Extinct woolly mammoths are resurrecting. Should we eat them?

The last known woolly mammoths have last breathed some 3,900 years ago on Mainland Siberia.

Since then, humans have been acquainted with mammoths with its scattered bones and frozen carcasses.

But there is good news for us, we can finally see them alive and breathing.

Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based start-up, is using genetic engineering in its quest to bring the species back to life.

"The woolly mammoth was the custodian of a healthier planet," the company says.

Using salvaged mammoth DNA, Colossal will genetically edit Asian elephants, the species' closest extant cousin. If its plans are successful, then it will produce a woolly mammoth – or as close as possible a replica – six years from now, reports The Independent UK.

This year, the company has raised $75m from investors.

This means that 3,906 years after it was believed to have been extinct, the woolly mammoth may reacquaint itself with humans – a creature that has never seen an animal this big that it didn't want to devour.

Some palaeontologists say that the prehistoric past is strewn with the carcasses of megafauna we've devoured to extinction, even if the end of the ice age restricted the size of their probable habitat.

It's time to answer a simple question: should we eat the mammoths that have been successfully reconstructed? Mammoth restoration aids the environment since the animal's heavy footfall increases permafrost, or the permanently frozen layer of soil, gravel, and sand under the surface of Earth, preventing it from melting and emitting greenhouse gases.

This possibility has not been mentioned by Colossal.

"If the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem could be revived," the company argues, "it could help in reversing the rapid warming of the climate and more pressingly, protect the Arctic's permafrost – one of the world's largest carbon reservoirs."

Even still, one has to question whether, as in the past, people will be drawn to try a bite. If we resurrect woolly mammoths and other extinct creatures, we must determine if we, too, want to devour them.

Would you eat them if you saw them on the menu?

Holly Whitelaw, director of Regenerative Food and Farming, says she'd be up for it. "I would eat anything that was holistically grazed," says Whitelaw. Roaming animals, she says, are healthy for soil; they distribute seeds and microbes as they wander. The healthier the Arctic soil, the more grassland it supports, and the more carbon is removed from the atmosphere. "It's like bringing the wolves back," Whitelaw says. "You get that whole tier of the system working better again."

Victoria Herridge, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum and an expert on woolly mammoths, has called for caution.

In carrying out this kind of environmental project, Dr Herridge told The Telegraph, "you are carrying out a bio-engineering experiment which, if your goal is [met], will create change at a global scale. It becomes a question of: who gets to tamper with the climate system of the planet?"

It would be a great tragedy if we were to heave these majestic individuals into our time just to use and exploit them for our own benefit, she further remarked.

Dr Herridge highlighted more worries regarding the lineage of these mammoths in an interview with The Independent.

"I have a problem with anything to do with surrogate mothers," she says.

The genetically modified mammoth amalgams will gestate within Asian elephants, risking them significant pain and medical risk.

These are not objections to consuming mammoth flesh at the conclusion of the expedition, but rather to the effort itself. Dr Herridge sees this scenario as unlikely, but poses a hypothetical scenario in which she would consider eating mammoth meat.

"Fast-forward 100 years. Imagine that Siberia isn't a bog, there's a place for woolly elephants to roam, they're not wading through mosquito-infested swamp. Let's say they've managed to breed 20,000 woolly elephants at this point. They've wandered across to Banff and they're causing havoc, and to maintain that population they had to have an annual cull. Would I turn it down? No. But there are so many caveats."

According to Whitelaw, mammoth grown on pasture would have a favorable ratio of omega:3 to omega:6 fats, making it a good dietary choice, The Independent UK report stated.

With this in mind, it's easy to imagine Paleo enthusiasts providing consumer demand. Dr Herridge, though, is again sceptical. "The idea that you can have a diet that harks back to this ancient way is really problematic," she says. "There's this naive idea that there's a lost Eden. Our vision of it is based on nothing but wishful thinking and stereotypes."

There are different angles from which to view this issue. According to philosophers like Brian Tomasik, author of the blog Essays on Reducing Suffering, "It's typically preferable to consume bigger ones so that you get more flesh per dreadful existence and painful death, if you're going to eat animals."
For instance, moving from consuming just chicken to only beef would result in a 99.9% reduction in the number of farm animals killed since beef cows produce more meat per animal than chickens do.

We should also consider the manner of the mammoth's death. "Whether death by hunting would be better or worse than a natural death in the wild," Tomasik says, "depends on how long it would take for the mammoth to die after being shot, and how painful the gunshot wound was until the point of death." Wild deer, he says, can take 30-60 minutes to die after being shot in the lungs or heart. Their brains are considered too small a target, though that could be different for mammoths.

There are several contradictory factors at play here. Although the climate will likely benefit from the regrowth of Arctic grasslands, more wild animals would potentially be there. This is negative news in Tomasik's opinion. "Almost all wild animals are invertebrates or small vertebrates that produce vast numbers of offspring, most of whom die painfully not long after being born."

More trenchant opposition to the idea comes from Elisa Allen, PETA's vice-president of programmes. Arguing that we ought to focus on protecting existing species, whose habitats are fast disappearing, rather than resurrect species whose habitats are already lost, Allen says: "If anything distinguishes humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, it is the selfish desire to eat the other members of it when we don't have to." Allen says that "the future of the meat industry lies in lab-grown or 3D-printed meat".

Jacy Reese Anthis, co-founder of the Sentience Institute, sees the application of this technology to woolly mammoths as ethically preferable to hunting them. "One of humanity's most pressing challenges for the 21st century is to end the unethical, unsustainable industry of factory farming," he says. "Cultured meat is one of the most promising substitutes, so if mammoth meat is what gets people excited about that, then I'm excited about it. It would be extremely wasteful to breed and farm live mammoths when we could sustainably grow meat tissue in bioreactors."

This would prevent what Anthis perceives as the intrinsic wrongness of murdering a sentient being for our own enjoyment. He declares that he supports technology wholeheartedly but emphasizes the need to "keep limits of respect and physiological integrity for sentient beings." The right to not be owned and used for another person's advantage has shown to be one of the most successful boundaries. This is true for both people and animals, and it is an important tenet of caring for other living things in a responsible manner.

"It would be a great tragedy if we were to reach our technological arm back into the Pleistocene and heave these majestic individuals into our time just to use and exploit them for our own benefit."

This problem wouldn't have been nearly as difficult for our predecessors, who constructed structures from mammoth bones. Imagine instead a mammoth-based meal made in a bioreactor rather than via hunting. What may it taste like? Whitelaw speculates that the meat will taste like pork. "To render that fat down and create it, you'll need to simmer it slowly and for a long time. Or maybe you could cook it till it is really crunchy. But keep an eye out for that fur."