According to some quick research, the "Woolly Mammoth" (Mammuthus primigenius), is just about the size of an adult elephant. Elephants apparently eat about 300-400 lbs of vegetation/day. Let's just run with 400 to account for any increased requirements a Woolly Mammoth would have from living in an arctic environment.
The price of middling-quality hay in Kansas (where hay is relatively plentiful) is about $110/T. so it'll last you about 3 days for one adult mammoth. So you're going to need about 10 tons of hay/month, 120 tons for a year...
That's about $13,200 dollars/year for feed alone for maintinance. It wouldn't suprise me if you actually needed to feed it more, due to higher requirements and/or boredom. When herbivoires are bored, they eat, as they're designed to be eating all damned day anyway. $13,200 is a good starting point, but I definitely feel like it's the low end of our estimate. If you have to add concentrate on top of that, or any supplements (PS. you probably will), it'll become MORE expensive.
And that's the adult. The young is probably going to cost MORE, really, because it's going to have to consume milk (and god knows if whatever milk we can give it will be an appropriate formula!) at a high volume.
I do think that carnivore diets end up being more expensive than this per year, BUT, a mammoth is probably going to be ill all the gorram time because it's not adapted to any microbial habitat a zoo can possibly recreate, and cloned animals generally aren't quite as healthy as naturally produced animals. Then there's the specialized caretaking, cost of the size of the habitat, etc...etc....
Anyway. So yah. I don't think it's at all economically efficient to keep a mammoth in a zoo. At least we know how to take care of elephants...
The price of middling-quality hay in Kansas (where hay is relatively plentiful) is about $110/T. so it'll last you about 3 days for one adult mammoth. So you're going to need about 10 tons of hay/month, 120 tons for a year...
That's about $13,200 dollars/year for feed alone for maintinance. It wouldn't suprise me if you actually needed to feed it more, due to higher requirements and/or boredom. When herbivoires are bored, they eat, as they're designed to be eating all damned day anyway. $13,200 is a good starting point, but I definitely feel like it's the low end of our estimate. If you have to add concentrate on top of that, or any supplements (PS. you probably will), it'll become MORE expensive.
And that's the adult. The young is probably going to cost MORE, really, because it's going to have to consume milk (and god knows if whatever milk we can give it will be an appropriate formula!) at a high volume.
I do think that carnivore diets end up being more expensive than this per year, BUT, a mammoth is probably going to be ill all the gorram time because it's not adapted to any microbial habitat a zoo can possibly recreate, and cloned animals generally aren't quite as healthy as naturally produced animals. Then there's the specialized caretaking, cost of the size of the habitat, etc...etc....
Anyway. So yah. I don't think it's at all economically efficient to keep a mammoth in a zoo. At least we know how to take care of elephants...
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Continued Love of my Aussie <3
This message last edited by LadyLorraine on 19/03/2012 at 01:17:12 AM
Scientists to bring extinct woolly mammoth back to life with the help of elephants
14/03/2012 04:18:52 AM
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Mammoths had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction!
14/03/2012 03:32:42 PM
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No, we did. It's one of the first species we likely hunted to extinction. *NM*
15/03/2012 01:25:02 PM
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I had it it mind that it was more a result of climate change. *shrug* *NM*
17/03/2012 10:03:22 PM
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ugh.
14/03/2012 04:10:14 PM
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Our zoos hardly suffer from a shortage of food. *NM*
15/03/2012 07:19:36 AM
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First of all, yes, some zoos do. Secondly, woolly mammoths eat a LOT
15/03/2012 12:06:47 PM
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They are still herbivores, they can't be that expensive to feed
18/03/2012 10:16:22 PM
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Okay, let me take a look at the numbers.
19/03/2012 01:13:09 AM
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Remember this moment in history....
14/03/2012 10:21:02 PM
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I don't think you even need chaos theory to get a grasp of the unintended consequences... *NM*
14/03/2012 10:24:01 PM
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There's a big hole in their plan
14/03/2012 10:31:21 PM
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Seriously. "We have plans to clone an alien. All we need to do is find some alien DNA." *NM*
14/03/2012 10:53:52 PM
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I don't think finding aliens would be as hard as getting to them. *NM*
14/03/2012 11:35:21 PM
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