Playing God or Fixing History?

The dilemma of the ‘Mammophant’

Think of our planet’s history as a vast, ancient library, where every species is a unique, handwritten volume detailing how to survive. Over millions of years, these books have been carefully preserved, but every so often, a fire breaks out, and a volume is lost forever. The mammoth is perhaps the most famous of these missing works, its final chapter closing roughly 10,000 years ago. For centuries, we assumed this part of the library was permanently ash. However, the biotech firm Colossal Biosciences is now attempting a feat of biological restoration, aiming to ‘reprint’ this lost volume by producing the first mammoth-lookalike calves by 2028. This is not just about nostalgia: it is an attempt to repair a gap in the global archive that has left our modern environment struggling to find its balance.

To understand how we can reach back through time, we must look to the mammoth’s closest living relative: the Asian elephant. Research shows that these two giants are almost genetically identical, sharing a staggering 99.6% of their DNA. This similarity is the key to the entire project. In 2024, scientists reached a landmark milestone by successfully creating induced pluripotent stem cells from Asian elephants — essentially blank slate cells that can be programmed to grow into any part of a mammoth-like creature. By using advanced gene-editing tools, researchers are not exactly cloning an old resident; they are editing a modern one, giving an elephant the thick hair, insulating fat, and cold-resistant blood it needs to reclaim its ancestral home.

However, bringing back a species after ten thousand years is not as simple as replanting a flower. There is a heavy moral weight to consider, particularly regarding the welfare of the animals themselves. Much like the human brain, the minds of highly social creatures, such as elephants and mammoths, are wired for connection. We know from neuroscience that the brain processes social exclusion in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) — the same region that handles physical pain. For a mammoth born today, the prospect of being ‘the first’ is daunting. If we create a sentient being that has no herd to teach it how to behave, communicate, or migrate, we risk subjecting it to a state of perpetual biological discord. When a brain perceives such profound isolation, it releases cortisol, a stress hormone that keeps the body in a state of high alert. We must ask if it is fair to bring a creature into a world where its social harmony has been permanently silenced.

Despite these concerns, the potential is immense. In their heyday, mammoths were the ecosystem engineers of a vast grassland known as the mammoth steppe. By eating dead, dry grass and trampling down young trees, they prevented the forest from overtaking the plains. This is crucial because grasslands are far more efficient at reflecting sunlight and keeping the ground frozen than dark, leafy forests. By compacting the snow with their massive weight, mammoths allowed the winter chill to penetrate deeper into the soil, protecting the permafrost and the ancient greenhouse gases trapped beneath it. In this sense, the return of the mammoth is not just a display of human ingenuity; it is a way to promote biodiversity and restore a cooling system that the Earth has been missing for millennia.

Ultimately, the quest to bring back extinct species is an attempt to quiet the discord of our modern environmental crisis by restoring a lost voice to the natural choir. It is a testament to our desire to correct past mistakes and ensure a more stable future. As we approach 2028, we must proceed with awareness, ensuring that the ancient song we choose to revive leads to true ecological belonging. If successful, we might find that the return of these master gardeners helps us rewrite a more resilient story for the entire library of life.

Illustration by Louisa Nguyen