Ecology

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Iguanas colonized Fiji after surviving an 8,000-kilometre sea voyage — the longest known oceanic migration by any land-dwelling vertebrate1.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00767-z

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A company that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to ‘de-extinct’ woolly mammoths and other animals has claimed a breakthrough in its quest: the creation of hairier mice.The gene-edited ‘woolly mice’ harbour a mix of mutations modelled on those of woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius), as well as changes known to alter hair growth in mice, Colossal Biosciences announced in a 4 March press release and accompanying preprint.Colossal, which is based in Dallas, Texas, and worth more than US$10 billion according to its latest valuation, says the woolly mouse represents an important step towards its goal of engineering Asian elephants — the mammoth’s closest living relative — with genetic changes for key mammoth traits. “The Colossal Woolly Mouse marks a watershed moment in our de-extinction mission,” said Ben Lamm, Colossal’s co-founder and chief executive, in the press release.But some experts in mammoth genetics and genome editing question whether the mice represent a significant advance in either area, let alone a milestone on the way to bringing back woolly mammoths, which last roamed Earth some 4,000 years ago.“It’s far away from making a mammoth or a ‘mammoth mouse’,” says Stephan Riesenberg, a genome engineer at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “It’s just a mouse that has some special genes.”Shaggy-hair geneAs part of its effort to engineer mammoth-like elephants, Colossal and its collaborators are working to find gene variants that contributed to key mammoth traits, such as shaggy hair, cold tolerance and extra fat stores. To do this, they compare genomes extracted from the remains of dozens of mammoths and from other living and extinct relatives of the creatures, in search of protein-altering changes that evolved on the mammoth lineage.Credit: Colossal BiosciencesTo test the accuracy of these comparisons, a team led by Beth Shapiro, Colossal’s chief scientist, used gene editing to create mice with mutations similar — but in most cases not identical — to those found in mammoths. Shapiro says the group also tested several gene mutations known to affect the hair of mice but not found in mammoths.The researchers used different gene-editing tools to create mice with up to eight genetic alterations spread across seven different genes. These mice tended to have long, shaggy hair that, owing to a mutation known to affect hair colour in mice, humans and mammoths, was tawny-toned instead of the usual dark grey. “Adorability was one of the unintended consequences that we did not expect,” Lamm says. Mice with a mammoth-inspired change to a gene involved in fat metabolism were no heavier than were mice with unedited genes.The mice are only a few months old, and the researchers have not had much time to investigate how the mutations might affect their long-term health, including their fertility and propensity to develop cancers. The researchers plan to test whether the mice are any better at handling the cold than other mice, and to study their hair development.Lamm says the company has no plans to breed or sell the mice commercially. But for about $3,500, scientists can purchase a shaggy-haired mouse strain known as ‘wooly’ from the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, which first bred the mice more than two decades ago. Researchers later showed that the strain carries a mutation in a gene called Fam83g — one of the genes inactivated in Colossal’s woolly mice. The woolly mammoth’s closest living relative is the Asian elephant.Credit: Darryl Brooks/AlamyShowing that changes found in mammoth genomes can affect mouse biology is a useful proof of principle, says Alfred Roca, a population geneticist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who sees the experiments as a step towards engineering elephants with mammoth traits. “It’s a very nice visualization of where you want to end up in the mammoth.”Mammoth genomics

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“In this photograph, I am using radio tracking to monitor European wildcats (Felis silvestris) with my daughter, Sabana. I love this image, because it brings together my two worlds: science and motherhood. It is important to me to inspire her love for nature, and my life as a field biologist allows me to do this almost every day. We are in the Sierra Harana, southern Spain, where wildcats have been monitored with radio tracking and camera traps for the past eight years. So far, we have fitted radio collars on 18 individuals and are now tracking 4 females and 3 males.These cats are elusive and understudied, especially in the Mediterranean region. There’s more research on the reproductive ecology of cheetahs, say, in remote areas, than on wildcats in Europe.Wildcat populations are in sharp decline and the animals are now absent from much of their former range in the Iberian Peninsula, owing to legal predator control and illegal killings, as well as road accidents, habitat fragmentation and hybridization with domestic cats. In Mediterranean areas, a decline in their main prey — rabbits — due to viral diseases seems to be the key factor. Understanding the balance of all of these factors is crucial to identify potential threats, reassess the need for greater protection and urge governments to take conservation action.

