Renae wonders if the infamous woolly mammoth could walk this Earth again..

Credit: Veer Images

~ Renae Soppe

It's mammoth time! This week, the office has been buzzing with mammoth talk. Extinct for the past 10,000 years, the mammoth resembled a woolly version of the modern day elephant (you might be familiar with 'Manny' from the movie Ice Age).

Right now, scientists from Japan and Russia are sussing out whether they can harness the precious, ancient DNA from the frozen remains of Siberian woolly mammoths. And, most intriguingly, whether they can clone that DNA and resurrect the extinct animal by impregnating an elephant with a mammoth embryo. Now, there are many questions that arise from this, when and if the day comes.

Resurrection questions

What would it eat?

The diet of the woolly mammoth consisted mainly of tundra grasses, which are grasses that grow in treeless plains, much like elephants today. But the elephant's diet has been known to change once in captivity, which leads me to my next question...

Where would it live?

Of course, the first resurrected mammoth would live in a captive habitat at a zoo or an institute somewhere, constantly monitored by scientists and gawked at by the public. If this method of producing mammoth babies turns out to be successful and elephants at zoos could pop out baby mammoths at a rate that could revive the species, would they gradually release them back into the wild? What impacts would that have on the environment?

Would the mother elephant be responsible for raising it?

The answer would have to be yes, at least for the first generation of resurrected woolly mammoths. The mammoth calves would grow up learning the behaviours of modern elephants as opposed to those of mammoths, and would essentially become an elephant in woolly mammoth clothing.

Would it survive global warming?

Research has shown that one possibility of the extinction of the mammoths was the increase in climate temperature. The woolly mammoth was perfectly designed for cold climates, with short ears and tails that could reduce the loss of heat from the body. There's a good chance that as global temperatures keep rising, the mammoth would not be equipped to cope with the heat.

Are we doing this just because we (theoretically) can?

If you subscribe to the Darwinian theory of natural selection, there is a reason why species live and become extinct - for the advancement of evolution. Maybe mammoths became extinct for a reason. And if we start resurrecting extinct animals, would it actually benefit nature anyway? Or just put the natural swing of things out of wack?

And why stop with mammoths? If we are doing it just because we can, why don't we resurrect the Tasmanian tiger, the sea cow, the Caspian tiger and while we're at it - let's live in a world like Jurassic Park and bring dinosaurs back to life! We're a long way off having the technology to do any of that, but if we could, are we bringing these extinct creatures back because it will benefit the Earth in some way, or are we doing it to satisfy our selfish curiosities?

It would be cool to see these amazing creatures roam the Earth once again and see how they would have lived all those years ago. But I can't get the image out of my head of 'Manny' from Ice Age and think that the mammoths would all have the secret animal voice of Ray Romano...

On a side note: I have been writing a news story on a 'controversial' comment published in Nature today by Australian scientist David Bowman. He's suggesting that the introduction of elephants to Australia could help prevent bush fires and ease the environmental destruction of feral animals.

The mammoth and the elephant are believed to have lived in very similar environments. Some of the comments by other researchers on the elephant article mention that elephants destroy habitats and turn once lush forests into scattered grasslands like Africa - a situation that we don't want find ourselves in here. So if we were to resurrect the woolly mammoth and release it into the wild, would it destroy our current habitats and environments? Or maybe there is just no place for mammoths in countries like Australia (damn), but is there a place for them in Africa with the elephants?