A team of Russian scientists is working hard
to resurrect this quintessential
ice age behemoth.
"Give me a high-five."
But what if they never disappeared
in the first place,
and still roamed the Arctic regions on Earth?
These shaggy haired herbivores
are cousins to the modern day Asian elephant.
Weighing in at 5.44 metric tons (11,993 lbs)
and around 3 to 4 meters (11 to 13 feet) tall,
they were similar in size to the
African elephant.
Still large, but not as mammoth
as we like to imagine.
Woolly mammoths only went extinct
about 10,000 years ago.
Their fossils are found across North America,
Asia, Europe and Africa.
Woolly mammoths were built for sub-zero Arctic habitats.
A main reason they were able to thrive
during the Ice Age was because of a
particularly quirky circulatory flow.
Their counter-current system feeds
venous blood through the heart and lungs
and arterial blood through the legs and feet.
This is opposite to how human blood circulates.
Their blood itself was also special
and kept oxygen flowing at frigid temperatures.
Sort of like antifreeze in your car.
This unique blood system allowed them
to stay warm in ice cold weather
and operate off of limited calories while still
conserving heat and maintaining blood flow.
It didn’t hurt that their exterior hair
could grow up to 1 meter (3 feet) long.
Woolly, indeed.
Scientists haven’t come to a conclusion yet.
It is still debated whether climate change,
which altered their ecosystems,
or humans, who hunted them,
were the driving factor of their annihilation.
Probably a little bit of both.
But what if they somehow survived?
Our Arctic regions would look a lot different,
and not just because there would be jumbo-sized,
shaggy animals roaming around.
There would be less elk, moose, and caribou
because the woolly mammoth would
out compete them for food.
They would sweep aside snow with their
giant tusks to access grass compacted under permafrost.
This grazing style creates a cycle that favors
grassland over the current Arctic tundra.
The soil compaction of large mammal grazers
allows for deeper freezing in the winter.
This prevents the release of greenhouse gases,
because firmer terrain keeps grass from
totally thawing during summer.
Woolly mammoths themselves would
look a little different if they still existed.
They’d have to adapt to
warming temperatures and beat
out their rivals, the other grazers.
Being brawny gives animals
dominance over a landscape,
but it also requires much more food,
which is a vulnerability.
So woolly mammoths would be smaller
than they used to be,
and maybe lose some of that thick blanket
of fur with increasing temperatures.
They’d also be a target for the ivory trade.
In Siberia, melting permafrost is
unearthing woolly mammoth tusks
which are worth around $1000 per kilogram ($450 per pound).
Highly sought after ivory
is exported to China where it's used for
traditional medicine, ornaments, and jewelry.
In order for the species to survive in the wild,
they would require legal protection and enforcement.
Even with protection,
their population would be low.
A female mammoth
is not sexually mature until age 15,
and her pregnancy with one calf lasts 22 months.
While woolly mammoths don’t actually exist today,
scientists from around the globe are trying
to bring them back.
This process is called de-extinction
and uses resurrection biology.
None have been completely successful,
yet it still begs the question of whether
we should be trying.
Although it sounds cool
to potentially see these
amazing creatures back on our planet,
we can’t know the ripple effects
it may have on ecosystems.
And fictional warnings aside,
humans don't have the best track record for
reviving past creatures.
Jurassic Park, anyone?
A better use of our energy would be
to make sure their endangered cousins,
the Asian elephants,
continue to have wild habitat to survive
and are kept safe from illegal hunting.
Which would be easy
if we set aside half of the planet
for wildlife conservation.
But that’s a story for another What If.