Basically there is no adaption that works against bad circumstances that adapt to you - besides intelligence. We might wipe out all bigger life-forms where we go- but in our shadow, intelligent life might grow.
Arras able to do take out orders from unoccupied flats.
Foxes able to open trash cans.
Wild boars, planting ambrosia to keep allergic humans at bay.
Algae and Fungi able to eat electricity and plastic.
Nature has a nice come back swing. Not very Disney, but nothing is.
Most of nothern megafauna was destroyed anyway (mostly not by humans, but climate change) and we should probably bring it all back. Replace swamps with steppes.
To start with, we're wiping out pretty much any natural habitat it might may able to survive in at an alarming rate. Along with that of the polar bear and elephants etc.
We seem to also have a pretty good habit of causing countless other species to go extinct, so maybe if we learn to look after the species we have, we can get a new pet?
So why invest bringing back something back that will just get made extinct again?
From what I've read, the hard part isn't cloning, we already have that technology. The hard part is growing it in a womb, where the baby is bathed in various chemicals at various times in its progression, and where the temperature has to be exactly right. Where do you attach the umbilical cord?
Do you know what the body temperature of the womb a pregnant mammoth is? Tough question.
Unless we figure out a way to make artificial wombs, our best bet is just to use an elephant for that. Since mammoths are unlikely to differ much in terms of body temperature and nutrient requirements, the problems you mention won't be much of an issue.
More problematic would be immune system incompatibility, which could lead to the mammoth or its elephant mother being killed by the other's immune system response. But I think we have a way to deal with that when it happens in humans, so there should be a workaround.
Anyway, first you need to get some cells with mammoth DNA to divide often enough. Before you have that, those other problems don't really matter much.
Could you point me to where specifically you have read that? Every article I can find on the internet seems to assume that using an Asian elephant as the surrogate mother will be as easy (i.e. very hard) as if we had living mammoths to carry the clone.
I sent an email to the team at MIT back in 1997 when the mammoth clone news first started hitting the rounds (maybe it's older, I don't know).
Even getting a hybrid asian/african elephant baby to survive is very difficult. How big would a mammoth baby be at birth? Could it even fit in the womb?
All that said, if someone does manage to clone mammoths, that will be very cool.
Oh, it's gonna happen. The technology is not quite there yet, but it's advancing rapidly. What do you think, if you can prove you have a decent shot to do it, will YCombinator support you?
Attacking other users will get your account banned on HN regardless of how good your cause is. We've warned you before, so please don't post like this again.
Hey now, don't go selling humans short. Life has been around for billions of years. Dinosaurs were blundering around for a long time before that asteroid hit.
If extinction is the goal we don't have to wait for an asteroid, we can nuke the planet today.
I think you're kind of avoiding the point that extinction isn't the goal. Perhaps, for a moment, entertain the idea we need to be a little more cautious wiping out other life.
We can probably wipe out quite a bit more, and still be ok. Much like you can loose an eye and still be ok. Probably easier to avoid losing the eye in the first place.
