Implausible Burgers: Wooly Mammoth Patties from the Lab

We’ve talked about the mad scientists trying to resurrect the extinct wooly mammoth before, but now a Belgian company wants to go a step further and produce edible meat from the long-dead creatures. Startup Paleo has a patent pending for this macabre product.

The company got its hands on some DNA fragments from 1.2 million-year-old mammoth teeth discovered in the Siberian tundra. By mixing in a soupcon portion of DNA from the mammoth’s closest surviving relatives (Asian and African elephants), a dash of yeast DNA, potato starch, oil, salt, and other flavors, the firm has developed something like a burger.

Paleo says its unholy concoction has a richer flavor and more brilliant red color than the meat carnivores among us currently consume. The company had already been producing faux meat in various forms – beef, chicken, pork, lamb, and even tuna. “Then we decided to challenge ourselves,” according to the Paleo website. 

“If we at Paleo were able to truly crack the code of meat, could we make proteins of animals that no longer live on this planet? … We soon learned that this mammoth protein has interesting properties, and delivers strong aromas of grilled meat.”

Perhaps just as incredible as the frankenburgers coming out of the lab is Paleo’s assertion that their meats are a “highly pure product that is GMO-free.” Now that’s a claim that challenges everything we thought we knew about what it means to be “genetically modified.”

Photo credit: Andreas Arnold / picture alliance / Getty Images