Scientists trying to clone, resurrect extinct mammoth

[Tupac Shakur]

They basically wiped out the megafauna every where which didn't co-evolve with men and thus learn to fear men.

This theory makes no sense, when you actually think about it.

[Dinner]

It makes perfect sense and is widely documented. Many animals are pretty tame and don't run from humans, this makes them easy to hunt because they just stand there and don't run away as a hunter creeps up on them.

[Aeson]

Yah, mammoths don't move very fast. Even when moving at glacial speeds you can often catch them.

[Docfeelgood]

It makes perfect sense and is widely documented. Many animals are pretty tame and don't run from humans, this makes them easy to hunt because they just stand there and don't run away as a hunter creeps up on them.

Ever been rabbit hunting, deer, or squirrel?
Only those that domesticated do not run.

[Docfeelgood]

Yah, mammoths don't move very fast. Even when moving at glacial speeds you can often catch them.

It would take a RPG to bring down one.
Are we to except that they were done in by spears and bow/arrow?

[Elok]

On the contrary, there are tribes in Africa today that successfully hunt elephants with stone-age technology. I read about one where it's a sort of super rite of passage: whoever actually spears the elephant is granted a title akin to "hero." There are various theories about the best way to bring down a mammoth--or there were when I took that archaeology class five years back anyway. There's also the little matter of prepared traps.

[Elok]

It makes perfect sense and is widely documented. Many animals are pretty tame and don't run from humans, this makes them easy to hunt because they just stand there and don't run away as a hunter creeps up on them.

Cite, please. "This is new and strange to me; I'll just assume it's safe and ignore it" is the dumbest survival instinct imaginable, except perhaps "Ooh, a bright, hot red light in the forest! I'd better lie down and go to sleep." Any wild animal that tamely walked up to strange animals would find itself very quickly removed from the population.

Try an experiment. Do you have a dog, or a friend with a dog? Get yourself a dinky little windup toy, crank it up and put it on the floor with the dog. What do you think will happen?

Spoiler:

The dog will, nine times out of ten, react to the new organism by backing up and barking at it furiously. It has no reason to fear the stupid thing except that it is moving and making noise, and therefore a strange organism. After it has been doing its thing for a while, or if it winds down and stops, the dog will approach, very cautiously, and make timid sniffs to try and figure it out. This will work equally well for great danes and chihuahuas, except the chihuahua will bark a lot longer because it knows, deep in its neurotic soul, that it's too pathetic for anything to ever be really afraid of it.

If you try this with a cat, of course, the cat will simply pounce on it and try to kill it, because cats are hardwired to annihilate anything smaller or weaker than themselves. They're jerks that way. If my cat were bigger than me, it would murder me as soon as I moved too fast and to hell with affection, purely by instinct. But they certainly won't ignore it.

And that's with domesticated animals, creatures bred for docility who've rarely, if ever, faced a real threat in their lives. Wild animals will react in a similar but exaggerated way to novel creatures, as a general rule. Species which do not mistrust humans instinctively, like Allegheny cliff rats, are few and far between. Oh, and if we're talking about herd animals--like mammoths, in all likelihood--they'll learn to distrust humans pretty quickly when Ook-Ook and D'leh start bringing down their herdmates.

[N35t0r]

I think it's more that in the old world, the megafauna could evolve and adapt concurrently with the various hominids. In the new world, however, the established megafauna suddenly faced a new group of highly intelligent (comparatively at least) animals, and their predator-avoiding behaviours and traits just couldn't manage with this new threat (mainly, their size and strength turned out to be useless against thrown and projectile weapons).

[Elok]

Megafauna went extinct worldwide, not just in the Americas. No cave bears/lions, no dire wolves, no mammoths. With rare exceptions like the aurochs, which survived into the 1600s or thereabouts, they all died off. Whether this was a result of human hunting, the end of the ice age, or both, is a matter of scientific debate.

[Al B. Sure!]

It makes perfect sense and is widely documented. Many animals are pretty tame and don't run from humans, this makes them easy to hunt because they just stand there and don't run away as a hunter creeps up on them.

Yes because it's so easy to pet wild deer. They just stand there as you get close.

[N35t0r]

Megafauna went extinct worldwide, not just in the Americas. No cave bears/lions, no dire wolves, no mammoths. With rare exceptions like the aurochs, which survived into the 1600s or thereabouts, they all died off. Whether this was a result of human hunting, the end of the ice age, or both, is a matter of scientific debate.

Hm?

Elephants, Rhinoceroses (? Rhinoceri? ), Hippos...

[Al B. Sure!]

The climate of Sub-Saharan Africa probably didn't change much between the Ice Age and since. Where it did change, such as the Sahara, there was a decline in the population of big mammals.

[N35t0r]

There's also elephants in India. There was also megafauna in south america, which wasn't very much affected by the ice age...

[Elok]

Hm?

Elephants, Rhinoceroses (? Rhinoceri? ), Hippos...

True enough. But the majority--glyptodonts, giant sloths, mammoths, all the gigantic variants of today's animals--kicked the bucket, and which factors played how much of a role in which places is debatable.

[Al B. Sure!]

Climate change clearly played a huge role. I could be wrong but I don't think the climate of Sub-Saharan Africa or South America changed much at all after the Ice Age, compared to the large-scale changes that occurred in Northern Eurasia and North America where species of megafauna went extinct in large numbers.