Woolly mammoth to be brought back to life from cloned bone marrow 'within five years' , page 2

I just want to state for the record before I respond to the idea of cloning a Wolly Mammoth, that it is utterly and completely baseless to suggest that some supernatural or intelligent reason exists why the mammoth was "killed off" or why "this life form was considered unfit" or some other such twaddle. Nothing has ever happened that way.

The lifeform was proven not to be capable of adapting to a warmer climate, and the increasing threat of bieng hunted off the face of the earth, by our industrious but barbaric ancestors. Its not as if the fist of some mighty diety, in the shape of a meteor, or a plauge, or something, wiped the poor buggers out. Climate change got to them. They couldnt move far enough North , fast enough to keep up with the changing weather, and the rest were hunted into non existance.

Any suggestion that these wonderful creatures were anything less than the most badass pachyderm ever born to the Earth, and would have carried on quite contentedly had thier entire habitat not dissapeared from around thier enormous feet, is complete nonsense, and as an opinion, ought to be taken out the back, shot, and its remains fed to pigs.

Now, onto my reaction to the idea of cloning one. I think it is a terrible idea. For a bloody start, an elephant as a mother will be a pretty poor surrogate, for many reasons, including this vital one. An elephants natural environment is about as opposite to that of a Mammoth as it is possible to get. All wild elephants these days have chosen hot arid, or hot damp climates in which to live, which is pretty much the polar (ho ho) opposite of the climate required by Mammoth physiology. It is the difference in climate, the retreat of the tundra, the dissapearance of the glaciers from thier stomping ground, that put paid to the magnificent beasts in the first place.

Why , you ask, would that make an elephant a poor surrogate for a Mammoth? It is because elephants feed differently, and come up against an entirely different set of problems in thier dusty hang outs, than did the Mammoth. Mammoths would have to learn things about survival that an elephant just does not know, like how to deal with frozen ground, or forage under snow for food. If the Mammoth that came about from the in vitro fertilisation process, were taught by its birth mother, then it would be functionally the most useless and stunted mammoth ever born, since there is no beast alive today that could teach it the tricks it would need to know to survive.

A human tutor might be able to better grasp the idea of what is needed for a mammoth to evolve ideal behaviors and survival skills, but I doubt very much that a human could TEACH one of these enormous animals how to actually achieve its aims.

Therefore, is it ethical to bring a creature back from extinction if there is no one around who could garuntee successful education of the blighter, so that it does not starve to death when or if it is released.

Another thing that strikes me, is that a Mammoth baby must be quite some degree larger than an elephant baby. Therefore would it be ethical to put an elephant through that potentially dangerous process?

And finally... Unlike some Christians and religious philosophers, I do not believe in the least, in the idea that God frowns upon the efforts of science. I believe the opposite in fact. I believe that science offers us the greatest oppertunity to witness the glory of Gods creation. I have no religious or secular issue with the idea, I want to make that very clear.

But I do believe in animal wellfare, and I think that until the people who are suggesting this can ensure that any mammoth child that comes into the world, can be taught, can be homed, and will not suffer from having no elder beast around to learn from, and will have a climate that agrees with it, rather than being crated up and sent to live with elephants in the worst possible climate for it, untill ALL these things are dealt with completely, that they ought to hold off and ensure the infrastructural elements of KEEPING and caring for one of these animals are met, before they even introduce the genetic materials to one another.