mammoth-clangen

[mammoth-clangen]

On conservation and survival

[mammoth-clangen]

Omg!! These all turned out so cute, and I really love how much personality you captured in each pose and expression 💜

Tysm for drawing Snakespots! I think this is their first? Fanart? Regardless, it's really cool to see them drawn in someone else's style ;v;

What a nice group of fictional kitties, I sure hope nothing terrible happens to them...

WOP!

thank you everyone for your kitty suggestions! Names and @'s under the cut

We have:

Mulberry Wine from @heavensgaze (suggested by @mammoth-clangen)

Minnowlake from @as-the-raven-cries-wolf

@mixit-exists's kitty Lyca

Cloudthunder from @forestclan-clangen (suggested by @fymo-blogs)

Icystar from @tallclan (suggested by @mammoth-clangen)

Beepaw from @herons-crossing

Morgana from Persona 5 (suggested by @shinydmoon)

Viima from @jumalanpelko (suggested by @hyacinthbleus)

Thistle from @branchclangen (suggested by @goofy-clan)

Mountaindew from @goofy-clan (suggested by @bundlesofcrows)

Lucky, one of @hyptanyl's funny little fellows

Absol aka Oakstar, @leohnoz's anxious dudeguy

Chirpspeck from @bundlesofcrows's Lagoonclan

Pebblerun from @the-exiled-comic (suggested by @foxxf1nch)

Trout from @whatlurksbean (also suggested by @foxxf1nch)

Snakespots from @mammoth-clangen

please let me know if i made a glaring design mistake or if you'd like your kitty isolated for any reason! \o/

[mammoth-clangen]

Going through my notifs and I Nearly Missed This, Oagh!!!

Bat looks so cute in your style! I love how you drew his scruffy ruff, and his ears so pricked and alert! He probably saw a cool bird or something lmaooo 🤣 tysm for drawing my silly little guy!

Immediately adding Bogclan to my reading list bc I'm very intrigued to see another illustrated-literature type clangen ovo

Also I'm super chuffed to be held as a fav alongside these other clangens, especially because I actually know everykitty for a change!

I wanted to take a break and draw some other people’s kitties, so here’s my favourite characters from some of the clangen comics that I read.

In order these are:

Chumtail from @loudclan-clangen

Hawkplume from @glitterclan

Vinepaw from @splinterclan

Vinepaw from @vespidclan

Bat from @mammoth-clangen

And Lavenderstar from @ashpaw-is-alone

[mammoth-clangen]

Very!! Belated!! But tysm!! Quiver looks adorable, I want to boop her snoot and pat her ear tufties 🥺

Also everyone should go follow Sporeclan if they're not already! The art and characters are wonderful and I really enjoyed my recent re-read ùvú-b

Also you finished this So Fast omg?? I'm rly impressed tbh, BC 30 cats you're not used to drawing is A Lot ;o;

AND HERE IT IS!!!! The big ol wall of various kitty cats from 30 different clangen blogs! Thank you so much to everyone who suggested cats for me to draw :D I unfortunately wasn't able to draw a cat from every single blog requested, but rest assured that the blogs I missed have been written down to be first in line for if I do another project like this! <3

I'll tag everyone's blogs under the cut and then at the very bottom there's a version of this drawing without text or borders :]

And once again, thank y'all for being so wonderful!! <3

Asterglory - @lightclangen

Scorchplume - @clangenrising

Fogfreckle - @nimbusclan

Violetsong - @branchclangen

Gorseflame - @hawthornclangen

Basseye - @cricketclan

Icystar - @tallclan

Wheatkit - @dayclan

Quiver - @mammoth-clangen

Wiggity Wacks - @fallenclan

Cinnamonstar - @wtclangen

Meadowshade - @nettleclan-clangen

Raggedghost - @echoes-in-echoclan

Goldpaw - @our-clangen

Peanutkit - @circus-clangen

Magpiehop - @ranchclan

Lynxdawn - @salt-clangen

Snowkit - @boughclan-clangen

Tangleflame - @songclangen

Shatterhaze - @hillclan-ruins

Mango Martini - @dustclan-clangen

Claweye - @gooseclan

Shadowdusk - @duskclangen

Silkglide - @chasing-faith-and-fate

Angelwing - @heavensgaze

Ravenfreckle - @briarclan-horror-artlocke

Talonburn - @direclan

Songpaw - @loudclan-clangen

Vinepaw - @splinterclan

Rosemary - @bearclangen

[mammoth-clangen]

