Making a Mammophant: Why we shouldn’t bring back the woolly mammoth

The company Colossal Biosciences — pioneered by tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard professor George Church — officially announced their plans on Sept. 13 to bring back the woolly mammoth.

Initially funded with $15 million through investors like Climate Capital, their goal is to fill the void left by lost ecosystems and help reverse climate change through de-extinction technology called CRISPR. The plan is to harvest eggs from female Asian elephants and genetically modify the DNA to mimic that of recovered mammoth DNA.

So, really, this won’t be an actual woolly mammoth, but an elephant that resembles and behaves like one. Hopefully. 

Lamm and Church’s goal of this “mammophant,” as it’s known, is to improve the ecosystem of the tundra, specifically Siberia. The mammophant is supposed to help combat climate change by getting rid of moss that has taken over the tundra floor, and move snow off the ground to reflect the sun’s rays less into the atmosphere.

While this all sounds good in theory, I beg to differ.

It should be known that no one has ever harvested eggs from an elephant before, so it’s impossible to tell if that will actually be effective. However, I’m more stuck behind the ethics of the procedure. Who knows what negative impacts it could have on the animal — a risk heavily conflicting with my morals.

Trust me, I’m all for combatting climate change and global warming — it’s probably my biggest concern with our world right now. But if it’s going to take six years to even produce a mammophant embryo — according to the timeline that Colossal hopes to follow — it’ll be too late by the time the creature actually grows up and gets to live in the tundra (if they even get to that point). There won’t be enough of them to make a big enough difference before climate change becomes irreversible as more heatwaves caused by human interaction strike the area.

If we’re dedicating this much time and money to a potential climate change combatant, then why don’t we just directly intervene and put our $15 million to better and more efficient uses? If the mammophant really is going to do what Colossal claims it’s made to do, then we need to be focused more on the present day — not 6 years from now when it would barely be capable of making a significant difference.

On top of that, many scientists argue that the void left by the woolly mammoth 10,000 years ago has now been filled in by the ecosystem. As a result, actually placing a baby mammophant in the tundra could either allow it to flourish and develop the ecosystem, or destroy the food chain that has been effective for centuries.

The effectiveness of the mammophant’s social life is also an aspect of high consideration in the decision regarding whether to place the genetically modified species. Similar to the Asian elephant, the infants have a strong connection to their mother for a long period of time. If the biological mother of the mammophant is exposed to its child, how will it react? We have no way of knowing if the mammophant will be accepted into the social hierarchy of elephants, and we don’t know if the other elephants will accept it as one of its own.

There are so many factors at play when we think about the survivability of this animal. Just while it’s in the artificial uterus that Colossal is attempting to grow from stem cells, it’s possible that the uterus won’t be able to support a 200-pound fetus for two years. And, again, it’s vital to consider all of the consequences of introducing it back into the wild. There’s plenty of room for error across all the steps that go into making this happen.

If we have technology to practically revive an extinct species, we should be using it to preserve species that are currently endangered. If we can bring back the mammoth, we can preserve white rhinos, giant pandas and even the very elephants that are being used to make the mammophant. We have to question the use and reliability of all the resources and money we are putting into this project.