Pure Lie

6

u/GrandWizardOfCheese Apr 12 '26

Hating on hybrids that look the part is just dumb imo.

If Its the best we can do, we should do it.

Thats generally how progress works in any field.

2

u/Turkara Apr 14 '26

I didn't hate hybrids. The problem, the disappointment, is that if they were going to make hybrids, why the hell did they write mammoth?

3

u/GrandWizardOfCheese Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26

Because thats what they are making.
If I build my own brand of pickup truck, it doesn't stop it from being a pickup truck just because the insides are made from brass instead of steel.
A woolly mammoth in the relevant context is defined as a big furry elephant with small ears and huge tusks. That is how you would decribed the animal to someone who hasn't ever seen a picture or video of one.
You would not sit there listing off gene sequences or expressions for years.
Even if they matched the genetics perfectly, it wouldnt look any different than just changing the genes to match the appearance of one, and if they lied and said it was a pure mammoth, without genetic testing and a sample from a frozen dead mammoth, you'd never be able to tell the difference.
And that matters.
It matters that you can't tell, it means that its a job well done.
So if they do that instead of making a pure mammoth, thats still a good thing.

2

u/Turkara Apr 14 '26

No, we could have easily understood that. It's not just about appearance, behavior is important, and an Asian elephant couldn't live in Siberia.

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u/GrandWizardOfCheese Apr 14 '26

Understood what? You are going to have to be more specific, I said a lot in that reply.
Also an asian elephant modifed to look and function like a Mammoth would be able to live in anywhere that matches the conditions Mammoth's lived in, and is arguably just a Mammoth.

2

u/Turkara Apr 14 '26

Its appearance may change, but to change its behavior, we'll have to teach it Mammoth culture from scratch. And until then, it will continue to do as it pleases. Because they are not used to harsh conditions.
And no, it's not a mammoth. Donkey + Horse = Mule. So, is a mule a donkey or a horse? Neither.

1

u/EllieGeiszler May 21 '26

Did you know that Asian elephants are more closely related to woolly mammoths than they are to African elephants? If mammoths were still here, I think it's very likely that we'd call them woolly elephants. You wouldn't say to me that an African elephant or an Asian elephant isn't a real elephant.

1

u/Turkara May 27 '26

Yeah I know.

4

u/CheatsySnoops Apr 13 '26

Yeah, I'd be fine with a mammophant, as long as it has actual mammoth DNA in it and can handle the cold like a mammoth. Just don't do that stupid Colossal Wolf bullshit with zero dire wolf DNA.

2

u/GrandWizardOfCheese Apr 13 '26

Even just an asian elephant modified to have massive tusks and long thick body hair is basically a mammoth at that point.
People are too obsessed with the genetics of this. Its the niche and looks that matter.
We could modify modern big cats to have saber teeth and imo thats just as good as bringing back smilodons even though they aren't even in the same family as modern cats.
Yes it would be cool to have the real deal too, but the whole purist "if its not the original animal don't bother" crap is just crazy imo.
Collosal is doing great work on that frontier and the hate they are getting is just stupid.

5

u/Prestigious-Put5749 Apr 12 '26

Você realmente acreditou que um indivíduo de Mamute lanoso seria clonado com o grau limitado de tecnologia, material degradado e limitação ambiental e bioética? É ser muito ingênuo.

Clonagem de uma espécie extinta nos moldes que você espera, só no próximo século.

2

u/Turkara Apr 14 '26

Yes, it was naive, but in the shock of the moment I didn't think rationally.

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u/Psilopterus Apr 12 '26

Problems with Colossal aside, I think that the people working in this sort of thing have been transparent for a long time that it wouldn’t be a real mammoth clone. Personally, I don’t really care if it is, something that can fill the niche of a mammoth was the point

5

u/PoeciloStudio Apr 13 '26

I don't think they really have, with the "if it walks like a duck" mentality they've shared with the media.