Happy 1st Birthday, Kindred! 🎂

I was gonna do art or something but I'm here:

So enjoy this photo of gibber instead uvu-b

[mammoth-clangen]

Clangen Comic Creators..

Just curious 👀

[mammoth-clangen]

Oh my goosh!! I love the way you line sm, especially the slight hatching and how floofy cats look so flowy!

Also same hat bc I've had Gardenclan on my reading list for ages but finally actually did it! 100% recommend! I love the art and panelling sm, it's really distinctive in the best way❤️

I'm also really intrigued by the lore and Angel and Imp's Mission ™

Tysm for drawing Lilac!! He looks so regal in your style ;v;

I recognise quite a few of these kitties but not all, so I'll have to add them on my "to read" list too >:3c

fanart for some clangen // warrior cat comics i've been very into lately !! all of the blogs will be linked below the cut.

PLEASE go check all of them out if you haven't.

Lilac is from @mammoth-clangen - your comic has been on my reading list for ages now and when someone suggested Lilac for this it gave me the perfect opportunity to sit and read. i love the choice to write in first person from the perspectives of the characters. it creates a really intense emotional weight in the story. your art is also just SO stunning. your environment and background work is to die for. Lilac is such a good character. he has this quiet dignity around him that i really love in a character.

Coalfrost is from @rainy-wc - rain has heard me gush about shoreclan and The Watchful Eyes of the Sea so so much already but that's not going to stop me from doing it here too. the atmosphere of the comic is so mysterious and bleak in the best way. the way you write the dialogue really feeds into the culty energy, with everything seeming so innocent on paper but also so incredibly guarded that something must be going on. i love the jagged shapes and the use of color so much too. you know i love coalfrost... i can't wait for people to see more of her.

Flowerdaisy and Rapidpaw are both from @sunclan-rising - i fell in love with your art the moment i saw it. i love the vibrant colors and sharp lines, and how varied each character's shapes are. it gives them so much personality. seeing what happened to little rapidpaw broke me, and then i remembered that flowerdaisy is practically a kit herself at 18 moons??? i can't imagine how this is weighing on her, and can't wait to see where it goes from here. (also sorry for flopping and calling them peakpaw... a classic jj L, i fear TT_TT)

Greenberry is from @fallenclan - i've probably read through fallenclan in its entirety four or five times at this point. i ADORE the way you draw cats, and the longevity of the comic is such an inspiration to me. i think one of the coolest things about fallenclan is how everyone seems to have their favorite little background character, regardless of their relevance. you're so good at making every single character have so much personality, even if they only show up once or twice. greenberry is my personal fav!! people who know me will know that a character having "green" in their design (or name, in this case) is a surefire way to my heart. she's MY clairvoyant little sweetie...and i was so excited to see her get her new accessory.

Leapmist is from @ask-littleclan - first off... it was SO hard deciding which littleclan cat to draw. your character designs are so next level and inspiring to me!! and the comic is BEAUTIFUL??? the colors are so tasty and the way you use all of the space on each page is insane. like i can only aspire to have that level of visual interest. i chose leapmist because i LOVE how pointy they are, and i figured they deserve it considering their new promotion. i'm so very excited to see where the story goes, and i hope you're able to get lots of rest and that the new term goes super smoothly for you!

Yewstar is from @righteous-pines - if it's not very obvious from the content of gardenclan, i LOVE a story about religion. i'm very excited to see where your comic goes, especially since it starts with this guy losing a life? his design is SO fun. i love a grumpy old man, and his spiky fur and beard are such good details. i am such a big fan of how you draw cats, especially the really round ones. it's SO fun. and the detail and backstories you've given everyone are crazy intriguing.

