• Nomecks@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    Nothing bad will happen, as long as they spare no expense.

  • TomMasz@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The world they lived in is long gone along with the food they ate and the rest of their species. It seems almost cruel to bring them back.

    • nyan@lemmy.cafe
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      2 months ago

      Not that long gone—the last relict population on Wrangel Island only died out about 4000 years ago. That’s (barely) within historic time. There are probably islands in the Canadian and Siberian Arctic that could still support them (and have no or few human inhabitants).

      I see two big issues. First of all, not all knowledge among elephants is transmitted genetically, and I expect mammoths were the same. Who will the new ones learn from? They’ll have to redevelop best practices for dealing with their environment from scratch.

      Secondly, global warming. This seems like about the worst possible time to bring back an ice-age-adapted critter. We’d be better off transferring the effort spent on this project into de-extincting the thylacine, a more recent loss which doesn’t have that specific issue.

        • nyan@lemmy.cafe
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          2 months ago

          Different group, I think, and not as close to success. The thylacine has a better chance at long-term survival if we do bring it back, though—it isn’t an ice age creature, and it was surviving despite competition from other creatures in a similar niche until humans started aggressively hunting it down.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It’s not that long gone. There were still mammoths around when the pyramids were built. Plus there’s still huge swaths of tundra and taiga that they could live on, with a lot of the same plants, even if it’s quite a bit warmer.

      • illi@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        In the grand scheme of things the pyramids were built relatively recently, but I’d still consider it quite long ago

        • stoly@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Measured in human life it’s long ago. measured at universal scales, it was nothing.

          • superkret@feddit.org
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            2 months ago

            A good measurement for human timescales is the age difference between a child and their grandfather (~50 years, basically one generation of oral tradition).
            The mammoths died out 80 grandfathers ago.

            • stoly@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              That’s an interesting unit of measure for sure. I do get what you’re saying–that’s sort of the limit to where some knowledge can reach.

    • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Not advocating for restoring the mammoth, but this is a dangerous line of argument.

      With climate change and ongoing mass extinctions, many current species are or will soon be in the same situation that re-introduced mammoths would be—and you could use the same argument to say that trying to preserve them is cruel so we should kill off any current species facing environmental stress.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Nah. It’s still the same place. They died out within the time frame of completely modern humans.

    • Ænima@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      It’s worse when you consider the state of the world and the warming. They’d have about 20 sq\km of land capable of supporting them and they’d have to share it with those psychos, polar bears.

  • StenSaksTapir@feddit.dk
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    2 months ago

    I’ve said this a million times before, but if we’re playing gods anyway, can’t we make them dog sized also?

    I would totally get one or maybe two.

  • vegeta@lemmy.worldOP
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    2 months ago

    I hope they have put a substantial amount of thought into potential problems that could arise. (Not that it will actually be like JP)

    • Tudsamfa@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      There are about 2000 wild tiger left, I found this article from 2011 saying that they might be extinct in the wild by 2030.

      So there might be 2000 ecological niches for smilodon to fill in 5 years. We better hurry then.

  • theDutchBrother@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    “Your Scientists Were So Preoccupied With Whether Or Not They Could, They Didn’t Stop To Think If They Should”

  • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I remember reading about this in 5th grade. 25 fucking years ago. I’ll believe it when I see it…

  • kandoh@reddthat.com
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    2 months ago

    Everything outside of cities should be a nature reserve and we should clone extinct megafauna to put in zoos

  • Tudsamfa@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago
    • Step 1: acquire genetic material
    • Step 2: supplement material with closely related extant species <- We are here
    • Step 3: Get an egg cell with your Frankenstein-DNA to survive and divide
    • Step 4: Produce a healthy baby
    • Step 5: Get a small population in a Zoo/Park
    • Step 6: have a permanent wild population in a specific area
    • Step 7: have enough of those areas to declare repopulation a success

    Is fixating on the mammoths here first-world centrism? The article mentions 4 other species that have way better chances. Also, given how far we are from actual wild mammoths, that “it can solve climate change” argument is just wrong the way it’s been presented.