Need a break from all the depressing news?
Two words: woolly mice. Rodents were sniffing around headlines all week in the shadow of the Most Idiotic Trade War in History. Beavers were released in English rivers. The New York Times published a piece on “The War on Rats.” U.S. wildlife authorities begged residents to catch and eat nutria, an invasive species from South America.
Wait. I thought Donald Trump shut down the border.
Speaking of mice and the doofus-in-chief, during that bar stool rant of an unhinged speech there was a strange throwaway line about the government allegedly wasting $8 million to spawn “mice that are transgender.” Is it possible he was confusing transgenic mice used in disease research?
No idea. All I know is when he first heard about this lab abomination, the orange gremlins in his head hissed and doodled a pic of Mickey Mouse with Caitlyn Jenner’s face.
But the woolly mice? They are real.
In a press release this week, Colossal Biosciences announced the birth of the “Colossal Woolly Mouse.” It seems these geniuses who never watched “Jurassic Park” modified genes to create mice with a “dramatically altered coat color (sic), texture, and thickness reminiscent of the woolly mammoth’s core phenotypes.”
The company is on a “de-extinction” mission. It wants to bring back the woolly mammoth and dodo. I don’t have the technical know-how to rate this breakthrough. But the hirsute mice are adorable. They resemble a tiny Sarah Jessica Parker after a cold plunge and blow dry.
It’s intriguing to think long-gone behemoths may one day again roam the tundra and frozen hinterlands, even if many experts consider it implausible. As Stephan Riesenberg, a genome engineer at the Max Planck Institute, told Nature: “It’s far away from making a mammoth or a ‘mammoth mouse.’ It’s just a mouse that has some special genes.”
Yeah, including a lustrous and shaggy mane that is totally wasted on a mouse. Why is Colossal monkeying around with woolly mammoths? It should join forces with Rogaine and conquer hair loss.
But the bigger question: Where is this all going?
Will scientists eventually reanimate the megalodon or rescue the near horn beast from extinction? Will you be lounging on a beach and trying to shield your fries from a swooping Pterodactylus? Will you have to tell your dog to stop chasing that Moa?
It’s great that Colossal is focused on climate change and ecological resilience. But how does it know the woolly mammoth is “a vital defender of the Earth?” What if it comes back after 7,000 years and only wants to watch “Quest for Fire”? What if it rampages across ecosystems that did not evolve to contain 12 feet and 6,000 kilograms of unpredictable curved tusk action?
A nutria only weighs a few pounds. It is currently wreaking such havoc that alarmed officials are basically sending out flash bulletins and barbecue recipes.
And what happens when these gene-splicing nerds fiddle with their CRISPR tools and suddenly think, “Hang on. Forget the woolly mouse. Why don’t we bring back a dead person?”
All tech now moves at warp speed. Not that long ago, AI sounded like sci-fi. Now people are falling in love with chatbots and marrying robots. You don’t think the return of the dead is the next coming attraction?
Here you go. Your late spouse is now your newborn baby. Don’t get me wrong. It would be wonderful to see my wife take her first steps and hear her first words: “Turn up the temperature.”
Genetic research is a magic show. These scientists are more unpredictable than an earthquake. One day it’s woolly mice. The next, you are in Home Depot doing a double-take as Mr. Dressup buys lumber to build a new Tickle Trunk.
A woolly mammoth may prove to be a vital defender of this troubled planet. Or it might prove as unwelcome as Simon Cowell at a karaoke bar.
The scientists should start a Slack and ask the existing arctic animals for an up-or-down vote. Polar bears are already intermittent fasting and not by choice. Snowy owls get enough grief from the reindeer. The last thing a hare needs is to get accidentally squashed. Even the lemmings won’t go along with welcoming their new prehistoric neighbour. Find your own sphagnum bog.
Instead of de-extinction, why don’t we work harder to keep our current menagerie of beasts from going extinct? Can we not improve habitats without handing the problem over to a saber-tooth tiger or dire wolf?
It reminds me of this deranged quest to inhabit Mars. Elon? Spend your billions making Earth a better place. And stop having babies.
Woolly mammoths may return. But they won’t like what they see.
