Cloning or resurrecting a mammoth is one of the efforts that countries like Russia and Japan are dedicated to.
Anyone who has seen the film Jurassic Park (1993) will be able to understand the main message of the film: beyond raising a possibility of science fiction (which has already been proven that it cannot be carried out due to the age of the DNA of the dinosaurs ), the film launches a very clear idea: human beings should not “play God”, since this carries risks.
But isn’t this statement anti-scientific and anti-progress? Or is the eagerness to resurrect extinct creatures just the result of the audacity of conceited humans? Would it have any benefit for the planet’s ecosystems, or is it just a philosophical challenge, and an economic achievement (creating profitable amusement parks)?
One of the creatures that most fascinates scientists (in addition to the unreachable dinosaurs) are mammoths . A team of researchers from the United States, Japan and Russia, led by Akira Iritani, from Kyoto University, announced in early 2011 that they would try to resurrect mammoths using modern cloning techniques after extracting tissue from a specimen of the extinct animal. preserved in a Russian research laboratory.
In 2013, the skeleton of a woolly mammoth in good condition was found in northern Siberia. The discovery sparked enthusiasm from scientists and the media because the body contained a “red liquid” that could be blood. Thus, finding an intact cell nucleus in a red blood cell would allow scientists to insert it into an elephant’s egg to produce a woolly mammoth-elephant hybrid.
90-year-old Akira Iritani himself is currently working on a technique that can make this possible, although right now the prospect of a mammoth being born in the short term is still distant. Regarding the ethical implications of his work, Iritani stated in March 2019 the following: “Since many species become extinct by human action, it is my duty to preserve them.”
Is it ethically and scientifically feasible to “resurrect” a mammoth?
The first question we should ask ourselves is why would humans want to resurrect a mammoth , an animal that was extinct 3,700 years ago.
In addition, we could also ask ourselves, not only if this exercise is ethical (since it violates basic principles of nature and ecosystems) but if it would be feasible to reintroduce an animal that disappeared from the planet for millennia back into a changing ecosystem , and with a balanced delicate.
In 2016, the journal Functional Ecology published a report that analyzed the ethical and scientific (but especially scientific) implications of the resurrection of an extinct animal , and its introduction back into a changing and evolved ecosystem, assuming that the cloning techniques applied by scientists can be carried out.
As well; The report considered the case of the reintegration into the planet’s ecosystems of two extinct animals, the woolly mammoth and the Carolina pigeon or passenger pigeon (a species of bird); And for this, he asked himself two questions: Does the cloning of an extinct animal such as the mammoth benefit ecological communities and ecosystems ?; and, the second place: Can we effectively recover the functions of this species taking into account the changes that its natural habitat has undergone over the millennia?
Next, we proceed to summarize the analysis carried out by the authors of the report in the specific case of the woolly mammoth cloning.
Mammoths influenced the renewal of nutrients in the soil
Mammoths are believed to shape decomposition and nutrient turnover in the soil by consuming large amounts of vegetation, which was especially important in cold climates, where renewal often occurs slowly.
It is estimated that when the Pleistocene megafauna, including mammoths, became extinct, the global average nutrient distribution capacity of terrestrial animals fell to about 8% of pre-extinction values , precipitating a 90% decline. -95% in lateral transport of nutrients in the Americas.
Furthermore, mammoths appear to have had important mechanical and landscape engineering impacts on ecosystems. The trampling and aggressive feeding of these 6-ton mammals is believed to create disturbances that allowed less competitive grasses to grow where moss or forest would be dominant. The loss of such megafauna “ecosystem engineers” (as the article cites) likely contributed to ecological status changes in North America: there was a notable increase in dense woody and deciduous forests in North America and, in latitudes higher, a shift from grassland steppe to moss-dominated tundra.
Can cloning the mammoth regain its unique functions?
A priori, it would seem that there are areas in the Arctic that have the climatic parameters necessary for the ideal ecosystem of mammoths: a gigantic steppe and grassland populations. However, as the report indicates, no extinction studies have addressed the influence of soil pH : in the last 10,000 years, soils in this region may have become too acidic, as a result of increased soil moisture, as to support the return of grassland ecosystems.
Other factors that would hinder the resurrection of the mammoth: Post-glacial shifts toward warmer climate regimes at lower latitudes have similarly altered vegetation. In addition, the report determines that it would be “difficult or unfeasible” to introduce mammoths to certain latitudes in North America , due to the inevitable human-mammoth conflict.
Arctic areas with the necessary climatic parameters proposed for a putative mammoth reintegration are less densely populated, but measures would still need to be taken to avoid the overlap of mammoths and human civilization , both for the sake of the mammoths themselves and for the sake of the mammoths. people.
An example of the coexistence problems that mammoths and humans would have, the publication cites, lies in the “high frequency of conflicts” between elephants and humans in Africa, which provides indications of the difficulty of coexistence between the two, even in environments rural.
The report considers that some of the complications associated with the coexistence of mammoths and humans could be alleviated by taking some local measures (removal of woody plants, programs focused on smaller fenced landscapes), but even so “they would not be enough to recover the ecological functions historically provided by mammoths ”.
Conclusions
In the section dedicated to the mammoth, the report concludes that “it is not clear how much hope we can have in reversing the changes in ecological status on a large scale and recovering the ecological functions of the mammoth , for its correct reintegration into the ecosystem, such as transport services. of nutrients lost ”.
In closing, the report reaches the following conclusions. On the issue of cloning extinct animals , and their reintegration into the planet’s changing ecosystems, scientists should:
- Select the species that are the best candidates for this process, which will be those that have low levels of functional redundancy (that is, whose impact on ecosystems is not too high)
- Prioritize species that have become more recently extinct , as attempts to reintroduce functions may be ineffective if too long has passed (if ecosystems have changed too much).
Finally, the report also mentions that the search for these low levels of functionality (for the selection of a candidate) are extremely subjective but, even so, “worth it”.
Regarding the risks of “resurrecting” a mammoth , as an extinct creature that it is, and reintroducing it into the ecosystem, the report mentions that ecological communities evolve dynamically, so that the resurrected species and their recovered functions could be poorly combined with the networks ecological conditions, and that this could cause “chain reactions difficult to reverse”.
Furthermore, it is of little use to ignore the natural functionality of the extinction process in nature. That is to say, vulgarly speaking, “nature is wise.”
A positive point
Another thing is that the extinction itself is caused by human activity. There, precisely, lies the positive point that the report highlights: the cloning of extinct species can be beneficial in the case of species that are dangerously close to extinction but have not yet crossed the threshold.
However, the report warns that “participating in the resurrection of species for which natural barriers are insurmountable can result in an exercise in ecological frustration .”
Sources :
- A mammoth undertaking: harnessing insight from functional ecology to shape de ‐ extinction priority setting Douglas J. McCauley, Molly Hardesty – Moore, Benjamin S. Halpern, Hillary S. Young (2016) British Ecological Society (doi: 10.1111 / 1365-2435.12728)
- Signs of biological activities of 28,000-year-old mammoth nuclei in mouse oocytes visualized by live-cell imaging ; Akira Iritani. (2019) Scientific Reports (doi: 10.1038 / s41598-019-40546-1)
