"Hey!"
Posted on 07/04/2015 1:40:42 PM PDT by BenLurkin
It will definitely be possible within the foreseeable future to bring back the long-extinct woolly mammoth, a top geneticist has said. However, in his regretful opinion such a resurrection should not be carried out.
The assertion comes in the wake of a new study of mammoth genetics as compared to their cousins the Asian and African elephants, which live in warm habitats very different from the icy northern realms of the woolly giant.
The new study offers boffins many revelations as to the differences which let the elephants and mammoths survive in such different conditions.
“This is by far the most comprehensive study to look at the genetic changes that make a woolly mammoth a woolly mammoth,” said genetics prof Vincent Lynch.
“They are an excellent model to understand how morphological evolution works, because mammoths are so closely related to living elephants, which have none of the traits they had," he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
Now there I see a commercial possibility. Create herds of the little ones for their wool. People would pay a fortune for a mammoth-wool coat. I also suspect that people descended from ice-age European populations probably have a natural taste for mammoth meat. I for one, can't wait to try those steaks.
Do they taste like chicken?
Turn me into one.
Or the ribs!
From a FRiend:
Mammoth: The Resurrection Of An Ice Age Giant
http://www.amazon.com/Mammoth-The-Resurrection-Ice-Giant/dp/0738207756
“Herds of the little ones for their wool”
Animals bred and kept for wool are sheared once or twice a year, depending on the weather and species-since llamas and alpacas are downright dangerous, compared with sheep and angora goats, I can only imagine what a bitch it would be to get a mammoth on that shearing table without getting kicked or charged...
If in fact the mega-fauna were decimated by a major boloid strike in upper North America, then I see no logic to the argument that there time had come. There are areas isolated enough in the far north that they could be housed in.
That's why I suggested cloning the pygmy mammoths for the wool. If it turns out they are too ornery to flip over for a shearing I'm sure some kind of shearing stock could be designed for them.
A friend of mine weaves things from buffalo wool- the wool is not shorn from the animals, it is collected whent eh bison scratch their backs on barbed wire fences during the one time a year they shed their thick winter wool.
Hey, since you brought it up...
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
Such idiocy. They should spend the time and money figuring out how to save the elephants and rhinos here on earth and under siege from cruel poachers.
A friend of my husband’s who had been a rodeo rider wore a little talisman that contained a tuft of buffalo wool. It is the softest wool I have ever felt and that includes alpaca. I danced with him once and he was the smoothest dancer I have ever experienced, I guess that’s why he could stay on the bulls.
By all means, bring them back— end world hunger
I realize everyone would really like a Wooly Mammoth reserve
in Siberia, but I have to to ask: what’s the real agenda?
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