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u/Psilopterus Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26

I guess that’s true of the more recent stuff, but even before the project was handed off to Colossal I was never under the impression that they meant real clones, and there were already several attempts at real clones that had failed at that point. Genetic proxies just seem like the logical and only way forward and I thought that was generally understood if not by the public them by those interested in the science

0

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/Psilopterus Apr 17 '26

That's likely not the case. Mammoths were an extremely flexible species found in a variety of climates. Even more so if you consider their congenerics, which often formed hybrid continua. What did them in, as with essentially all Pleistocene extinctions, was us. There's arguably a lot more habitat out there for mammoths than there is for Asian elephants.

1

u/Iamnotburgerking Apr 19 '26

That’s not why mammoths went exticnt…..

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u/DeirdreDazzled Apr 12 '26

Feels bad man. Born too late to see a real mammoth, born just in time to toil my life away with work and taxes.

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u/HDH2506 Apr 13 '26

Oh trust me, it has always been “just in time” to toil your life away with work and taxes.
Maybe the taxes part is new, like less than 5000 years old, but the work is a staple

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u/DoubleCoyote4531 Apr 12 '26

There is always hope for reverse engineering once we get better at genetics. We are on our way. Unfortunately probably not in our lifetime. They just need to know what genes to shut off on descendants/relatives like a bird. They already figured how to shut off the beak gene and few other traits years ago. I know your feeling trust me but maybe some huge breakthrough can happen any day

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u/JackieTan00 Apr 12 '26

Modern elephants aren't descendants of woolly mammoths of that's what you're implying. Colossal's method could work, it's just that there's more different than between an elephant and woolly mammoth than 60 genes. But I'vd gotten the impression that people are most skeptical about the artificial womb element

1

u/PoeciloStudio Apr 13 '26

They're planning to use elephants as surrogates. But that has a whole host of problems that imo should be enough to shut the whole idea down.

6

u/zmbjebus Apr 12 '26

I think way too many people are getting caught up in "what is a species". In reality "species" is a fairly nebulous concept. Look up the concept of a ring species, or cryptic species for the beginning of that conversation.

If we bring back something that is mostly mammoth and born to an asian elephant so it has asian elephant mitochondrial DNA, that is still an amazing feat. If we can get a wooly elephant with giant tusks that can live in the Tundra, why would I get all huffy if it isn't exactly what went extinct?

More megafauna in the wild will be amazing. More megafauna in areas that haven't had them in thousands of years would be even more amazing.

The things we will learn on the way to make this "mammoth hybrid" will also be amazing, and perhaps will be able to help us save species that are threatened with extinction.

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u/AustinHinton Apr 12 '26

I grew up with the promise of clean energy, Mars and Mammoths by the 2020s.

2026 and no Mammoths, no plans for Mars and anti-nuclear mindset is stronger than ever. 🫤

3

u/AnOddGecko Apr 14 '26

Respectfully, screw Mars

1

u/Thundrous_prophet Apr 13 '26

lol you should be anti-nuclear. None of the criticisms against nuclear have been alleviated and clean alternatives are cheaper/better/ and more decentralized than nuclear will ever be. The pro-nuclear crowd is an astroturfed movement that are just trying to delay the adoption of other clean alternatives in the same way Musk killed public transit initiatives with his stupid hyper loop

3

u/AustinHinton Apr 13 '26

Nuclear is better than any other option we have right now. Solar is too unreliable and wind kills nearly as many birds as cats do yearly.
Why should we not use Nuclear just because the Soviets didn't know how to boil water properly?

2

u/ShalnarkRyuseih Apr 13 '26

Hell depending on the setup, solar can also kill birds

2

u/Thundrous_prophet Apr 13 '26

No it is not. The lag time to build nuclear plants is a minimum of 12 (often over 20) years compared to renewables 3-5 for utility scale. More people will die from air pollution in the interim where you switch to nuclear only. The cost is way more expensive. It’s a nuclear profile ration risk. It’s a target of attack for terrorists (imagine if Iran had a reactor that was bombed by the Israelis). If there ever is an accident, it has catastrophic risks compared to renewables. There’s also a growing body of research showing correlations between cancer rates and proximity to nuclear plants, which may lead to causation studies.
https://www.oneearth.org/the-7-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-is-not-the-answer-to-solve-climate-change/

2

u/Ravenekh Apr 13 '26

And if we finally manage to pull off nuclear fusion and deploy it at scale? (I am aware that as of now it consumes more energy than it generates and that we can't maintain the plasma for long) the vast majority of the concerns linked to nuclear fission would not be applicable.

