Woolly mammoths (mammuthus primigenius) have been in the news a lot. A few weeks ago we were told that they were going to be revived by some ingenious insemination of elephants using woolly mammoth DNA.

Now we are told that space impacts may have wiped out woolly mammoths and early human settlers in North America according to this BBC News article.

However, what hasn’t been considered is the smell. It was the illustration at that BBC News article that put this thought into my mind. It’s all that wool you see, on such a large animal. I bet they got pretty hot in the summer. It would have added up to a significant pong.

Maybe smelly mammoths would be more appropriate than woolly mammoths.

As if there wasn’t enough in the future to strike fear into our hearts what with global warming and marauding mammoths some German scientists (in fact the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering and Organisation) have dreamt up what looks like the hotel room from hell.

In this bizarre BBC news report Steve Rosenberg tells us what a wonder it is. It is a wonder that Steve Rosenberg could go through that script without laughing.

The room reminds me of that lift in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which keeps trying to keep its passengers calm but its efforts only infuriate them.