Doll is from @ask-graveclan - i was torn between drawing doll and whispstar (I LOVE GREEN CATS!) but doll's design is kind of everything to me. every single cat in this clan is breathtaking. seriously. i could look at your art all day? graveclan is so full of mystery and intrigue... i need to know who killed this absolute SWEETIE. i hope her and sunpaw stay safe as they investigate... i'm also so invested in their little ghost romance too...

Siltsplash is from @loudclan-clangen - i've actually made fanart for loudclan before. it feels like ages ago now, but i don't think i would have gone down the clangen comic rabbithole at all if i hadn't found loudclan. it's SO special to me. Siltsplash and Wildfirecry are my faves, but since i've drawn the latter before, Silt was the obvious choice :3 i LOVE them so much and they've suffered more than christ on the cross... i love their relationship with their adopted sons, and their relationship with owlstar, even if i think they should be allowed to throw rocks at him forever. your art is so charming. i love the way you draw cats and i love how expressive everything is. your ability to convey emotion not just through their faces but through colors and framing is SO impressive to me. and the worldbuilding you've done is also so good. it's such a fresh take on the warrior cats formula. you are one of my biggest inspos for Our Garden Under Heaven. i'm SO excited to see where this story goes... and scared. but mostly excited!!

i'm so sorry that i'm incapable of being brief, but i hope you all know how much i love and appreciate your art!! thank you for doing what you do!

[mammoth-clangen]

Biiiiig step

This is important paleo accuracy!! Because, you see...

All size of cat must take the Big Steppy™ uvu

[mammoth-clangen]

if the cast were house cats, how do think they’d act? i imagine bat would be one of those cats that always stares at the wall for no discernible reason (though i think canon bat would do that too)

Nono you don't understand, the one staring at walls would 100% be Pounce. Fr tho please go look at all the scenes he's in where he's staring into the distance bc there's a lot lmao

Bat would be more of a "hunting bugs around the house and then bringing them to you, but they're still alive" kinda cat 🪳

Preferably with a human who is scared of said bugs, and really wishes he would just eat them instead of looking proud about the cockroach that is now crawling towards them missing a leg X'D

[mammoth-clangen]

hi hello have you seen the cloudkit from the new warrior cats graphic novel because he immediately reminded me of Bat with his little downward lashes and I thought it was adorable

that is all thank you

You are so correct!!

Bats eyelashes are Very Important™, he and Cloudkit are the same in spirit uvu

I have the graphic novel out rn but need to finish it. I am really enjoying a lot of the changes from the OG books tho, Cinderpelt beloved 💙

[mammoth-clangen]

Next (idk when sorry my buffer is dead) Previous First

Phew, I did not think I was gonna get this done in time c':

I really enjoyed making this pageset! I was tossing up doing a constellation type theme for Fade's story, but then I had a much better idea and,,, I love,,, cave art so much,,, Past humans making art of animals they actually saw is possibly my favourite thing ;v;

Also, I used a wild mixture of cave art from all over the place because I just wanted to experiment with different styles. Though Homotherium was present in all these areas at some time, so it's not impossible the artists saw them too! Note: none of the actual art I referenced had Homotherium depicted! I just used the artstyles and took liberties, so please don't use it to make up lies about late surviving Homotherium in Chauvet France lmao

Lowkey, would anyone be mad if I changed the style to be like the last page from now on? kidding, haha... Unless... Kindred of the Mammoth is on Comicfury as well!

[mammoth-clangen]

In my opinion deextinction is a case by case tool. The northern white rhino cross species surrogacy problem? Hell yeah. The moa? Sure, bring em back - emu can be farmed relatively easily, and New Zealand has both a major interest in farming (we have domesticated deer, like not tamed, domesticated fully), and very large tracts of land that have not been disturbed. And off shore island sanctuaries to start with. But bringing back the haast's eagle? Nah fam, leave the Known Man Killer apex predator alone.