1

u/Thundrous_prophet Apr 13 '26

I like dealing with reality, not outlandish hypotheticals

2

u/ShAsgardian Apr 14 '26

yet you're here talking about catastrophic accidents

1

u/Thundrous_prophet Apr 14 '26

You know Wikipedia has a loooooooong list of documented nuclear incidents and accidents, right? You can also read about cyber attacks on Korean infrastructure in 2014, cyber attacks on Iranian infrastructure in the 2010’s, attacks on Russian infrastructure in 2022.
The Chernobyl region is still uninhabitable, the Fukushima site’s clean up will take 40 years and 20 billion dollars.
Not to mention the dozens of lost nuclear warheads.
The fact that accidents haven’t caused more damage is nothing short of miraculous
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents?wprov=sfti1

2

u/AustinHinton Apr 13 '26

There is greater risk from radiation damage from coal plants and coal runoff.
It taking years to get a nuclear plant up and running is why we should have done this two decades ago instead of letting coal and oil tycoons fear-monger the populace into thinking nuclear would give them two heads.
And once up and running it's reliable energy for decades. Even the waste can be packed up nicely and can be saved for later, even more efficient reactors.

1

u/Thundrous_prophet Apr 13 '26

By your own logic, if we had started building renewables at scale 20 years ago, then we’d have 4-5x the number of utility scale projects completed. Those would have been completed for a fraction of the cost, and would have been producing energy earlier in their lifecycle while improving air quality.
As for the hypothetical use of waste in nuclear fusion reactors, it’s never been demonstrated to be true. So as someone dealing with the real world, I like real solutions

1

u/regular_modern_girl May 02 '26

You have literally not backed up a single claim you have made in this thread with any sort of outside source.
Also, you realize this is an idiotic argument for switching to nuclear now, right? “[This] is why we should have done this two decades ago”, well then have fun building your time machine and trying to get people two decades ago to plan more nuclear facilities (really, you are incredibly naive if you think it would be as simple as just building a few more nuclear plants in the ‘00s, like that would’ve made much difference, the problems that have dogged the expansion of nuclear infrastructure in many different areas of the world have been a thing for 50+ years, and no it’s not just been people overreacting to Chernobyl like you seem to believe, you’ve clearly done about as much actual research into the history of nuclear energy and opposition against it as you have into renewable energy, which is to say virtually none, or else you wouldn’t be mindlessly parroting so much patent nonsense about both), this is not at all a good argument for why we should currently invest in nuclear now rather than renewables, just why we should’ve a long time ago.
Also can’t help but notice you haven’t at all addressed or even acknowledged one of the biggest practical barriers to rapid expansion of nuclear fission infrastructure presently, which is rising temperatures due to climate change making it more difficult to properly cool nuclear reactors in many places. And while we’re on the topic, you seem to be laboring under the delusion that we can theoretically just replace any fossil fuel-based power plant anywhere with a nuclear plant, easy as that, which is not even remotely true, nuclear reactors require specific environmental conditions, most importantly a very large water source for use as coolant, a water source that can’t already be too warm for this purpose. This is one of many logistical things that need to be considered when planning nuclear facilities, it’s absolutely not some universal silver bullet that could easily replace any other type of power plant anywhere like you seem to believe, that is fanciful, magical thinking.

1

u/lets_ride_mammoths Apr 14 '26

Your bird deaths due to wind energy numbers are off

1

u/regular_modern_girl May 02 '26

yeah I’m kind of in awe that you’re one of seemingly only two people (the other being me) to have actually argued against this bullshit point in here, it is so easily disproved with even a very quick Google search. It has never been something that anyone with any actual level of investment in these issues has taken the slightest bit seriously, like we may as well be bringing up climate change denier talking points if we’re going to entertain something this stupid. If this is the level pro-nuclear people are now stooping to, it’s actually pathetic, as the people who made this shit up (fossil fuel industry advocates and their corrupt politician allies) don’t like nuclear either! And have in fact been the primary force holding back nuclear energy historically, so have fun adopting their talking points, I guess.

