A new study has helped researchers understand how mammoths are so different from elephant. Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist who worked with the group, told the Los Angeles Times, said they look for changes in genes that enabled the woolly mammoth acclimatize to harsh conditions of the ice age.

The study showed that the furry giants managed to survive in subzero temperatures because of a metabolism that stored enough fat in their bodies to stay warm, in addition to smaller ears that had reduced sensitivity to cold and lost less heat.

The researchers extracted the mammoth DNA from the hair of two mammoths found in Siberia several years ago. The researchers determined that one mammoth died about 20,000 years ago and the other about 60,000 years ago.

The team compared the genome of the ice-age beasts with the Asian elephants that are their modern-day cousins. Both mammoths and Asian elephants shared a common ancestor roughly 5 million years ago.

Lynch told Live Science that they have a very close relation. The researchers noticed differences in genes of the Asian elephant and pudgy ice-age pachyderms. The ice-age woolly giants stored fat and processed insulin, the hormone that controls how blood sugar is used by the body to produce energy.

George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University who is not involved in the current study, said Asian elephants could be helped to live in colder locales after modifying the modern-day subtropical creatures with mammoth genes. "Possibly extending the geographical range of an existing endangered species northward to areas at much lower risk of conflict with humans", added Church.