2011 2:34:37 GMT
Clone longevity has improved...and I'm sure they will mostly treat it as an elephant to start with. It's going to be the unknowns that do it..if they can figure out what it requires fast enough it might just do fine...you just never know. At least they are finally trying after all that talk and time.
Puts me in mind of aquariums trying to keep Great White Sharks...dismiss all the JP talk, it's the animal that will suffer not the people.
|
|
|
Post by simon on Jan 19, 2011 2:44:46 GMT
This is a pipe dream at best, a hoax at worst. DNA decays very rapidly after death, and the odds of finding a complete strand of usable DNA in a frozen corpse that is 10-30,000 years old is pretty low.
In 1986, the wires carried a report that the Russians had cloned a baby mammoth by inserting the egg into an Indian elephant - the baby, the report said, had long reddish hair; The date of the report? April 1, 1986. You got it.
What gives this story away is the line about implanting the embryo into an African Elephant. The African Elephant is a distant cousin of the woolly mammoth - the Indian Elephant OTOH is a very close relative....
|
|
|
Post by zopteryx on Jan 20, 2011 0:50:41 GMT
Quote: "Puts me in mind of aquariums trying to keep Great White Sharks..." The Monterey Bay Aquarium successfully kept a 4 footer for at least 3 months (maybe more like 6), they only released it because it started preying on the smaller sharks (it had grown to 6 feet long in that time too). But your right, things probably would have worsened as the shark grew. Now about the mammoth, the only reason I can see using an African Elephant would be because it's larger (if only slightly) than an Asian elephant. Assuming it's raised by an elephant mother, I wonder how similarly it would behave as compared to an elephant, especially because I'm betting that a good chunk of its DNA will probably be elephant, not mammoth. And where will they keep it? The San Diego Zoo here in California would be good for the elephant, but they would probably have to build a special "cold room" for the mammoth during summer (or they'll give it a hair-cut like in Prehistoric Park ). And what about when it grows up, especially if it's potentially aggressive male, where will it go? Are there decent zoos in Alaska or Siberia?
|
|
|
Post by Blade-of-the-Moon on Jan 20, 2011 0:56:16 GMT
They did finally manage to keep a Great White...but after a lot of failed attempts.
I imagine if they through all this trouble it will be treated like royalty...with it's own specially built environment even as an adult.
|
|
|
Post by zopteryx on Jan 20, 2011 0:57:28 GMT
They did finally manage to keep a Great White...but after a lot of failed attempts. I imagine if they through all this trouble it will be treated like royalty...with it's own specially built environment even as an adult. Except of course for maybe some live prey. ;D
|
|
|
Post by Radman on Jan 20, 2011 0:58:48 GMT
If it's done correctly, the DNA will be 100 % mammoth. The maternal elephant will provide an unnucleated egg and no DNA of its own. I think it is a fascinating project, and as close to Jurassic Park as we will come within our lifetimes. And, if doesn't work, or goes awry, is it any worse than the billions of dollars countries spend almost daily figuring out ways to kill people more efficiently? What if Siberia was repopulated with wooly mammoths and rhinos, that would be incredible!
|
|
|
Post by zopteryx on Jan 20, 2011 1:01:52 GMT
They would need to be closely watched though, to prevent a second extinction. Assuming they migrate out of Siberia in winter, where would they go? Would they know where to go?
|
|
|
Post by Horridus on Jan 20, 2011 1:08:42 GMT
What if Siberia was repopulated with wooly mammoths and rhinos, that would be incredible! That would be a bad idea...that area has a different ecosystem now. Ultimately it's probably a bad idea to resurrect extinct animals for whatever reason. Just ask Ian Malcolm
|
|
|
Post by blastoidea on Jan 20, 2011 1:22:20 GMT
Ego's and money. Which company would own the species. How much should they charge to allow for a viewing. Which ecosystem could humans re-disturb. Better yet, kill all the near extinct species and save a few cells. Bring them back and then some company could own a species. If they clone Elvis in three years they could make way more money... think of all those record sales... lol.