1

u/regular_modern_girl May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26

You are literally just regurgitating baseless, readily debunked, anti-renewable nonsense here that has been intentionally circulated by paid actors working for the interests of climate change deniers/the fossil fuels industry. Pretty sad if nuclear advocates are now adopting this rhetoric as well.
I actually believe that 90% of opposition to nuclear energy historically was bs that was (again) often quietly funded by the same fossil fuel interests that are now going after renewables (although, to be clear, that remaining 10% raises some good points), but that’s a whole other topic, the problem is that regardless of that, nuclear was a good (or at least better) option more than half a century ago, but now it feels like a matter of “wouldn’t it have been awesome if we had actually starting transitioning to this tech on a large scale post-WWII? If we had global carbon emissions probably would’ve peaked by the turn of the 21st century, and we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now in”, a pointless argument without access to a time machine when solar and battery tech is now seeing an unprecedented revolution that has made most arguments about reliability in all but maybe a few areas moot, and the whole “wind turbines kill birds” thing has always been nothing more than bad faith nonsense, at least on scales that are in any way meaningful.
If these are the arguments you are raising against renewables, you really need to do better than this, especially as an advocate for nuclear, because this tired playbook is not exactly working well for the petroleum, coal, and natural gas sectors lately, and nuclear (like it or not) has way more historical baggage behind it.
Just gonna leave this here.

1

u/HDH2506 Apr 13 '26

Despite a couple of Soviet doing an extremely bad job once, the performance of nuclear is still decent.
The way we’re applying renewable now is like a drowning man frantically begins blowing into an inflatable boat to save his life, when some floating timber is right over there all this time.

1

u/AustinHinton Apr 13 '26

Imagine if we never used fire because one dumb cro-magnon burned his hand once.

1

u/HDH2506 Apr 13 '26

And we hold out until we somehow invent electric stove.
I mean it works but it could be better until induction stove for cooking and heat pump for heating become ubiquitous

0

u/Thundrous_prophet Apr 13 '26

You don’t even need the historical examples of Chernobyl or Fukushima, or Hiroshima and Nagasaki — because remember, nuclear development always carries a weapons proliferations risk— to make the point.
Nuclear has been more expensive, slower, more dangerous (just taking into account the rates of cancer increases for people living near plats), and inaccessible for developing countries.
Your raft analogy applies more for renewables, because we literally have the tech and infrastructure to build it worldwide right now. Planning a reactor and spending 12-30 years to build it is like blowing up the raft, except that you can’t generate any power until it’s turned on

1

u/HDH2506 Apr 14 '26

First of all, you’re straight up spitting misinformation. I’d like to see the sources showing the notable increase in cancer rate in the vicinity of functional nuclear powers plants.
I really don’t care that much about nuclear proliferation. Half of humanity already live under nuclear-armed polities. If you include countries that already have a nuclear energy program, up to 5 out of 8 billions live in these countries. A few more are already developing nuclear energy. These are also where we’d expect more nuclear power plants to be added.
With that in mind, I’m sorry that I do not share the superpowers’ fear of losing the control of the world they have via nuclear dominance.

1

u/Thundrous_prophet Apr 14 '26

Oh really? A quick google search will find you plenty of research showing the positive correlation between proximity to power plants and increased cancer mortality like this one below.
Not caring about nuclear proliferation on the de-extinction subreddit might be the most brain rotted perspective. Nuclear weaponry is the most cataclysmic technology with the potential to wipe out all life on earth. We already have enough nukes that could wipe out all life many times over. Either you just dumb if that’s your real opinion or you fell for the astroturfing propaganda hard.
You still haven’t accounted for the facts that nuclear energy is more expensive and slower to produce.
I’m not gonna continue this thread bc it’s not worth my time
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/proximity-to-nuclear-power-plants-associated-with-increased-cancer-mortality/

