WEBVTT - How Did Woolly Mammoths Work? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.640 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff 0:00:07.720 --> 0:00:12.959 Lauren Vohlabam. Here travel back in time around four thousand 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.440 years to a remote Russian Arctic island, and you might 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:19.760 see a few shaggy brown quadrupeds with trunks tugging up 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:22.600 tufts of grassy ground cover and shoving them into their 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:27.120 tusked mouths. But despite their four stout legs and thin 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:31.120 whipping tails, you would never mistake them for hairy elephants. 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:34.919 Sure if your glasses broke on the trip, you might 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:38.120 miss the distinctive downward slope of their backs, the finger 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:40.920 like grippers on the ends of their trunks, and their small, 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:46.120 cold adapted tail and ears. But no amount of astigmatism 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:48.760 could make you miss the fact that these animals aren't 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:52.839 much taller than you. You have found the Wrangel Island mammoths, 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:56.520 the dwarf descendant of the wooly mammoth. They are the 0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:02.480 last of their Kindlike the twenty five percent larger woolies 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:05.319 that in their heyday numbered in the several millions across 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:10.080 Eurasia and North America, these diminutive descendants survived the roughly 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:13.240 north to south Domino of extinction that had finished off 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:16.319 so many large mammals more than six thousand years earlier. 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:20.480 They walked Wrangle Island when humans were building pyramids in 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:25.880 Egypt and constructing Stonehenge in Great Britain, but soon, perhaps 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:28.720 done in by the same forces that killed their ancestors, 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:32.319 a likely climate change, human hunting, or some combination of 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:38.240 the two, time would catch up with them as well. 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.800 We probably know more about wooly mammoths and mammos in 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:46.240 general than we do about any other extinct species. Compared 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.040 to the last dinosaurs, which died out around sixty five 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:53.360 million years ago, Mammoths only recently shuffled off this mortal coil, 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.440 recently enough that ancient humans hunted them, ate them, used 0:01:57.480 --> 0:01:59.880 their ivory for tools, and depicted them in some of 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:04.000 the earliest known sculpture in cave art. They are well 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:08.280 preserved remains, which at times consist of complete carcasses, pickled 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:13.320 and frozen anaerobic soils can contain muscle, blood, teeth, bone, tusk, 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:17.799 and even brain. We've even recovered and sequenced mammoth DNA. 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:23.200 What's more, we have three living, albeit distant cousins to 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:26.840 compare them with the African bush and African forest elephant, 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:30.560 and the Asian elephant, which is the mammoth's closest living relative. 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.840 By combining what we know about modern elephants with evidence 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:38.360 from the wooly mammth fossils, preserved stool and gut contents, 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.720 and other physical evidence, we can confidently paint a picture 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:45.160 of what these wooly wonders were really like and how 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:48.799 they worked. So today, let's jump back in that time 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.040 machine and see what life was like when mammoths roamed 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:57.480 the earth. Wooly mammoths roamed landscapes unlike any that exist today. 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:01.679 During many parts of the Pleistocene, an epoch lasting from 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:04.839 one point seven million to eleven thousand, five hundred years 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:07.880 ago and ending with the most recent Ice Age, a 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.960 mixture of rich and varied grasses, herbs, and sedges spread 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:15.320 from Ireland to Siberia, across the Bearing Land Bridge and 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:20.240 too much of modern Canada. This mammoth step was supported 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:24.280 by a different climate. As growing glaciers locked up, water 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:28.440 sea levels dropped, exposing great swaths of land dominated by 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:34.440 clear and breezy blue skies. Grazing across this landscape in 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:37.520 a twenty hour a day pursuit of food were vast 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.920 numbers of wooly mammoths and creatures about the size of 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:45.520 modern elephants. The males grazed alone, each standing around nine 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:48.160 to eleven feet tall that's three to four meters and 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:52.680 weighing about six tons. They ranged near matriarchal family groups 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:57.240 of around ten to twenty smaller females and calves. They 0:03:57.280 --> 0:04:01.040 withstood the chill of their northern climes through number of adaptations, 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:04.559 including a four inch layer of fat that's ten centimeters 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:08.360 and an inch of thick oily skin. They had a 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.960 wooly undercoat layered with coarser guard hairs ranging from a 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:14.760 few inches up to three feet that's one meter long, 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:17.440 with the longest hanging in a skirt along the animal's 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:22.039 flanks and belly. Even their hemoglobin had heat retaining properties, 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:27.320 a trait echoed in many modern cold adapted mammals. Wooly 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:31.000 mammoths shared these lands with other massive mammals, including grazers 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.080 like wily rhinoceros and long horde bison, and predators like 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:39.120 sabertoothed cats and cave hyenas. Given their bulk and massive tusks, 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:42.040 health the adult mammoths could take all comers in a fight, 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.840 especially if gathered in a protective group, so predators likely 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.520 preyed on sick or injured adults or picked off the 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:55.320 occasional straggling calf. If, as experts suspect, mammoths were similar 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:59.760 to today's elephants, then they were likely highly social, educating their 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:03.840 cat and maybe even guarding and burying their dead. They 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:07.240 may have periodically come together in great migratory herds and 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:09.960 could probably swim to islands a few miles off shore. 