But no seriously, the only issue I have with the Mammoth revivification project is this:
Elephants and the other assorted members of their ancestral family tree/lineage are social animals. It is well documented in Africa due to the need to cull elephants in national parks like Kruger and others that young bull elephants need the bonds and the social education of the cows in herds before they strike out on their own to form bachelor herds or roam the bush as single bulls. Young bulls growing up without that guiding female influence are often highly aggressive and have been known to rape and then kill the rhinos they encounter. They act a bit like the boys in Lord of the Flies if the author had let things get darker.
It is difficult to find non-biased opinions on the culling process, but it is, rather, unfortunately, required in many cases, despite the terrific strain it puts on the animals and the environment.
For an educated read on the process and how some elephants have been imported into the US in order to escape that fate, I highly recommend reading Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives.
View attachment 3169637
Without getting too far off the topic, much like the elephants in our world today, or the fictional velociraptors in Michael Crichton's The Lost World, intelligent and social animals need to be raised in a society where they can learn how to behave. An excellent example of this is the baboon troop in the National Geographic special Stress, Portrait of a Killer.
Baboon society on the whole is a violent and stressful one. The adult males of this troop became ill and died allowing the females to raise the young males without them learning the aggressive behavior of the now-deceased males. These baboons are healthier and live longer lives than their counterparts in other troops and this has been detailed through scientific research over many years.
Mammoths are thought to be intelligent and social creatures. Therefore, they too need a society of adults to raise and properly shape them. In the absence of adult mammoths, obviously, modern-day elephants are the logical choice. The young mammoths need to be born into and raised by a herd of elephants. (Probably Asian as they are more closely related and that will probably be the choice used by scientists when implanting embryos.) However, the animals need to remain with that herd. Removal of their mothers and matriarch as well as not having an adult bull for young males to learn from would be, in my opinion, detrimental to the long-term development and revivification of the species.
In that case, research needs to be done (and is ongoing now in an effort to reduce the efforts of culling African elephants today) on contraceptives in order to keep the bull mammoths from being able to breed and potentially hybridize with their Asian mothers and aunts, while still allowing the young mammoth cows to be raised in a society that will teach them how to behave without the damaging psychological effects to both the mammoths and the elephants when they are separated.
I was thinking of north American arctic, where there are no horses.