|
|
|
Post by Radman on Jan 20, 2011 1:42:54 GMT
So if someone could clone and bring back a dinosaur(s), JP style or otherwise, say a Coelophysis and an Othnelia or Saltasaurus - who here wouldn't want to see this? We have made animals our food, workers, entertainerment (i.e. zoo animals) and companions for millennia - how would this be any different? What if we could clone/revive an extinct treefern/horsetail etc. Any difference?
|
|
|
Post by simon on Jan 20, 2011 2:07:33 GMT
So if someone could clone and bring back a dinosaur(s), JP style or otherwise, say a Coelophysis and an Othnelia or Saltasaurus - who here wouldn't want to see this? We have made animals our food, workers, entertainerment (i.e. zoo animals) and companions for millennia - how would this be any different? What if we could clone/revive an extinct treefern/horsetail etc. Any difference? Actually, anyone who has seen the Walking with Dinosaurs arena show has seen a glimpse of the future; in the future you'll be able to go to a dinosaur park with all sorts of dinosaurs ambling about, peeing, defecating, fighting, smelling (bad) ... you will suspend your disbelief ... knowing all the while that you are actually seeing robots .... ...and I mean robots that will be indistinguishable from real animals ... my grandkids (if I have them one day God-willing) will go to such a park, even if I don't live that long ... ...so, in THAT sense, mankind WILL one day 'resurrect' the dinosaurs ...
|
|
|
Post by blastoidea on Jan 20, 2011 2:11:09 GMT
Lots of people wouldn't want to see this. Check out Monsanto or Glofish for GM versions, plus there is many more. People like to watch dogs rip one an-others faces off in dog fights for entertainment as well. What's your point?
My point was that if they could do it - it would be for money NOT science NOT the animal/plant NOT any noble idea.It would be so someone could get rich. I'd go as far to say if they could clone it and they knew it would wipe out say, the elephants, due to a virus they would do it anyways because of money. I agree there would still be lots of people screaming on the internet "I wanna see a Mammoth, I have already seen the elephants and they are boring!" anyways.
|
|
|
Post by tanystropheus on Jan 20, 2011 14:28:53 GMT
Compy's would be really good to clone, and even beneficial for the anemic pet trade. Acquiring an exotic animal license for the sole purpose of "domesticating" a compy should be a relatively easy task, but one should verify with state requirements.
It appears that mankind's greatest achievements are ranked as:
1) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 2) Mammoth 3) Moon
|
|
|
Post by Horridus on Jan 20, 2011 16:04:41 GMT
So if someone could clone and bring back a dinosaur(s), JP style or otherwise, say a Coelophysis and an Othnelia or Saltasaurus - who here wouldn't want to see this? We have made animals our food, workers, entertainerment (i.e. zoo animals) and companions for millennia - how would this be any different? What if we could clone/revive an extinct treefern/horsetail etc. Any difference? We're not talking about some victim of deforestation, or the building of a dam - mammoths have had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction. Sorry..... Really though, as has already been raised, the issue is that once you have resurrected your extinct prehistoric animal, what do you do with it? Is it really right and proper to stick it in a zoo? I mean, you certainly can't release it into the wild - who knows what would happen. I mean, your scientists were so preoccupied with the fact that they could do this that they didn't stop to think if they should... *is perma-baned*
|
|
|
Post by Seijun on Jan 20, 2011 17:30:43 GMT
We stick other animals in zoos.
|
|
|
Post by zopteryx on Jan 20, 2011 23:57:30 GMT
Maybe it could live here: www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/27/sergey-zimov-ice-age-ecosystem-siberia_n_788806.htmlAnyway, zoo's already own the animals they have; so I don't see why a Mammoth would be any different. Personally, I'd love to see a live mammoth (but a reverse engineered dinosaur would be better ;D). However the odds of creating a sizeable population, or even a pair, of mammoths capable of breeding would be extremely low; due to the fact that they would most likely all be clones of one another. If we're going to start cloning extinct animals, I feel that we should put our efforts into cloning species that humans drove to extinction, like the Dodo, Moas, and Thylacine; not naturally extinct species. Speaking of Thylacines, has any headway been made with that thylacine cloning project in Australia?
|
|
|
Post by Blade-of-the-Moon on Jan 21, 2011 3:21:48 GMT
How do we know humans or other humanoids didn't drive mammoths to extinction ?
|
|