Disclaimer: my reply to this ask is a lot more opinion than hard science. So don't take it as The Truth™, because there isn't one.

To me, Aotearoa/NZ is actually a great example for my exact points from earlier. It has one of the most fascinating ecosystems; with incredible levels of endemism, very few native land mammals, and some amazingly unique birdlife. For those unfamiliar, see below!

Image source: theafterworkphotographer.com

But-

94% of reptile species, 82% of bird species, 80% of bat species, 76% of freshwater fish species, 22% of marine mammal species and 46% of Aotearoa's vascular plant species are facing extinction.

I cannot see any reason to dedicate time and money to resurrecting (one of nine) moa species that have been gone from the ecosystem for 500+ years. Not when so many extant species need desperate assistance, unless we want them to end up on an extinction list with the Moa, Haast's eagle, and huia.

This is how I feel about the Thylacine too.

I personally doubt there would be enough demand for Moa meat to make farming a viable reason to clone them. People barely eat emu in Australia, and they are right there as a perfectly viable ratite for captive-breeding and farming. Both Au and NZ export huge amounts of meat compared to the amount we consume. So unless they can find a huge international market for ratite meat, it's not really a worthwhile risk to most farmers.

Bird cloning/ genetic modification is also much harder to than in mammals. While mammal embryos can be implanted into a surrogate, it's much harder to implant a bird embryo into an egg and still have it hatch.

Extinction in Aotearoa is personal to me- -because my family are all Kiwis, even if I don't live there. I visit often and always lament how few native birds I actually see when I do.

---

It's worth noting the Northern White Rhinoceros isn't extinct quite yet; there are two individuals remaining, Fatu and Najin. However, as they are both infertile females, the species is functionally extinct.

Unfortunately, saving the Northern white rhino with cloning/GMO relatives or even cross species surrogacy will likely suffer nearly all the issues of true de extinction.

A company called BioRescue has 30 frozen Northern White Rhino embryos. Which looks great on paper! But every one was created using Fatu's eggs. Meaning all the potential rhinos would be full or half siblings. As I said in my Wrangel Island mammoth ask, sometimes species do strangely well as an entire population with extreme inbreeding depression. But most don't.

Side note, and this is purely my own speculation (and Polarwooly's), I wonder if the Wrangel Mammoths survived with inbreeding depression because elephants (and relatives) have extreme DNA repair 'machinery'. They also have extremely low cancer rates, so it could easily be linked!

I really don't want to sound like one of those "Useless animal! Let it go extinct!" people, because I don't think we shouldn't try. I just genuinely don't know how much anyone can do for them at this point. It all feels a bit 'too little, too late.'

And again, the Southern White Rhinoceros isn't extinct, functionally or actually. But they are threatened with the same things that drove their Northern cousins to the edge. That said, the Southern subspecies nearly went extinct in the late 1800s, being reduced to less than 50 individuals. Their numbers rebounded spectacularly when effort was put into habitat preservation and protection from poachers, but their numbers have been dropping again in recent years.

It just makes me wonder if the time and money being put into resurrection wouldn't be better spent fixing the underlying problems...

Also, can you please give a source for the "domestic deer"? I mean this genuinely, not as a dig! I couldn't find anything when I looked except that 'deer are farmed in NZ' (which I knew because I've seen deer farms there before lolol). But it takes more than "bred in captivity for x generations" to qualify as fully domestic!

Repeating my disclaimer: You, dear reader, are absolutely welcome to disagree with my opinions, and think having moa back would just be cool AF. Because logistics aside, it absolutely would be cool af!

[mammoth-clangen]

What 11 years will do to a man 🐺

(I realised I had drawn a dire wolf before, in 2014 lolol)

Hi all, sorry for the radiosilence! I've been struck with "sickness what makes you sleep for 20 hours a day and still feel tired when you are awake." Fun times 8)

Will Kindred update this week? Unsure! Tho I still have exactly 0 buffer, so unless I recover like tomorrow, the answer is unfortunately not u-u

[mammoth-clangen]

Honestly cloning has limited usefulness in conservation, let alone deextinctuon. If a population has bottlenecked or fallen below the carrying threshold then cloning what's left doesn't functionally help. Even cloning a recently deceased individual might not help, depending on a lot of factors. It's annoying that it's treated like this big help to conservation when frankly well managed breeding programs are a much bigger help than cloning will ever be.

