Apparently I Have Something In Common With Extinct Mammoths

I saw this as I was doing some reading on another article I was working on, and it surprised me! It turns out, I have something in common with an ancient, extinct creature: The Wooly Mammoth. And you might, too!

Get our free mobile app

Well, first, let's go over a couple of Wooly Mammoth facts.

First of all, yes, it's like in Ice Age.

via GIPHY

The last known population of woolly mammoths lived on an island off in Russia. They died off around 4,000 years ago. There's a little more to it, but that's the jist of what they know.

And part of what they've discovered is that Wooly Mammoths may have started to deal with allergies themselves.  I know I've tried everything.  Literally everything.  And I still end up with a runny nose and watery eyes just about every morning.  And the sneezing.

Oh, the sneezing.  It never stops, it feels like.  But......could that really end a species?

The last woolly mammoths on Earth, having a little party on Wrangel Island, probably kicked the bucket because of a terrible combination of problems. Think along the lines of a surprise disease party crasher or some wacky extreme weather, instead of just the usual suspects of inbreeding or humans sharpening their spears.

And we've been talking about, that unwelcome guest to the birthday party might have been,..... seasonal allergies.  According to Science Direct:

"One of the possible mechanisms for the extinction of animals during climate change could be a violation of the sense of smell due to the development of allergies when the flora changes."

I mean, if you think about it for a second, it...could make sense. If the mammoths weren't used to the pollen, their bodies would react. And if their sense of smell was disrupted the same way it is for us, with the sneezing and watery eyes and snot everywhere... it would impact how they lived. Live Science went on to explain:

Allergies would have disturbed several vital functions of mammoth life, the researchers argue. Animals use their sense of smell to find food and mates, to navigate during migration and to evade predators, so the mammoths' stuffed-up trunks may have doomed them, the researchers wrote in the paper.

And they didn't have Neti Pots, Claritin or Zyrtec or Benadryl or any of the thousands of over the counter stuff I've taken over the years that didn't work. So of course they were miserable. I mean, I'm no scientist. But if it was a factor contributing to their extinction... well, I'll just have to make sure to keep my Flonase spray handy. Allergies aren't gonna take ME down.

Allergically yours,
Behka