And what furry beast, whose time has finally come, is headed for a laboratory to be born?
About 3,900 years ago, in mainland Siberia, the last known woolly mammoth died out. Since then, people have known mammoths only through their remains: scattered bones and a small number of frozen carcasses filled with tiny remnants of once shaggy fur. These remains have piqued our curiosity for centuries – a curiosity that may one day be satisfied. Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based startup, is using genetic engineering in its quest to bring the species back to life.
“The woolly mammoth was the guardian of a healthier planet,” the company says. Using salvaged mammoth DNA, Colossal will genetically edit Asian elephants, the species’ closest extant cousin. If his plans are successful, it will produce a woolly mammoth – or as close a replica as possible – in six years. This year, the company has raised $75 million from investors.
So, some 3,906 years after it thought it saw the back of us, the woolly mammoth can be reacquainted with humans—a species that has never seen a large mammal it didn’t like the idea of eating. Their extinction wasn’t solely our fault—the end of the Ice Age greatly reduced the size of their potential habitat—but, as some paleontologists argue, prehistory is littered with the bodies of megafauna we’ve eaten to extinction. Giant sloths, giant armadillos, dire wolves… whoever represented planet Earth in those days had to stay on their feet.
Given the apparent progress in mammoth recovery, we could answer the obvious question: should we eat them? Colossal doesn’t mention that prospect, instead focusing on the environmental benefits of mammoth recovery: the animal’s heavy gait thickens permafrost, or the permanently frozen layer of soil, gravel and sand beneath the Earth’s surface, preventing melting and releasing greenhouse gases . “If the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem can be revived,” the company claims, “it could help reverse rapid climate warming and, more importantly, protect the Arctic permafrost—one of the world’s largest carbon sinks.” .”
Still, one wonders if people will be tempted to try as their ancestors did. At some point, we’ll have to decide if we want to eat a woolly mammoth too – and indeed any other species we decide to resurrect. Would you eat them?
Holly Whitelaw, director of Regenerative Food and Farming, says she would agree. “I would eat anything that’s holistically pastured,” says Whitelaw. Roaming animals, she says, are healthy for the soil; they spread seeds and microbes as they wander. The healthier the Arctic soil, the more grassland it supports and the more carbon it removes from the atmosphere. “It’s like bringing the wolves back,” says Whitelaw. “You make the whole system level work better again.”
It would be a great tragedy if we were to leave these great personalities in our time only to use and exploit them for our own benefit
Victoria Herridge, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum and an expert on woolly mammoths, urged caution. In doing this kind of environmental project, Dr Herridge told The Telegraph, “you’re running a bioengineering experiment that, if your goal is [met], will create change on a global scale. The question is: who can interfere with the climate system of the planet?
Speaking to The Independent, Dr Herridge raised further concerns about the origins of these mammoths. “I have a problem with anything related to surrogacy,” she says. Genetically modified mammoth amalgams will become pregnant in Asian elephants, risking significant pain and medical risk.
These are more objections to the project itself than to the idea of eating mammoth meat at the end of it. Dr. Herridge sees this scenario as unlikely, but presents a hypothetical scenario in which she would consider eating mammoth meat. “Fast forward 100 years. Imagine that Siberia isn’t a swamp, there’s room for woolly elephants to roam instead of wading through a mosquito-infested swamp. Let’s say they managed to raise 20,000 woolly elephants at this point. They have wandered into Banff and are wreaking havoc and to maintain this population they have had to do an annual cull. Would I turn it down? No. But there are so many caveats.
Whitelaw says a pasture-raised mammoth would have a good ratio of omega:3 to omega:6 fats, making it a good dietary choice. With that in mind, it’s easy to imagine paleo enthusiasts fueling consumer demand. However, Dr. Herridge is again skeptical. “The idea that you can have a diet that goes back to this ancient way is really problematic,” she says. “There is this naïve idea that there is an Eden lost. Our vision of it is based on nothing but wishful thinking and stereotypes.”
Dinner tonight? Woolly mammoths in the 2016 film Ice Age: Clash
(Shutterstock)
There are other ways of looking at this question. Thinkers like Brian Tomasik, author of the blog Essays on Reducing Suffering, argue that if you’re going to eat animals, “it’s generally better to eat bigger ones to get more meat for a horrible life and a painful death. For example, a beef cow produces over 100 times more meat per animal than a chicken, so switching from eating all chicken to all beef would reduce the number of farm animals killed by more than 99 percent.
Addressing the question of eating woolly mammoths, Tomasik says, “A woolly mammoth will weigh approximately 10 times more than a beef cow, so eating mammoths rather than smaller animals will further reduce the number of animal deaths. “
We must also consider the mammoth’s manner of death. “Whether death by hunting would be better or worse than natural death in the wild,” Tomasik says, “depends on how long it takes the mammoth to die after being shot and how painful the gunshot wound was. to the point of death.” A wild deer, he says, can take 30-60 minutes to die after being shot in the lungs or heart. Their brains are thought to be too small a target, although this may be different for mammoths.
There are many competing considerations here. While rejuvenating arctic grasslands would likely be good for the climate, it could also lead to more wildlife. Tomasik sees this as bad news. “Nearly all wild animals are invertebrates or small vertebrates that produce vast numbers of offspring, most of which die painfully not long after birth.”
I think it will be a bit like pork
Stronger opposition to the idea comes from Eliza Allen, PETA’s vice president of programs. Arguing that we should focus on protecting existing species whose habitats are rapidly disappearing, rather than resurrecting species whose habitats have already been lost, Allen says: “If anything separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, it is the selfish desire to eat the other members of it when we don’t have to.” Allen says that “the future of the meat industry is in lab-grown or 3D-printed meat.”
Jaycee Reese Antis, co-founder of the Sentience Institute, sees applying this technology to woolly mammoths as ethically preferable to hunting them. “One of humanity’s most pressing challenges for the 21st century is ending the unethical, unsustainable industry of factory farming,” he says. “Culturized meat is one of the most promising substitutes, so if mammoth meat is what gets people excited about it, then I’m excited about it.” It would be extremely wasteful to breed and raise live mammoths when we can sustainably grow meat tissue in bioreactors.
This would avoid what Antis sees as the inherent wrongness of killing, for our own pleasure, a being that can think and feel. He’s all about the technology, he says, but stresses that it’s important to “maintain boundaries of respect and bodily integrity of sentient beings. One of the most fruitful boundaries is the right not to be owned and exploited for someone else’s benefit. This is true for humans, but we are increasingly recognizing it for animals, and it is a crucial pillar in the responsible stewardship of our fellow humans.
“It would be a great tragedy if we were to reach our technological arm back into the Pleistocene and move these majestic individuals into our time only to use and exploit them for our own benefit.”
For our ancestors who made buildings out of the bones of mammoths, this question wouldn’t have been half so hairy. But let’s imagine a mammoth-based dish obtained not from hunting, but from a bioreactor. How can it taste? Whitelaw has a hunch. “I think it will be a bit like pork. You’ll need to cook it long and slow to melt that fat to make it. Or maybe you could make it nice and crispy.
Watch out for that fur though.
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