Woolly Mammoth

One of the most loveable animated films that drew millions in the box office is Ice Age, a movie that showed a group of animals living through funny situations through the ice age. One of the central members of the group is a woolly mammoth named Manny. 

Woolly mammoths, also known as Mammuthus primigenius or tundra mammoth, were one of the more common species of mammoths, giant, hairy elephants that walked the earth thousands of years ago. This animal was discovered through frozen carcasses and bones across northern Eurasia and North America. Some have even reported discovering woolly mammoth bones as far as northern China. The best of the preserved bodies is the frozen remains of a baby mammoth, discovered in Siberia. Many of our ancestors also recorded interactions with mammoths through their cave drawings.

Unlike other prehistoric animals that studied only through fossils, it has been easier for scientists to know more about the woolly mammoth—this is because of their natural habitat. These giant creatures lived in very cold areas of the world, and cold temperatures naturally preserve their bodies making it much simpler for researchers and scientists to exhume their bodies and study them under better conditions. Because of their very thick and long fur, woolly mammoths could easily live in areas that have very low temperatures.

Woolly mammoths can grow to a full size of 10 feet in height and can weigh as much as a ton. Like elephants, they travel and live in herds. They often ate leaves off tress such as birch trees and other vegetation around the area. Ancient man would hunt these animals down for their precious meat, with their tusks and bones also used to create weapons such as spear tips.

 

Woolly Mammoth

True Wild Life | Woolly Mammoth | The woolly mammoth was an enormous mammal that once roamed the vast frozen, northern landscapes in large size. Believed to be closely related to the modern-day elephant, the woolly mammoth remained in the wild until roughly 1700 BC when it became extinct. The woolly mammoth was found roaming the bitter Arctic tundra where they would often gather in large herds for both warmth and protection. Woolly mammoths lived in two groups which are thought to have been different enough to be characterized as separate subspecies. One woolly mammoth group stayed in the middle of the high Arctic, while the other woolly mammoth group had a much wider range.

The woolly mammoth was an enormous animal, with adults often reaching heights of four meters or more. Woolly mammoths in certain areas where, on average slightly smaller in size and could in fact be just half the size of one of the largest woolly mammoth individuals. As elephants do today, the woolly mammoth had enormous tusks which would have been used for both digging and collecting food, and for intimidating and fighting off both predators and rivals. The tusks of the woolly mammoth were often quite dramatically curved and could easily be up to 5 meters (16ft) long.

Like the African and Asian elephants still found roaming the small parts of the planet today, the woolly mammoth was a herbivorous animal meaning that it survived on a purely plant-based diet. Woolly mammoths would have eaten similar vegetation to modern-day elephants, browsing the forests for leaves, fruits, nuts, twigs and berries. Due to the sheer size of the woolly mammoth, it had only one real predator in it's natural environment which was sabre-toothed cats that would often hunt the smaller woolly mammoth calves. Other than human hunters that quickly wiped out the woolly mammoth populations in vast areas of the Arctic tundra, the rapidly melting ice had an enormous impact on their demise.

Although little is really known about the reproduction of woolly mammoths, it is quite likely that in a similar way to elephants, the female woolly mammoth would have given birth to a single woolly mammoth calf after a nearly year long (maybe even longer) gestation period. Woolly mammoths are thought to have had quite a long lifespan, getting to an average of 70 years old. It was generally assumed that the last woolly mammoths vanished from Europe and Southern Siberia in around 8,000 BC, with the last of the isolated woolly mammoth populations vanishing from Wrangel Island, located in the Arctic Ocean in around 1700 BC.