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The third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3), to be held in Nice, France, in June, could help to redefine global ocean governance. But the conference’s political statement — the UNOC3 ‘zero draft’ declaration — (see go.nature.com/3ejp7hb) addresses only the environmental and economic pillars of ocean conservation and sustainable development.
Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests. More

Cave-bat fieldwork often looked like a scene from the 1995 film Outbreak.Credit: Warner Bros/AJ Pics/AlamyFor years, I was a bat ecologist, fully immersed in the grind of data collection and publications. My research on cave-bat conservation took me to remote locations, crawling through caves knee-deep in guano, catching bats. Back then, taking photos felt like a distraction from my research.But two years ago, I left the academic world for a career as a science communicator at the GENUS hub at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in South Africa. Today, I work alongside researchers, helping them to bring their science to life through compelling stories. Visuals, particularly photographs, are a key part of this work.Looking back, I wish I’d captured more of my field experiences. Photos are priceless tools for public engagement, yet many researchers fail to see their value. Now, I understand that science doesn’t just live in publications — it lives in stories, visuals and the personal connections that we create with people.Pics, or it didn’t happen During my postdoctoral position in ecology and viral zoonosis at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, my team and I worked mainly in a rural part of Limpopo, on the northeastern side of South Africa, in a small village called Ga-Mafefe. The landscape was lush and green, dotted with ancient fig trees and alive with the rhythm of daily life.Photography: Science on cameraWithin minutes of arriving at the cave site at the base of a steep hill, my team from the Centre for Viral Zoonoses would transform a patch of wilderness into a fully functioning research station, complete with a working centrifuge, powered by portable car batteries. We would dress head-to-toe in white, crinkly Tyvek suits (a type of lightweight, protective, plastic onesie that could shield both us and the bats from contaminants). With respirators humming, we looked like something straight out of the 1995 medical-disaster movie Outbreak.For a week every month, this was my reality. I’d catch bats with specialized traps, and then spend hours hunched over folding camping tables carefully measuring the animals and collecting biological samples. Summer nights were sweltering, with sweat pooling in our suits; meanwhile, winters had us shivering, our noses running faster than we could wipe them, although wiping wasn’t exactly an option. It was exhausting, repetitive and, at times, comically miserable — but it was also exhilarating. We were a well-oiled machine, driven by a shared passion and the late-night humour that only a sleep-deprived team in the middle of nowhere could understand.Then in 2022, I did a three-month science-storytelling fellowship with the Nature, Environment and Wildlife Filmmakers — an organization that aims to build a network of visual storytellers, led by Indigenous African voices, celebrating and protecting Africa’s natural history — and it completely changed my perspective. I rediscovered my creative side and came to understand that scientific exchange can take many forms beyond just research papers. Armed with this newfound inspiration, I started taking photographs of everything during our fieldwork, capturing the beauty and intensity of our work.Mariëtte van der Walt back in her bat-fieldwork days.Credit: Mariette van der WaltBack home in Johannesburg, my family and friends were captivated by the stories my photos told. Through my lens, they saw breathtaking landscapes, rough conditions and, of course, cute bats. I felt like my work could connect with people in a way data alone never could.With this perspective, I realized that as much as I loved my research, my postdoctoral studies weren’t the right place to pursue my newfound passion for storytelling. I decided to leave academia and embrace a career in science communication.Ecologists: don’t lose touch with the joy of fieldwork

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