Oh don't get me wrong

There's certainly room for thoughtful, ethical cloning use in conservation!

A really great example is in Black-footed ferrets just last year. They're critically endangered partially due to reduced fertility from inbreeding depression.

Two jills (female ferrets) were cloned from historic samples of a ferret called Willa, who was captured and never reproduced in her lifetime. Because of this, reintroducing her genes helped bolster the genetic diversity of the population!

This is one of the twin ferret sisters, Antonia.

Better yet, the above ferret then went on to give birth to healthy kits! They're super cute, and being 100% ferret made the old-fashioned way (not clones), shouldn't have any of the issues that clones sometimes do.

Behold them!

But what Colossal is doing is not cloning!

I can't stress that enough! It's genetic modification, but cloning means creating a complete replicate of another animal.

Even using genetic modification has many potential applications in conservation; coding endangered species with resistance to population-devastating diseases, or using it to recode lost genetic diversity, as a few examples. But the way Colossal is using it is not to preserve endangered species. They have created, depending on your opinion:

1) a GMO grey wolf (or wolfdog, given where the white-coat gene came from).

2) a completely new transgenic species.

They claim to be filling the niche left by an extinct species, but this is honestly BS. They haven't made an extinct species, nor an endangered one. It couldn't even fill the niche if that niche was still open.

"The T. rex in this Jurassic Park is just a frog..."

-paraphrased from sparrowlucero

[mammoth-clangen]

*Grabs this in my mouth like a feral hound and runs off*

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

That's my reading for the plane sorted >:3

So, first off, as a paleontologist… thank you for that rant. It’s been driving me up the wall that people are going “oh look we revived the dire wolf using gray wolves!!” Even if you ignore the whole issue of de-extinction wolves aren’t even the closest living relative! Jackals and African wild dogs are more closely related to it, and they aren’t anywhere close to being in the same genus.

And of course, de-extinction is a whole other issue. Why are they so focused on the mammoth? At least the thylacine went extinct about a hundred years ago so the niche could still be there. But still, why focus on them? If you want to de-extinct something, why not focus on, oh I don’t know, the northern white rhino which still has two living members for sequencing and who have a living subspecies.

And further more, it’s genuinely cruel to bring most of these back. You think a wooly mammoth that lived in the last glacial maximum would be happy in todays climate that is consistently getting hotter? You think the dodo would appreciate the fact that it’s one habitat has been mostly destroyed? You think the thylacine would enjoy trying to outcompete the dingos that have moved into its niche? No. They wouldn’t.

For the mammoths, it’s especially cruel since they are herd animals and you’d need to clone a lot of them at one time for them to be happy.

And I mean, look. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see these creatures alive. As unlikely as it is, I keep a sliver of hope that the thylacine might still be out there. But that doesn’t mean de-extinction is good. Like it or not, they went extinct for a reason. Yes, that reason may be because of humans, but it is still a reason. You bring them back and they’ll go extinct again unless they are given extreme protection.

They need to focus on living creatures or, if they are desperate to bring something that’s completely extinct back, focus on creatures that have gone extinct within the last two decades.

Ugh, sorry for the mini rant but as someone who understands extinction (including the current Anthropocene mass extinction), bringing things back is not the way to go. I can point to multiple genuses that went extinct for a good reason.

Hello fellow palaeontologist! 🤝 My area of study was actually Dromornithid ichnotaxonomy but carnivorans are holding me hostage nowadays, it seems...

Unfortunately, you have fallen prey to another (thankfully, less insidious) piece of misinformation! Dire wolves aren't wolves, but they are no more closely related to Jackals or African Wild Dogs!

Aenocyon is an outgroup to all wolf-like canids, jackals included!

