The final woolly mammoths to walk the soil were so wracked with genetic disease that they lost their sense of smell,shunned company, and had a strange shiny coat.
That's the verdict of scientists who have analysed ancient DNA of the extinct animals for mutations, and BBC News reports.
The studies propose the final mammoths died out after their DNA became riddled with errors.
The knowledge could inform conservation efforts for living animals.
There are fewer than 100 Asiatic cheetahs left in the wild,while the remaining mountain gorilla population is estimated at about 300. The numbers are similar to those of the final woolly mammoths living on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean around 4000 years ago.
Dr Rebekah Rogers of the University of California, Berkeley, and who led the research,said the mammoths' genomes "were falling apart factual before they went extinct", in what she said was the first case of "genomic meltdown" in a single species.
"You had this final refuge of mammoths after everything has gone extinct on the mainland, and " she explained.
"The mathematical theories that have been developed said that they should accumulate atrocious mutations because natural selection should become very inefficient." The researchers analysed genetic mutations found in the ancient DNA of a mammoth from 4000 years ago. They used the DNA of a mammoth that lived about 45000 years ago,when populations were much larger, as a comparison.
Source: tert.am