Woolly Mice: The £435 Million Science Experiment
That Proves We’ve Lost the Plot
Ladies, gentlemen, and whatever future mutant elephant-mammoth hybrids are reading this in horror, we’ve done it. We’ve crossed the final frontier of scientific insanity. While the world burns, the oceans boil, and billionaires launch themselves into space to avoid the consequences of their own greed, our best and brightest have cracked the most pressing issue of our time:
Making lab mice fluffier.
Yes, instead of solving world hunger, eradicating disease, or—heaven forbid—keeping our already existing species from going extinct, science has officially gone full Jurassic Park. The woolly mammoth is on its way back, and it’s starting with a rodent makeover. Because clearly, the best way to revive a four-tonne, ice-age behemoth is to first test the concept on an animal that weighs less than a slice of bread.
This unhinged master plan is the brainchild of Colossal Biosciences, a US biotech company that’s raised $435 million for the noble cause of genetically resurrecting a creature that’s been dead for 4,000 years. That’s right—we’re about to pump half a billion dollars into playing God, while actual living elephants are on the brink of extinction. Priorities, people.
A Scientific Leap Forward… Into Absolute Madness
So, how did we get from “wouldn’t it be cool if mammoths existed again?” to “BEHOLD, THE FLUFFY MOUSE OF THE FUTURE”? Well, here’s how the mad science went down.
To prep for their big woolly-elephant remix, researchers at Colossal decided to go for a low-stakes test run. Enter the lab mouse—small, disposable, ethically flexible. Scientists took normal mice and cranked up their genetics until they looked like they'd just stumbled out of an Ice Age fashion show.
Dr. Beth Shapiro, Colossal’s chief science officer, was positively giddy about the results:
“I was mostly surprised by how adorable they are. They’re just mice, but they have this really golden, long, fluffy hair—it’s spectacular.”
Spectacular. That’s the word we’re going with. Not “unhinged,” not “bioethical nightmare,” just… “adorable.” Fantastic.
The Science: Because If You’re Going to Play God, At Least Do It with Style
FGF5 – Edited to make the mice’s fur three times longer. Because normal-sized fluff just wasn’t ridiculous enough.
FAM83G, FZD6, TGM3 – Tweaked to create a woolly texture, wavy coats, and curled whiskers. Because nothing says "scientific breakthrough" like making mice look like they need a hair straightener.
MC1R – Turned the mice a lovely golden-brown, matching preserved mammoth remains. Because what’s the point of playing God if you don’t get the colour scheme right?
FABP2 – Supposedly altered fat metabolism to help survive in the cold, but… no actual difference in body mass. So, basically, they made a mouse that looks like it should survive in the Arctic but would still freeze to death in a slight breeze. Nice one, science.
“Proof of Concept” or “Proof That Scientists Are Just Making Things Up Now”?
Ben Lamm, CEO of Colossal, gave us this reassuringly megalomaniacal statement:
“By engineering multiple cold-tolerant traits from mammoth evolutionary pathways into a living model species, we’ve proven our ability to recreate complex genetic combinations that took nature millions of years to develop.”
Ah, yes. Because nothing bad has ever come from humans thinking they can outdo nature. It only took millions of years of evolution to perfect these traits, but don’t worry, we’ve cracked it in a lab in Texas.
“My biggest problem with the paper is that there is nothing addressing whether the modified mice are actually cold-tolerant, which is the justification given for carrying out the work. As it stands, we have some cute-looking hairy mice, but no real understanding of their physiology or behavior.”
Oh. Oh. So, to be clear: we are editing animals to be cold-adapted, but we didn’t actually check if they survive in the cold. That’s like designing a fireproof suit and then testing it by seeing how stylish it looks on the catwalk. What’s next—waterproof fish? Oxygen-tolerant humans?
And Dr. Tori Herridge of the University of Sheffield hit us with this reality check:
“Engineering a mammoth-like elephant presents a far greater challenge: the number of genes involved is far higher, they are less well understood, and the surrogate will be an animal that is not normally experimented upon.”
Translation: We can barely get a mouse right—good luck stuffing all this nonsense into an elephant without turning it into a woolly abomination that hates its own existence.
The Ethics: Should We Even Be Doing This? (Spoiler: Probably Not)
Now, for the million-pound question: Why? Why are we doing this? Why resurrect a species that nature decided wasn’t fit for survival?
Colossal argues that bringing back mammoths will help fight climate change by restoring Arctic ecosystems and slowing permafrost thawing. You know, because when you’re tackling global warming, step one is obviously “revive the elephants that lived in the ice age.”
OR… and hear me out… we could stop burning fossil fuels. Maybe not bulldoze rainforests for cattle farms. Perhaps tax the billionaires flying their private jets to Davos to talk about climate change.
But no. Mammoths. That’s the play.
Even if this insane idea works, what then? Mammoths were social creatures—they lived in herds. Are we going to clone them a family? A full-on mammoth daycare? Or will we just drop one lonely, confused, woolly freak into the Arctic and watch as it wonders what the actual hell is going on?
Dr. Tori Herridge sums it up best:
“Unless you decide to make EVERY edit necessary in the genome, you are only ever going to create a crude approximation of any extinct creature. You are never going to ‘bring back’ a mammoth.”
In other words, we’re not making mammoths. We’re making fuzzy, genetically confused elephants.
Final Thoughts: Humanity Deserves Whatever Comes Next
Look, I get it. The idea of a real-life mammoth is cool as hell. But this? This is scientific chaos with a budget. We’re engineering mutant elephants while actual elephants are being wiped off the planet by poaching, habitat destruction, and climate change.
Instead of focusing on saving the animals we already have, we’re throwing obscene amounts of money into biotech necromancy, playing Russian roulette with the laws of nature.
And one day—mark my words—when we finally do bring back a mammoth and set it loose in the Arctic, it’s going to take one look at humanity and think:
“Nope. Hard pass. Put me back in the ice.”
And honestly?
It’d be right.
If you’ve enjoyed this descent into scientific madness—where we prioritise resurrecting mammoths over saving the planet, where lab mice get designer fur coats while elephants teeter on extinction—then congratulations, you have excellent taste in chaos. Stick around, hit subscribe, and buckle up for more unhinged deep dives into the absurdity of human progress. Because if we’re going to watch the world go to hell in a genetically modified handbasket, we might as well do it with a laugh.