I've seen the Aenocyon/Lupulella/Lycaon relatedness touted often, and am guilty of repeating it myself before I re-read the paper.

A possible reason for this confusion that African jackals are considered the most basal of the extant, wolf-like canids; as seen on the cladogram above.

Therefore, the ~5.7million year old common ancestor of Aenocyon and the wolf/jackal/dhole lineage would likely have looked more like a jackal. Then Aenocyon convergently evolved a very wolfish skeleton because of their similar lifestyles!

This is also why I chose to reconstructed my Aenocyon with a shoulder patch, seeing many canids seem to have some sort of cape marking.

The 2021 paper that concluded the dire wolf isn't a wolf at all, is unfortunately paywalled :/ Without full access to the paper it's hard to be sure exactly where Aenocyon fits within the larger Canidae family tree (if they discussed it at all), but the abstract describes them as having "an early New World origin".

It seems they were a true outgroup to modern wolf-like canids, being the earliest branching member of Canina! They're not too different from sabercats, in that way.

Also if anyone is following the ongoing edit war on the Dire Wolf Wikipedia page, I beg you to ignore the "taxonomy based on morphology" section. It is only useful as a historical reference for how we used to view Aenocyon dirus as Canis dirus for a long time. Current science supports these morphological similarities being convergent, contrary to what Colossal Lies are being told...

---

I already partially addressed Mammoths (and the issues with their herds inbreeding) in this other ask, but I do agree completely with your points.

Having the GMO wolves raised without another older wolf or dog parental figures is frankly, just cruel. Any vet will tell you hand-reared and imprinted animals are significantly more prone to behavioural issues down the line. Mammoths would be worse again, because unlike Romulus and Remus, there is no chance of even having a twin to keep them company.

And yes; What could possibly go wrong with bringing back a polar-adapted, woolly proboscidean, into a world where even winters are getting progressively warmer?

I too, would love to see extinct animals in the wild. I'd be lying if I said I don't secretly hope for many of them to pull a coelacanth on us. But sadly, I don't think that's likely, and nor do I think we should be trying to make it happen.

---

Hank Green brought up something poignant about this dire wolf debacle, which is that extinction is not as simplistic as we imagine it to be. It's not just the death of a species.

"It's the destruction of a space in the natural environment for a species."

And that is really it, you can't just "bring back" an extinct species, because you aren't bringing their niche back with them.

Successful reintroductions of species that were locally extirpated or made entirely extinct in the wild have only worked because effort was put into securing a niche and ecosystem that had been lost.

And even well-planned, well-funded reintroductions struggle, but at least they understood the assignment.

Colossal, on the other hand, seems to think that adding back their very-roughly-wolf-shaped 'jenga block' to the ecosystem 'tower' will completely stop the collapse. But the real 'collapse' is caused by habitat destruction, and no amount of GMO wolves, mammoths or thylacines can stop that.

Bringing the species in to save the ecosystem is climbing ass-first up a tree. We need to save the ecosystem for the species. And all this is still ignoring the sad truth for a lot of extinct animals:

For many of them, there is no 'tower' to save.

[mammoth-clangen]

So, first off, as a paleontologist… thank you for that rant. It’s been driving me up the wall that people are going “oh look we revived the dire wolf using gray wolves!!” Even if you ignore the whole issue of de-extinction wolves aren’t even the closest living relative! Jackals and African wild dogs are more closely related to it, and they aren’t anywhere close to being in the same genus.

And of course, de-extinction is a whole other issue. Why are they so focused on the mammoth? At least the thylacine went extinct about a hundred years ago so the niche could still be there. But still, why focus on them? If you want to de-extinct something, why not focus on, oh I don’t know, the northern white rhino which still has two living members for sequencing and who have a living subspecies.

And further more, it’s genuinely cruel to bring most of these back. You think a wooly mammoth that lived in the last glacial maximum would be happy in todays climate that is consistently getting hotter? You think the dodo would appreciate the fact that it’s one habitat has been mostly destroyed? You think the thylacine would enjoy trying to outcompete the dingos that have moved into its niche? No. They wouldn’t.

