As a staunch supporter of mad science I think this is wonderful news. For those of you that peed your pants during grade 4 history and had to be escorted down to the nurse's office by the hall monitor to be forced into a pair of jogging pants from the lost and found: a woolly mammoth is a great ancestor of the modern elephant that became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Apparently these Japanese scientists are going to insert mammoth genes into an elephant embryo and then insert that embryo into the uterus of an elephant in hopes that the elephant gives birth to a woolly mammoth! I wonder how the elephant's mate will feel when he sees the baby? Maybe they'll have to go on Maury Povich to sort it all out.
It'll be like this but with a lot more trumpeting.
And for those of you who say that it's impossible to extract usable DNA from a long dead frozen specimen...
WRONG!
These mad scientist have already done it. They successfully cloned a mouse with DNA taken from a mouse that was frozen for 16 years. The mouse chose to freeze its self after watching 11 seconds of the newly released movie It's Pat.
What is it with scientists and mice anyway? They make them run through mazes, they make them wear lipstick, they shave their little mouse heads and attach wires to their brains. Hey remember when they grew a human ear on one?
Yeah, if we ever get invaded by some alien race that evolved from mice, we're in BIG trouble.
Squeak, squeak squeak. TRANSLATION: You're all in big trouble
Now I know a lot of you have questions and concerns regarding this mammoth cloning. Please allow me to enlighten you.
1) Isn't it morally wrong to clone something?
Maybe. But we're already doing it anyway so what the hell. In fact I hear that Disneyland keeps clones of all the Princesses in a bunker below Space Mountain for when the current ones die of heat exhaustion or get knocked up by Goofy. Apparently that happens a lot.
Rubbers don't fit on my lipstick. Huy-huyuck.
2) Mammoths became extinct for a reason. Shouldn't we leave them that way?
Why? We are always trying to save other species from extinction. We're just taking a little longer with this one. And besides, look at the Dodo Bird. It became extinct over 300 years ago and people still won't shut-up about it. The Dodo has become the poster bird for extinct species. And look it at. It's the dumbest looking bird I've ever seen.
In fact it's so dumb looking that its name has become synonymous with being dumb. The woolly mammoth would be a way cooler looking spokesman and it would be alive. Plus the word mammoth means huge and that's something everyone wants to be.
File Photo: Everyone's goal.
Speaking of that, did you know that Thomas Jefferson was the first to use the word mammoth to describe something big? It's true. He was an avid fan of paleontology and used it to describe a rather large wheel of cheese that he was given.
3) If we do clone mammoths, will that mess up our echo system?
Maybe. But I doubt it. We would have to clone lots of them. And from what I hear they only eat tundra grass. Do you eat tundra grass? I sure as hell don't. If there is some animal that eats tundra grass, it will just have to learn to eat mammoths. Problem solved.
4) Isn't a woolly mammoth too big to come to full term in an elephant's uterus?
I don't know. What do I look like a mammoligist? If it is too big they could always try putting it in that horrible Kate woman from John & Kate plus 8. Her uterus has got to be the size of a dump truck. I hear TLC is having the Little Couple move in there for season 4.
Hey that reminds me. Did you ever see that show on Fox where all those midgets raced an elephant while pulling a jumbo jet?
5) Are there any practical uses for mammoths?
Given mans natural instinct to exploit every living thing on the planet, this was bound to come up. Many scientists believe that the reason why woolly mammoths had such long tusks was because they used them to push snow out of the way to get at the tundra grass underneath. (Again with the tundra grass!) So we could use them as snow plows.
All we would have to do is put a blue light on its head and teach it trumpet that beeping sound when it backs up. Sure they might gore a few children that throw snow balls at them for ruining their snow days but to appease the parents we'll just clone their kids back to life.
6) What do they taste like?
One of the dominant theories as to why the Woolly Mammoth became extinct is that it was hunted into extinction by early man.
So that means that they must be delicious. I've also read that woolly mammoths had numerous sebaceous glands all over their body that secreted greasy fat into their fur to insulate them better. In other words, expect to see them added to the McDonald's Extra Value Meal menu by 2016.
I could go on and on but the point is that I'm just not seeing a downside to this. Cloning woolly mammoths is the answer to all out problems. We can look at them. We can pet them. We can ride them. We can attach missles to them. And yes, we can even eat them. So I say bring it on mad science. Up with Woolly Mammoths!