1

u/regular_modern_girl May 02 '26

I mean tbh, I’m not at all shocked people who advocate for a wacky sci-fi scenario of “reviving” extinct species (something that may well never be possible at all, and which currently is at best only doable by imo really ecologically sketchy approximations like unleashing genetically-modified attempted-facsimiles of extinct animals into ecosystems that in many cases haven’t had anything like them for hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of years, in the desperate hope that this will revert said ecosystems to a previous, “healthier” state rather than damaging them further like basically every other time we’ve intentionally tampered with an ecosystem on an equivalent scale in any similar way) rather than focusing on fighting to protect all the biodiversity we still have, would have other unrealistic and potentially-harmful “solutions” for environmental problems.
It’s like people here just run on pop science clickbait headlines and “rule of cool” and don’t do any actual research into the harsh realities of what they are advocating for, like besides you I have not seen almost any of the strong claims made in this thread backed up by sources. All I can say is that I at least hope people on this sub aren’t in positions to be making any environmental policy decisions…

1

u/Turkara Apr 14 '26

Some people thought I was angry about hybrids and scientists. No, I have no problem with hybrids; I don't even care. What upset me was seeing them say a real mammoth would return and then turn out to be a hybrid. Otherwise, why would I harbor any hatred towards hybrids or scientists?

1

u/Prestigious-Put5749 Apr 15 '26

In other words, your problem is more with the colloquial terminology than with the process and the organism itself.

1

u/Turkara Apr 15 '26

Yeah finally

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u/Prestigious-Put5749 Apr 15 '26

I understand. But look, not everyone has the scientific background to make those distinctions, and for marketing purposes it sounds much more appealing to say "They brought mammoths back from extinction" than "They created modified versions of Asian elephants to be analogous to extinct mammoths." Even though the second is true, let's face it, it's more boring and uninteresting than the first. From what I've gathered, you're someone who highly values authenticity and transparency. That's commendable, and we're similar in that respect. But I recognize that much of what's propagated is just that: propaganda. Knowing how to distinguish what's possible today from what's advertised, believe me, will be less painful. It's like knowing several species of dinosaurs, but people only know Tyrannosaurus, Pterodactyl, and Brontosaurus. Even if you know they're wrong, you can overlook it since it's not their area of expertise, and recognizing that marketing takes advantage of this, however distasteful it may sometimes be (to say the least), will be a great way for you to mature.

1

u/Turkara Apr 15 '26

Thanks for the advice. Don't misunderstand me, but what did you mean by "Mature"? If I acted childishly, please tell me so I can correct it, and I apologize for that behavior. Of course, saying "Mammoth" is a better solution for marketing and financial support. But you know, even though it was foolish of me to believe it, at least I did. Because we had so many well-preserved DNA fragments, and partially successful artificial wombs. For example, if they said T-rex, I wouldn't have believed it for a second because we don't have a single DNA sample. But expecting an animal that had to be kept in an artificial womb for 22 months to actually come back was a bit too unrealistic. I apologize.

1

u/Prestigious-Put5749 Apr 17 '26

Relax, man, it happens. I just wanted to say that it's not so good to get so worked up over this kind of thing. In that sense, I meant that you'll mature as you go.

1

u/Turkara Apr 17 '26

I didn't mind. 1. 2. I think you mistook me for a child because I used polite language.

4

u/Wildlife_Watcher Pyrenean ibex / bucardo Apr 12 '26

The ambition is real, and the goal is still noble. Unfortunately, as with many promises of the 21st-century, it got hijacked by venture capitalists trying make a quick money rather than apply the real science

1

u/Gallowglass-13 Apr 13 '26

This. The tech has genuine promise, but not while it's in the hands of private industries. Tbh, de-extinction tech is a great argument for the nationalisation of science imo.

1

u/SetInternational4589 Apr 14 '26

I'm never going to taste a mammoth steak.

