Hoping to revive mammoths, scientists create 'woolly mice'

NPR ^ | March 04, 2025 | Rob Stein

[DannyTN]

Those have already escaped the lab.

I saw a dark brown woolly mouse in my house.

[HartleyMBaldwin]

Add the wooly coat and you’d really have something.

[BipolarBob]

“You bred raptors”?

[dp0622]

LOL

[tumblindice]

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy
Was he

[AnotherUnixGeek]

I thought the wooly mammoth would be revived by transplanting an intact cell nucleus from a frozen wooly mammoth into the ovum of an Indian elephant (their closest living relative). The egg would then be implanted in an Indian elephant. The result would be a genetic clone of a wooly mammoth that died thousands of years ago.

But what's being described is, as the article says, an effort to create "mammoth-like" creatures that would have a number of genetic traits from the actual wooly mammoths, but would not be the same creatures genetically. Still very cool but kind of a letdown.

[escapefromboston]

Dodos probably were against foreign rats from invading their island and destroying their habitat. So at least dodos are better than most of our politicians

[Republican Wildcat]

apparently they are working on that too...

[ZOOKER]

Why does the world need hairy elephants? Why would you waste talent and treasure to invent something nobody wants or needs?

If they really must play with genetics, why don't they make chickens that lay three eggs a day or cows that grow twice as much sirloin steak meat?

Unless fake mammoth meat is really tasty...

[Red Badger]

Wooly Bully!..................

[dfwgator]

[Bob434]

Yeah I shouldnta dissed dodo,birds like I did- my bad

[exnavy]

What would be the purpose? To busy trying to find out how, not willing to consider if they really should.

[dfwgator]

I want a mini-giraffe.

[gnarledmaw]

Thats a good idea, certainly better than dinking around with the genome of already threatened creatures like that genius above suggests.

Dodos would have a short life cycle and after produced a million or so could be bred quite quickly to look for genetically created diseases we may have accidentally created or other research like getting an idea of the real effect these creatures would have on different environments before being released anywhere.

And who knows? They might actually taste good or at least palatably different as many fowl do. If you had a million (magic number) and they dressed at 10lbs (because that makes the math easy) and you sold them for $10/lb (chickens dont but this would be trendy at first) then you would have quite reserve for propelling future work.

If we screw something up and some do get away we should be able to retrieve them easily, they arent likely to destroy much, and we dont lose another species if we wind up at square one.

What kind of PR nightmare are they going to create for this type of work if the first couple have temperaments like african elephants and yank the limbs of of a couple of researchers at feeding time? I dont think that losing researchers or difficulty in the news cycle is such a big risk with dodos. Its might actually be the opposite because Gen Z knows that dodos are wacky survivalist types with a humorous form of martial arts and who wouldnt want to fund that?

[larrytown]

We can’t even manage bison and wolves.

This just smacks of science masturbation.

[protest1]

It’s a Mousetodon!

[protest1]

This is more like selective breeding. It is not actually bring a mammoth back to life at all.

"bringing a woolly mammoth-LIKE creature back from extinction"

This would be a new breed so nothing is "back from extinction"

[Larry Lucido]

A mammouse?

[Larry Lucido]