A 'Mammoth' Question

 

(Discover Magazine)
While watching philosophical debates by Captain Picard on the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" series, I was also reading some articles about the idea of bringing back extinct species of animals, the woolly mammoth in particular.

For those who are not familiar with this, here's a short version of it:  You can't clone a woolly mammoth by using ancient tissue (for you need an intact cell, as opposed to just DNA, to fully resurrect a woolly mammoth) since even the most intact tissue is still in terrible condition.  So,  instead of cloning, scientists plan to use genetic-modification.  By using a tool called CRISPR, scientists could modify elephants with traits of mammoth, via using the fragmented mammoth DNA that has been discovered.  By doing this, you shall get a mammoth-like creature.

And the big question is this:  Doesn't this mean that we're just making a hairy elephant?

I often ask myself that question as well and my mind soon came with the reply that asks:

"Isn't a woolly mammoth technically just a hairy elephant?"

At this, a scenario has popped in my head:

You go to a lab-zoo and you see two 'woolly mammoths'.  They both look the same, but have some subtle differences (but you could very easily write those off as just individual differences).  As you look at them, you can definitely believe that they both genuine woolly mammoths; as in they are hairy, they love the cold, and seem to have reached your expectations of the said species they are claimed to be.

Then, you got a hand on a paper that shows you their DNA.  From this paper, while not saying which is which, you learn that one of them has been genetically-modified with the woolly hair of a mammoth, the insulating fat of a mammoth, and the anti-freeze hemoglobin of a mammoth.  That seems to not bother you, but then you see the DNA of the other 'mammoth'.  You learned that the other 'mammoth' was genetically-modified with the wooly hair of a musk-ox, the insulating fat of a beluga whale, and the anti-freeze hemoglobin of a polar bear.

With this in mind, you were then asked this:

"Which one is truly a 'woolly mammoth'?"

In this question, I would say that the 'mammoth' with actual mammoth genes would be the more mammoth, more so than the one with musk ox/beluga whale/polar bear genes.  Because the mammoth is just as much as an elephant as the polar bear is a bear.  The 'mammoth' with genes of other species would perhaps be more deemed as a foreign creature than the one with mammoth genes (although it doesn't make it any less than of an elephant than a pig with a spinach gene make it more vegetable than animal).

Puts things into perspective, doesn't it?


In the possible future, we would be face-to-face with a creature like this.....
but would it be a mammoth or a sort of elephant mutt?
(Huffing Post)

=Reference used=

  •  Sarah Fecht (24 March 2014), Woolly Mammoth DNA Successfully Spliced Into Elephant Cells, Popular Science

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tibial Hemimelia (TH) in Cattle

Image
  This was an old report I did for my Farm Animal Anatomy and Physiology class when I was in college and this got a pretty dang good grade in that class (I was struggling in that class).  So now, I present it here because it has excellent and educational information about Tibial Hemimelia (TH) in cattle.  Along with that, it's something to consider if you're interested in breeding cattle. Introduction A calf born with Tibial Hemimelia (photo from steerplanet.com) Tibial Hemimelia (TH) is a rare lethal physical defect that is inherited.  The symptoms of this defect are characterized by skeletal abnormalities, such as the tibia bone becoming twisted (not unlike that of a corkscrew), defects in organs, etc.  Although this genetic mutation does occur in several species (such as dogs and even humans), this article will focus on the tibial hemimelia in cattle. History Tibial hemimelia was first described in the 1950s, in Scotland (Young, 1951).  It has also been ...
Read more

What if American Prehistoric Megafauna survived? Pt. 1: Mastodon

Image
  "What if" Megafauna survived to modern times in North America (primarily USA) Ah, the megafauna of the Ice Age, some of the most fascinating and even terrifying creatures that not only roamed, but also shared the Earth with us in recent times.  Then, suddenly, they died off, leaving us pretty clueless and digging up their bones to learn about and marvel at them. However, when one learns about this wonderful animals, we sometimes ask these questions: What if they did survived? What if they didn't died out and survived along up to historical or even modern times? What would the ecology would be like? What would our relationship with the animals would be like? What kind of impact would they have on our view of the world? In this post series, I will be diving into what would happen if, somehow, the 13 Ice Age animals I have selected have survived whatever wiped them and have been able to survive to our times. I will talk about the general facts of these animals, the reasons...
Read more