Here’s a better article that isn’t as uncritically sensationalist.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/de-extinction-company-announces-that-the-dire-wolf-is-back/
tl;dr is that it’s basically just a gray wolf with 14 edited genes, most of which are from natural gray wolf populations rather than dire wolf genomes. The result is a gray wolf that’s visually similar to a dire wolf, not a dire wolf.
Visually similar to a GoT dire wolf. IIRC, actual Aenocyon Dirus probably didn’t have a white coat.
Wild the amount of money spent bring back an extict species instead of trying to protect the ones we already have.
Its like trying to justify ruining the environment and driving species to extinction as no biggie because we can just have a do-over through the power of science.
i feel the same way. they made this video, though, which explains how the end product (ie. the pups) required the development of many other technologies that can help endangered species.
Why not both?
They are doing that too… FTA:
“Colossal also said it had cloned four red wolves, a critically endangered animal with under two dozen thought to be left in the wild.”
“We spared no expense”.
“We’ve taken a gray wolf genome, a gray wolf cell. which is already genetically 99.5% identical to dire wolves because they’re very closely related,” Shapiro said. “And we’ve edited those cells at multiple places in its DNA sequence to contain the dire wolf version of the DNA.”
My understanding is that that they identified genes associated with 20 key characteristics of direwolves, and edited those genes in the grey wolf genome. I guarantee that there are likely thousands of direwolf genes that they overlooked, so technically they didn’t create a direwolf. They created a grey wolf that looks like a direwolf.
That is a lot of effort put into making a slightly different wolf.
There are lots of people complaining about the ethics… But, but, baby woof!
Make them hyper intelligent and give them thumbs.
Also, don’t forget to hit them with a stick periodically so they learn their place. They might develop a deep hatred for humans but that’s okay, it’s not like they’ll revolt and kill us all or anything.
I saw a report that said they’d have Wooly Mammoths by 2028. I’d go to the zoo to see a Wooly Mammoth.
DINOSAUR
I can’t wait to be disemboweled by a velociraptor. What a time to be alive!
*guts spilling out on to your arms as you try catch them from spilling out on to the floor. your last works being 'fu…king… rad."
“I think that the best definition of a species is if it looks like that species, if it is acting like that species, if it’s filling the role of that species then you’ve done it," she said.
How does she know what a dire wolf looked like and acted like though? They went extinct 10,000 years ago! I hate this quite frankly . Unethical, wasteful, and they’re not even dire wolves!
