New technology that they are using to make the mammoth-elephant hybrid real is synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is pretty much genetic engineering. The scientist will take the DNA from a wholly mammoth and take DNA from an Asian elephant and put it into an Asian elephant’s womb or in the made-up womb in a lab and create this new hybrid. In this process they can also pick and choose which genes they want the hybrid to have. George Church and his team believe that when they make this new hybrid it will protect the endangered species of the Asian elephants and it could also combat global warming. It can combat global warming by reintroducing animals into the Pleistocene-era (reindeer, bison and Yakut horses), these animals are mostly herbivores. Having the animals be herbivores promotes growth of steppe grasses which have a high albedo effect. The light-colored grasses reflect the light from the sun back into the atmosphere, this will reduce the heat the is being absorbed into the earth and slow the process of melting in the permafrost. Another advantage to making a mammoth-elephant hybrid is that it could help the Asian elephants from not going extinct. I do think there are some disadvantages to this whole mammoth-elephant hybrid creation. One of the disadvantages is the unknown because what if that animal turns out to be more aggressive than what they thought it was supposed to be. What if the animal makes global warming worse and then we are in a worse situation than before. I think there is a lot of unknowns and that’s what is scary about new creations of animals. The scientists say that if they can create a mammoth-elephant hybrid than they could definitely do this with other animals, extinct and animals that are not extinct.
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