Elephant

We’re a step closer to seeing a live woolly mammoth walking the Earth for the first time in 4,000 years. Colossal Biosciences, a company dedicated to the controversial-but-unquestionably-cool goal of resurrecting extinct species, has now announced a major breakthrough in creating elephant stem cells.Apparently learning all the wrong lessons from Jurassic Park, Colossal Biosciences was formed in 2021 with the express goal of using genetic engineering to revive extinct animals. The woolly mammoth was the first target, but…

OpenAI left a lot of jaws on the floor last month when it shared the first footage made by Sora, its AI-powered text-to-video generator. The quality, while not perfect, was extraordinary, and left many wondering about the kind of transformational impact that such technology will have on the creative industries, including Hollywood. OpenAI has yet to release Sora to the public — that’s expected to happen later this year — but the company is happy to continue impressing everyone by dropping regular Sora-generated…

Colossal Biosciences, which calls itself “the world’s first de-extinction company,” has created stem cells it thinks will hasten the company’s marquee goal of resurrecting the woolly mammoth. The team’s research describing the accomplishment will be hosted on the preprint server bioRxiv.What Drew John Boyega Back Into Sci-Fi? | io9 InterviewThe cells are induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), a type of cell that can be reprogrammed to develop into any other type of cell. The cells are especially useful in bioengineering,…

Wild elephants leaving the jungle and destroying crops have become much more common lately. In the southern part of India, we have encountered many such animal and human conflicts. There have even been cases where wild animals like elephants have killed people and destroyed vehicles and properties. A recent video from Hassan in Karnataka shows a wild elephant charging towards a man who was working in a farm. The man somehow ran away from the elephant and hid under a parked car to escape. The video has been shared by…

Illustration: Panayiota, Age 14 / Republic of CyprusWorld Wildlife Day was March 3, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare celebrated the event with its annual International Youth Art Contest. Now, the winning artworks have been selected from a group of 15 semi-finalists. These selections were made from over 3,000 entries submitted from 141 countries and sovereign areas. The theme of this year’s competition was “Connecting People and Planet: Exploring Digital Innovation in Wildlife Conservation,” and subjects of…

Asian elephants loudly mourn and bury their dead calves, according to a study by Indian scientists that details animal behaviour reminiscent of human funeral rites.Researchers identified five calf burials conducted by the giant mammals in the north of India's Bengal region in 2022 and 2023, according to the study published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa this week.They found in each case that a herd carried the deceased calf by the trunk and legs before burying it in the earth with its legs facing upward."Through…

Cage the Elephant‘s latest single, “Out Loud,” is the sound of a band growing up. The group wrote the tune after the death of the father of brothers Matthew Shultz (vocals) and Brad Shultz (guitar) and the song, an elegiac piano ballad, finds them making sense of their regrets. “Man, I really messed up now,” Matthew croons. “Too afraid to say it out loud.” The tune makes for a preamble of sorts for the group’s upcoming sixth album, Neon Pill — due out May 17 — which was written following the death of the Shultz…

Matt Shultz, the lead singer of Cage The Elephant, shared that he was suffering from a “mental health crisis” leading up to his arrest last year for possession of two loaded guns. “It’s a miracle that I’m here today,” Shultz wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday evening. “I was arrested last year, and it undoubtedly saved my life. After my arrest, I went to the hospital for two months followed by months of outpatient treatment. I can finally explain what happened.” He continued, “Over the last…

During mating season, male seals usually have one thing on their mind. For about three months, the seals conserve all their energy to mate, or at least try to, with nearby females at the beach. But not all heroes wear capes, some of them weigh two tons made of blubber, and are willing to sacrifice precious energy to save a pup from drowning without even trying to get it on with its mother.The Animal Kingdom Imagines a World of Humans Turning Into AnimalsA group of wildlife biologists at the National Park Service observed…

One must always be careful while driving on roads in India. If you are driving through a forest area, you should always be alert. Lately, we have seen a lot of cases where people have tried to interact with wild animals on such roads, and that did not end well. Here is one such video from Kerala’s Muthanga, where men trying to take a picture of a wild elephant narrowly escaped from being crushed by the animal. The video has already gone viral on the internet. The video was shared by Wayanadgram on their Instagram…