A mammoth meatball [literally from mammoth meat] has been created by a cultivated meat company, resurrecting the flesh of the long-extinct animals.
The project aims to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells, without the slaughter of animals, and to highlight the link between large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis.
[I think this is awesome.]
@JohnShirley2023 Huge supporter of meat replacement, but I shudder at the symbolism of using the flesh of a sapient being almost certainly helped to extinction by man for the purpose. (They even spliced in elephant DNA. Elephants are kind, compassionate and intelligent. They're people if anyone is.)
@pieist I'm a big fan of elephants. They deserve this planet. We do not. I have always wanted to write a Tarzan novel or graphic novel where Tarzan (who is immortal, as per ERB's miraculous immortality inducing pool somewhere) decides he's had enough of the poachers who kill elephants for their tusks, and those who send them, and goes to war against them. Charge, Tantor!
@JohnShirley2023 It's possible Tarzan is indeed near-immortal if Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton hypothesis is correct.
@pieist Yes true. It was publicity for the overall effort. If we can make obsolete even a substantial portion of the land we're misusing to raise beef, and the slaughterhouses, why that'll be a fine thing indeed.