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.
Why not both?
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.
“We spared no expense”.
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’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.
Great … a wolf that’s twice the size of a normal one … while we’re at, let’s put a machine gun on it … or maybe a lazer.
this but two lasers or machine guns.
Leave room for the saddle
More to snuggle.
That is a lot of effort put into making a slightly different wolf.
Make them hyper intelligent and give them thumbs.
or you make them packminds and give them long necks
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.
No! They’ll hate the sticks, man! Like, it’s the anti-fetch.
It sounds like they did some gene editing to select characteristics the dire wolf supposedly had, as opposed to finding an ancient DNA sample somewhere and working from that. So it’s more of a genetic simulation than the real deal right?
Like just because you know of some gene that happens to give people pronounced brow ridges doesn’t mean you can bring back the Neanderthal. Or am I not understanding this correctly?
No, that’s exactly it. Framing this story as that they’re reviving extinct animals is misleading at best
There are lots of people complaining about the ethics… But, but, baby woof!
I just want to try dodo meat
Probably tastes like chicken…
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."
That’s really interesting. Would be useful for research of life in early human or pre-human times.
it also helped develop new tech to help our currently endangered species:
