Look at This Yummy Woolly Mammoth Meatball Scientists Made for Us

A meatball created from woolly mammoth flesh has just been unveiled, despite the animal going extinct 4,000 years ago.  

The ball of flesh cultivated from DNA from a woolly mammoth was unveiled at the NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam, and it’s meant to be a symbol of diversity loss and the climate crisis.

It’s made of sheep cells inserted with a singular mammoth gene called myoglobin, which is responsible for the smell, the colour and the taste. African elephant DNA was used to complete it, said Vow, the Australian cultured meat company that developed the meatball.

Tim Noakesmith, a co-founder of the company, told the Guardian: “We chose the woolly mammoth because it’s a symbol of diversity loss and a symbol of climate change.”

Nobody has actually eaten the meatball yet, as scientists didn’t know how a person’s immune systems would react. 

It might seem gross, but the aim of the project is to highlight the potential meat growth from cells without the need to slaughter any animals. It also aims to demonstrate the link between large-scale livestock production and the climate crisis. 

Vow said it is investigating the potential lab-grown use of dozens of other species, including alpacas, kangaroo, and peacocks.

Japanese quail is expected to be the first meat served to customers in Singapore later this year. 

“We have a behaviour change problem when it comes to meat consumption,” said George Peppou, another co-founder of Vow.

“The goal is to transition a few billion meat eaters away from eating [conventional] animal protein to eating things that can be produced in electrified systems.”