Abstract
Media reporters often announce that we are on the verge of bringing back the woolly mammoth, even while there is growing consensus among scientists that resurrecting the mammoth is unlikely. In fact, current “de-extinction” efforts are not designed to bring back a mammoth, but rather adaptations of the mammoth using close relatives. For example, Harvard scientists are working on creating an Asian elephant with the thick coat of a mammoth by merging mammoth and elephant DNA. But how should such creatures be classified? Are they elephants, mammoths, or both? Answering these questions requires getting clear about the concept of reproduction. What I hope to show is that with an appropriate notion of reproduction—one for which I will argue—resurrecting a member of Mammuthus primigenius is a genuine possibility.
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Notes
Unless, of course, one is not interested in bringing back a member of M. primigenius. Recreating members of lost species is just one aim of de-extinction (albeit one that is the focus of this paper), but there are numerous others. For example, Shapiro (2015) has argued that the aim should be the restoration of lost ecological interactions. If we embrace Shapiro’s aim, the question of whether a mammoth-like creature is really a woolly mammoth is only relevant if a creature must be a member of M. primigenius in order to provide those interactions.
Of course, even widely conceded requirements occasionally face opposition. See Kitcher (1984) for an argument against the spatiotemporal continuity condition.
Focusing on this condition of species membership means I needn’t resolve sticky questions about what it means for a species to no longer be extinct. Whether members of a species must be viable in the wild or merely in confinement, whether they must survive to adulthood or not, or whether they must meet some further condition in order to qualify as “de-extinct” can be ignored for my purposes. Before any of those further, knotty questions can be resolved, we must first determine whether an organism meets the only widely conceded necessary condition of species membership, viz, is it spatiotemporally continuous with other members of the species?
My focus on M. primigenius is not essential to my argument. The woolly mammoth is merely a conceptual test case. I’m asking whether it’s possible to satisfy the only widely conceded essential condition of species membership: Are there methods for ensuring spatiotemporal continuity with members of extinct species? M. primigenius is merely a captivating test case for engaging this question. Some of the practical barriers that may stand in the way of actually resurrecting a member of M. primigenius (e.g., raising adequate capital, housing and feeding host animals, implanting a mammoth/elephant fetus in a host, etc.) may not be barriers for other extinct species. If we can see our way through certain practical barriers (but not others) in the case of M. primigenius, that will help us to understand the conceptual and theoretical constraints facing de-extinction efforts.
Perhaps this possibility reveals a weakness in the analogy between species and individual organisms.
Mammoth DNA can be inserted into an elephant genome using targeted genome editing technologies, e.g., CRISPR-Cas9.
Godfrey-Smith (2009) has criticized Griesemer’s account precisely on this point, arguing that an account of reproduction does not require material overlap.
It’s worth emphasizing the weight of these assumptions. As one anonymous reviewer points out: the cost of acquiring, nurturing, transporting, anesthetizing, and generally funding an experiment with (possibly generations of) elephant hosts is tremendous. Further, even if it were possible to overcome such barriers, the idea that an elephant’s mammoth offspring would be born alive, that it would survive long enough to develop reproductive organs, or that its DNA would be passed to further generations is extraordinarily unlikely. Such practical improbabilities, however, seem to be the type of barrier we can see our way through when thinking about resurrecting members of extinct species. Mega-fauna may present a range of problems too difficult to overcome, but many of those problems seem to disappear when thinking about species that do not demand such extraordinary resources. Furthermore, those practical barriers do nothing to undermine my central point, which is that there seems to be methods available for establishing the spatiotemporal continuity required of species membership.
Whether the interbreeding criterion must be testable in practice or in theory, i.e., as potential to interbreed, is a matter of controversy. For a discussion of the interbreeding criterion in the context of de-extinction, see Siipi and Finkelman (2016).
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Gunner Babcock, Marc Ereshefsky, anonymous reviewers, the editor of this journal, and most of all to Matt Mosdell, for helpful discussion and feedback on earlier drafts.
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Piotrowska, M. Meet the new mammoth, same as the old? Resurrecting the Mammuthus primigenius. Biol Philos 33, 5 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9616-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9616-4