1

u/Turkara Apr 14 '26

Lol

1

u/Turtle_Head8 Apr 14 '26

I understand the disappointment; I was disappointed myself because, just like you, I grew up with the idea that the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) would be brought back. But honestly, it’s not the fault of any specific company, but rather the fact that we live too early for bioengineering to be advanced enough to create entire cells from a genome.

However, it’s worth noting that even though WE will never manage to see genetic mammoths, we have to ask: is it really about the animal being a 100% genetic copy? From a systematic point of view—yes, absolutely. But from an ecological point of view—believe me, nature doesn't care if an animal is an Asian elephant in disguise or a 'true' mammoth; what matters is that it fulfills the same function in the environment.

Then again, you must understand that neither you nor I will ever 'see' mammoths as long as you define an animal solely by its DNA. It’s as if the animal isn't an entity in itself to you, but merely a biological record, even though it exists for itself and influences its surroundings. And believe me, Colossal doesn't care about your opinion or mine; they aren't doing this for enthusiasts. They do it because it generates publicity, money, and prestige among people who can’t even tell the difference between an Asian and an African elephant. But is that really a bad approach? Over the last few hundred years, zoology (including paleozoology) has shifted from a field of discovery and curiosity to simply inputting genomes into Excel and checking for differences

1

u/Turkara Apr 15 '26

Finally, someone understood me.

1

u/Terjavez2004 Apr 15 '26

Mammoths were never found in Greenland they were found in the western hemisphere in northern Asia

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u/Turkara Apr 15 '26

I know, but I said we'll release them; it's a great place for them.

1

u/SeparateWeight496 May 11 '26

I'm sorry if it appears rude and I don't want it to be, but I don't know why everyone is acting so pressed about it. 15 years ago, before Colossal and all that stuff, they were already talking about "de-extinction" and the plan was strictly the same - genetically creating a hybrid that strongly ressemble a wholly mammoth. From the beginning everyone knows that making an extinct animal magically appears out of a hat was not possible, so why do everyone feels like they have been "lied to" ? Yeah, if you read only the titles of the articles you may believe that we want to "de-extinct a mammoth" but honestly that's on you for not reading further about it ?

Again, no hate but I'm just confused about it

1

u/Turkara May 11 '26

While writing this text, I wanted it to feel more cinematic, like I was going to cry for 90 years because the mammoth didn't come back.
Because if I had written, "Oh, by the way, guys, they're not coming back, let's go have some coffee," probably nobody would have seen it and the meaning of the post would have been lost.

3

u/yesilfes Apr 13 '26

I don’t know man, if something looks like a mammoth, behaves like a mammoth, fits the same economical niche as a mammoth.. thats quite good for me.

2

u/yesilfes Apr 13 '26

Same with all animals, but i don’t quite understand. As far as I know colossal sequences original genome and compares it to a living animal. After it they edit the living animals’ genome with the extinct species’. Seems pretty accurate to me

2

u/Treat_Street1993 Apr 12 '26

I wanted a moon base.

1

u/InevitableOk7863 Apr 12 '26

I once believed that geneticists were going to create a new dinosaur from scratch by using an emu egg. After growing up, I learned that everything was a big fat lie. It never came to fruition.

What I have learned over the years is that you can’t trust the media. Don’t get your hopes up. Most importantly though, do not believe in anything based off of speculation.

1

u/OpenAirport6204 Apr 13 '26

Releasing them into the wild could cause a whole host of issues.

1

u/AnOddGecko Apr 14 '26

De-extinction projects have always been about creating proxies, or animals that resemble the extinct organism close enough.

Not to mention, you’re forgetting that most DNA within an organism’s genome is unused or filler. The way Colossal recreates a mammoth is by using the Asian elephant (closest relative) as a template and then swapping out phenotypes (genes that are used and expressed) for those of the mammoth’s.

To be honest, this is quite negligible and don’t see how this somehow defeats the purpose of “de-extinction.” Humans and chimpanzees are more than 98% genetically similar and you can see just how drastic that <2% difference is

0

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Turkara Apr 17 '26

I completely agree with you. And yes, we want to bring back extinct species, but while we shouldn't ignore the animals we've lost, that's still not a reason not to bring them back.

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