Everyone looked through the window. They
almost seemed unable to breath. The specialists on the other side were
carefully helping the female elephant to get on the floor and lay down on her
side. The animal was strangely restless and wouldn’t listen to any human. She
gave a couple steps backwards and some forward. Her eyes went from the people
around her, to the window, to the door. For a moment, some thought she was
trying to figure out how the get out of there, by force if necessary. But the
truth was that she was really restless.
One of the people around her injected her with
a serum to make her a bit more manageable, as they needed her on the floor and
not pacing around in desperation. Of course, in the wild, the animal had her
young whenever she felt was a safe and good place to have hit. It wasn’t a
thing of being comfortable but more to do with the fact of being safe. In that
room, however, she didn’t feel safe at all and that’s why she kept moving and
refused to do what was natural. She felt danger all around and she was all that
wrong.
After all, every woman and man around her were
there to take way her young as soon as she had it. Or at least that was the
initial idea, until they discusses it and arrived to the conclusion that taken
the cub away from the mother could have really important consequences for his
survival. The baby probably needed his mother’s milk but also her protection
and love. If they showed her they only wanted to help, maybe she wouldn’t feel
so hostile towards them and may even be able to let them do their research on
him, if that was their goal.
After a second injection, the elephant finally
lay down on the floor on her side. She begin to make a really weird sound that
one expert called a “sign of melancholia”. It was very strange to attribute
human traits to animals but it wasn’t uncommon to see creatures behaving
exactly like actual people, especially when they have been living or have been
very close to a large amount of people or even just one person in particular.
It happens with dogs and even with cats and birds. It’s a strange form of
attachment, still pretty uncommon though.
They soon started making tests on her and
helping her breathe properly. The people behind the glass were glued to it, as
it was the first time that they would be in the presence of the miracle of
life. The women there had never had children and no one had been in the room
for the delivery of a human baby, much less and elephant baby. They were
looking forward to it but the process also made them really nervous because
they knew elephants could be very temperamental and even a real danger if you
were in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
But the one there was to drugged up to do
anything against anyone. A couple of scientists started massaging the animal’s
belly, trying to stimulate the birth. It was a very long process until some of
the effect of the drugs wore off and it was the creature herself that pushed
the baby out because she obviously felt obliged to do it. She was desperate to
have her baby and once she had it, she turned around her head to see how he was
and if he was alive. Elephants would even eat the placenta too, as nutritious
as it is but that didn’t happen.
The mother touched her cub with the trunk and
then let out a very loud sound that seemed to be product of fear or something
worse. Again, they gave her a shot and she was sleepy for a while and then fell
asleep for real. The baby was then helped to her milk and while he was getting
fed, they measured everything and started taking pictures. The people behind
the glass couldn’t do that because their cellphones had been taken away form
them but they understood why: the new creature they were looking at was
something else.
The process had been a success and the
insemination of an elephant with DNA from an extinct species had been
successful. The young mammoth seemed to be just perfect. He was drinking milk
like crazy but he also seemed to be very curious, looking around the room and
at the people. His fur was still a little bit wet but the thick brown fur could
easily be appreciated. One scientist dared to take off his gloves and attempt t
touch him but the supervisor caught him just in the right second. They couldn’t
allow that.
After eating, the creature seemed to be very interested
in his surroundings. He even walked slowly towards the glass and lightly
touched it with his trunk. The people on the other side were ecstatic, they
couldn’t even begin to understand how amazing what they were watching was. No
human had seen one of those for the last four thousand years and now, as if it
was the most normal thing in the world, there was a mammoth walking around,
touching almost everything with his trunk, being caressed softly by the
scientist that were proud of their work.
The
cub went back to his mother and he seemed to notice that she wasn’t really
responding. The reason was simple: she was asleep after all the effort and
didn’t have the opportunity to properly meet her child. However, most people
had noticed that the mother had not been very eager to see him as much as the
scientists were. It was pretty understandable: after all, she was an elephant
and she had just delivered a baby into the world that didn’t look like her, at
all.
As the cub moved around and did small sounds with
his trunk, the people behind the glass were simply over the moon. They had been
told that they were going to see something very special and amazing but they
would have never guessed an extinct creature was the secret of the facility.
They thought a cure for some awful disease had been found or that something to
do with communications had been discovered. The world did not receive news like
this one every day so it wasn’t a surprise that every electronic device had
been taken from them
They were given five more minutes for
observation and then a very kind young woman came and told them to exit the
room and follow her. They did exactly that and joined her to a conference room,
where she left them alone for a couple of minutes. In that time, every single
one of them bursted into talk, saying how simply incredible what they had seen
was. Their general opinion was that what they had just seen could be one of
those world-changing things people love to talk about. It could be very big and
important.
The group was made of entrepreneurs,
journalists and other scientists whose specialty was not biology. The woman
came back and asked them to fill a survey and they she told them they could begin
elaborate their plans but that they would need final approval by the laboratory
in order to publish a paper, release a statement about any ideas or projects or
anything related to the mammoth. They all nodded and the woman left again, with
the promise to return their electronic devices to them when she returned. And
so she did.
As the men and women were being escorted to
the entrance, they realized that the secret was really important for the people
that had done this. And they also realized that the laboratories had challenged
some ethical procedures. Besides that, they hadn’t been presented with an
explanation of why they had done what they had done. And why a mammoth? Other
animals had been dead for millions of years and DNA had also been found from them.
Why not a dinosaur or an ancient wolf or an extinct tropical bird?
The moment they stepped the parking lot, most
of them started calling their boards or their most trusted advisors. Ideas had
come up in the way to the front gate and they were already envisioning many
things to do with the creature. It was a small and furry gold mine that could
translate in many more extinct gold mines in the future. But their enthusiasm
was broken when a scientist ran towards the lady that had attended to them and
announced something sad: “The mammoth and his mother just died”.