For the mammoths, it’s especially cruel since they are herd animals and you’d need to clone a lot of them at one time for them to be happy.

And I mean, look. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see these creatures alive. As unlikely as it is, I keep a sliver of hope that the thylacine might still be out there. But that doesn’t mean de-extinction is good. Like it or not, they went extinct for a reason. Yes, that reason may be because of humans, but it is still a reason. You bring them back and they’ll go extinct again unless they are given extreme protection.

They need to focus on living creatures or, if they are desperate to bring something that’s completely extinct back, focus on creatures that have gone extinct within the last two decades.

Ugh, sorry for the mini rant but as someone who understands extinction (including the current Anthropocene mass extinction), bringing things back is not the way to go. I can point to multiple genuses that went extinct for a good reason.

Hello fellow palaeontologist! 🤝 My area of study was actually Dromornithid ichnotaxonomy but carnivorans are holding me hostage nowadays, it seems...

Unfortunately, you have fallen prey to another (thankfully, less insidious) piece of misinformation! Dire wolves aren't wolves, but they are no more closely related to Jackals or African Wild Dogs!

Aenocyon is an outgroup to all wolf-like canids, jackals included!

I've seen the Aenocyon/Lupulella/Lycaon relatedness touted often, and am guilty of repeating it myself before I re-read the paper.

A possible reason for this confusion that African jackals are considered the most basal of the extant, wolf-like canids; as seen on the cladogram above.

Therefore, the ~5.7million year old common ancestor of Aenocyon and the wolf/jackal/dhole lineage would likely have looked more like a jackal. Then Aenocyon convergently evolved a very wolfish skeleton because of their similar lifestyles!

This is also why I chose to reconstructed my Aenocyon with a shoulder patch, seeing many canids seem to have some sort of cape marking.

The 2021 paper that concluded the dire wolf isn't a wolf at all, is unfortunately paywalled :/ Without full access to the paper it's hard to be sure exactly where Aenocyon fits within the larger Canidae family tree (if they discussed it at all), but the abstract describes them as having "an early New World origin".

It seems they were a true outgroup to modern wolf-like canids, being the earliest branching member of Canina! They're not too different from sabercats, in that way.

Also if anyone is following the ongoing edit war on the Dire Wolf Wikipedia page, I beg you to ignore the "taxonomy based on morphology" section. It is only useful as a historical reference for how we used to view Aenocyon dirus as Canis dirus for a long time. Current science supports these morphological similarities being convergent, contrary to what Colossal Lies are being told...

---

I already partially addressed Mammoths (and the issues with their herds inbreeding) in this other ask, but I do agree completely with your points.

Having the GMO wolves raised without another older wolf or dog parental figures is frankly, just cruel. Any vet will tell you hand-reared and imprinted animals are significantly more prone to behavioural issues down the line. Mammoths would be worse again, because unlike Romulus and Remus, there is no chance of even having a twin to keep them company.

And yes; What could possibly go wrong with bringing back a polar-adapted, woolly proboscidean, into a world where even winters are getting progressively warmer?

I too, would love to see extinct animals in the wild. I'd be lying if I said I don't secretly hope for many of them to pull a coelacanth on us. But sadly, I don't think that's likely, and nor do I think we should be trying to make it happen.

---

Hank Green brought up something poignant about this dire wolf debacle, which is that extinction is not as simplistic as we imagine it to be. It's not just the death of a species.

"It's the destruction of a space in the natural environment for a species."

And that is really it, you can't just "bring back" an extinct species, because you aren't bringing their niche back with them.

Successful reintroductions of species that were locally extirpated or made entirely extinct in the wild have only worked because effort was put into securing a niche and ecosystem that had been lost.

And even well-planned, well-funded reintroductions struggle, but at least they understood the assignment.

Colossal, on the other hand, seems to think that adding back their very-roughly-wolf-shaped 'jenga block' to the ecosystem 'tower' will completely stop the collapse. But the real 'collapse' is caused by habitat destruction, and no amount of GMO wolves, mammoths or thylacines can stop that.