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:15.120 Mammoth calves were mostly born in spring, when fresh growth 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:19.479 could support lactating mothers. A twenty two month gestation period 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:23.240 meant that conception occurred in the late summer. The competing 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:26.720 males would demonstrate their fitness via tusk displays, the ritualistic 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:32.640 sparring or out and out fights. Beyond fighting, a mammoth's twisted, 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:36.320 inward curling tusks were also handy for stripping and felling 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:41.120 trees or shovel plowing through dirt and snow. Evolved from 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:44.320 the mammoth's upper incisors, these tusks would grow throughout the 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:47.840 animal's lifetime. The rest of its teeth consisted of foot 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:51.240 long molars with side to side grooves that aided in 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:55.600 breaking down its tough food. Like today's elephants, a mammoth 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:58.000 would go through six sets of teeth in its sixty 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:03.720 year lifespan, but typically dying after the last set wore out. 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.919 A wooly mammoths are one of a number of large herbivores, 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:11.080 including mastodons, elephants, and other mammoth species descended from the 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:15.640 primitive Probosideans, named for a Greek word meaning nose, which 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.200 all split off from the general ma million tree around 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:22.279 fifty five million years ago. The first mammoths showed up 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:25.080 in Africa around five to six million years ago, but 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:29.200 they weren't wooly. The probable ancestor of the wooly mammoth, 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:32.960 the step mammoth, may have originated in northeastern Eurasia around 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:36.159 two million years ago. It was the largest of its kind, 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:40.120 standing fourteen feet that's four point three meters and weighing 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:44.400 at least ten tons. It sported smallish ears and tail, 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.679 and a bit of a shaggy coat. Primarily a grazer, 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:52.440 it also supplemented its diet with trees and shrubs. The 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:56.719 comparatively smaller wooly mammoth, established around four hundred thousand years ago, 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:00.640 likely resulted from specializations suited for the chill of Siberia, 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.440 and it was from this ice box that botanist Michael 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:07.920 Adams recovered the first wooly mammoth carcass in eighteen oh six. 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.200 But the species spread as far as modern Ireland and 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:15.280 crossed the Bering Strait to continue across Canada to the 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:20.720 eastern coast of North America. Their population was highly adaptable 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:25.440 to the fluctuations in climate that characterized the Pleistocene, yet 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:29.200 within the brief period spanning from fourteen thousand to ten 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:33.280 thousand years ago, they and most other large mammal species 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:40.600 in the northern Hemisphere died out. But why Paleontologists have 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:46.040 advanced several theories, including meteors, diseases, climate change, and human hunting, 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:50.600 but there's no evidence of meteor strikes, and any potential 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:54.600 disease that killed megafauna likely would have affected other animals too, 0:07:55.640 --> 0:08:02.000 so that leaves climate and hunting. According to the climate hypothesis, 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.600 mammoth's very specialization that let them thrive in their step 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:10.880 environment may have doomed them to isolization and starvation. As 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:14.240 the climate shift melted glaciers and raised sea levels, cotton 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:18.760 and shrength and wetter conditions prevailed. Their food sources dwindled, 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:25.800 and mammoth populations declined with them. The hunting hypothesis emphasizes 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:29.680 the fact that mammoths shockingly fast decline coincides with the 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:33.800 generally accepted arrival of humans in North America from thirteen thousand, 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:37.960 three hundred to twelve eight hundred years ago. We know 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:41.200 that humans used mammoth firs, meat and ivory, and that 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:45.559 both Neanderthals and Stone Age humans constructed buildings from mammoth bone, 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:50.800 but many questions remain. Given that many humans could have 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:54.760 survived on a single mammoth, especially aided by natural refrigeration, 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:58.439 and that early humans venerated the animals in cave art, 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:01.960 it's possible that they traded mammoths with the reverence and 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:07.200 restraint that Native Americans had for buffalo. Either way, hunter 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:10.679 gatherers likely had a varied diet and relied on small 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:13.920 to medium game for meat, so how often they actually 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:20.880 hunted mammoths versus scavenging their remains is unclear. Ultimately, the 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:24.320 limitations of large mammals like mammoths, with their low birth 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.840 rates and vast need for sustenance, might well have hastened 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:31.800 to their end, worsening the effects of isolation, habitat, loss, 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:37.800 and predation. But could we bring the wooly mammoth back? 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:42.680 DNA is fragile and has a limited shelf life. We 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:46.800 could never clone dinosaurs a la Jurassic Park, but given 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:50.560 the excellent preservation and recent age of some mammoth remains, 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:54.120 we could theoretically clone a mammoth or breed one through 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:58.520 in vitro fertilization using elephant ovum modified or fertilized with 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:05.640 mammoth genetic material. Both approaches entail complex ethical and practical concerns. 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:10.440 After all, the environment that wooly mammoths lived in is gone, 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:13.640 so where would they live? What would they be able 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:16.400 to eat? If we bring them back just to keep 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:19.560 them as curiosities and zoos? What kind of life is that? 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:24.920 If we look at their living cousins, the elephants, they're 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:29.520 a keystone species in their ecosystems. Their movements and activities 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:33.600 create habitat for other animals and natural fire breaks, and 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:37.480 their dung feeds. Numerous species spread seeds and changes the 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:41.559 makeup of the soil. When an animal like that dies out, 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:46.360 it sends thunderous impacts throughout the ecosystem, and bringing such 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:51.160 an animal back would be equally thunderous. It seems more 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:55.520 practical and more kind to focus on preserving the amazing 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:59.280 species that we have alive today and honoring the extinct 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:07.880 ones by further extinctions. Today's episode is based on the 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:10.720 article how Wooly Mammoth's worked on how stuffworks dot com, 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:13.920 written by Nicholas Jarbis. Brain Stuff is production by Heart 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.160 Radio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com, and it's 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:19.559 produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts my heart Radio, 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:22.959 visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:25.359 to your favorite shows.