Bringing the species in to save the ecosystem is climbing ass-first up a tree. We need to save the ecosystem for the species. And all this is still ignoring the sad truth for a lot of extinct animals:

For many of them, there is no 'tower' to save.

[mammoth-clangen]

(Hi, i need to rant to someone who knows more than me on the topic of the de-extinction of mammoths. Apologies to your inbox and you for the wall.)

in my opinion, for mammoths, it's also vital to remember how unfortunately inbred their last living population was. If humans hadn't killed them, they'd have all died of inbreeding. They were stuck on an island, the only extant population left, and honestly, probably on their way to if not already suffering from low food supplies, assuming they had few or no natural predators there. Plus, I'm pretty certain we have at least one specimen from there, and to my knowledge, we can't exactly test how inbred it is without other direct relatives... while yes, a few cases of inbreeding would be relatively harmless to a population, rampant inbreeding is bad for a reason.

I don't think any species should be revived - even if there was somehow a good reason to - unless we can clearly and consistently prevent unhealthy amounts of incest from occurring down the line. Something which, as you pointed out, likely can't be done with "dire wolves" or mammoths.

These scientists are playing with fire, and all they're going to do is make everything worse. The very definition of "so determined to see if you could, you forgot to stop to see if you should."

You make a very good point about the mammoths towards the end, they were indeed, very inbred. The cervical rib thing is interesting to me in particular because I have cervical ribs too, lolol

That being said...

The last surviving refuge population, the Wrangel Island Mammoths, were actually were doing surprisingly well before humans showed up! This is surprising, especially given what we know about animals such as Cheetah, with very reduced genetic diversity.

But it seems the Wrangel Island population, small as it was, had found a sort of 'genetic and environmental equilibrium' that lasted 200+ generations. They were living long-term as a whole population with inbreeding depression until their extinction ~4000 years ago, at the hands of humans. Major deleterious gene mutations were apparently "purged" rather than accumulating, though why, I'm not certain.

Really strange and interesting stuff!

However, the severe inbreeding in the last mammoths is still important in discussions of de extinction.

It shows what happens when, as we both mentioned, a species' numbers drop below the minimum survivable population. "Severely reduced heterozygosity" is the scientific term for "both copies of everyone's genes are the same." It leaves them vulnerable to disease, and much less able to adapt to changes as a population.

Refugia of extinct species like Wrangel Island are fascinating, but unless they can repopulate outside their refuge, they typically don't last. It's only a matter of time before something novel to the environment, such as predators or disease, wipes the rest of them out.

Quick clarification about inbred mammoth genomes in cloning

It's important to remember that the ice sheets have come and gone across the Northern Hemisphere for hundreds of thousands of years. Mammoths lived and died among them for much of that time. Thus, any intact genomes we find would likely be from different times in their range; not all from at the time of their extinction!

Here's a couple of examples of mammoth DNA sequenced from:

52,000 year old Woolly Mammoth skin.

Three Siberian mammoth specimens dating to the Early and Middle Pleistocene subepochs, two of which are more than one million years old!

So what I'm saying is, we actually could sequence a fair number of non-inbred mammoths. And we should! Learning about their genetics is fascinating, and tells the story of their lives throughout their existence as a species!

Does this mean we should clone/GMO mammoths using those sequenced genomes?

It's still a Hard No from me, for the other reasons mentioned here.

Additionally, whatever was happening on Wrangel Island, I doubt we would be able to replicate it well enough to stop inbreeding depression in resurrected mammoths.

Like the bucardo, I think any de extinct mammoths would unfortunately be crawling towards a second extinction.

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Sorry to mildly rebuttal you there; I just think it's important not to spread misinformation, regardless if it supports your viewpoint c:

And thanks for giving me a chance to ramble about those funny island proboscideans!

In a world where endangered species are constantly at risk of genetic drift and inbreeding depression, the Wrangel Island mammoths are a bizarre case that I don't expect most people to know about XD

Image taken from the Wrangel Island paper.