SOUND ON. You’re hearing the first howl of a dire wolf in over 10,000 years. Meet Romulus and Remus—the world’s first de-extinct animals, born on October 1, 2024.
— Colossal Biosciences® (@colossal) April 7, 2025
The dire wolf has been extinct for over 10,000 years. These two wolves were brought back from extinction using… pic.twitter.com/wY4rdOVFRH
I suspect they went extinct because the Siberian-Americans wiped out their food supply. It seems to me that the next de-extinctions should be woolly mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, and ancient bison, to give them worthy prey. There’s apparently no record of them being north of 42 degrees, but that’s probably because it was covered in ice at their time.
My cat did not approve of this. She likes dogs and is not bothered by coyote howling but this made her worried.
Bring back the sabretooths!
Um. We bred dogs out of wolves for a reason…
Here in Colofornica (or is that Califrado? I forget), by a 50.1% vote, the urban leftists imposed the importation of Canadian wolves onto the non-urban part of the state.
I just don’t get the fascination with wolves.
Is it the idea of a pack of predators running down large ungulates (wild or domestic) then ripping out their intestines and starting to feed while the animal is still struggling to escape? Or that wolves are the opposite of “vegan”? Or that their behavior reminds the “wolf supporters” of their favorite politics? Then again, wolves are probably better behaved and less of a nuisance than my suburban neighborhood’s “friendly” “rescue” dogs.
(I also enjoy the stories of what happens when those imported wolves wander north into Wyoming.)
They enjoy making the lives of rural people harder. It’s like Jim Crow but with more wolves and bears
They want to release them. Bad idea.
However, why didn’t they splice in the wooly mammoth gene? Might as well make them look cute and cuddly. Plus all the extra fluff will drive them north to Canada.
Michael Crichton warned us about so many things. So many read his warnings, understood them, yet proceeded anyway as if no warning was ever made and the consequences made clear. When he realized many missed the point of his stories, he added an epilogue to “State of Fear”. Still, people said “he has a point”, yet kept on with their Gell-Mann amnesia.
It’s the human genome that needs work.
But I’m interested in how Colossal expects to make any money from de-extincting species unless they are slated to be exhibits in a string of Colossic Parks. There would seem to be no profit potential in just turning these critters loose in the wild, but there are open-ended liability issues. As soon as one of these science experiments kills and eats someone’s child in, say, Idaho, there will be a rapidly formed re-extinction movement.
Once the revivified paleo-predators are gone – or perhaps even before – the worthies at Colossal Biosciences will be rendered extinct as well as a warning to others. There will always be more “villagers” with torches and pitchforks than there are Dr. Frankensteins.
Once a person gets killed, the lawsuit against Colossal will make it extinct.
Look on the bright side, maybe they’ll eat all the feral pigs.
“Then again, wolves are probably better behaved and less of a nuisance than my suburban neighborhood’s “friendly” “rescue” dogs.”
Agreed, with the added benefit of eating stupid people and maybe rescue dogs.
If the wolves ever figure out that the grotesque, gene twisted creatures that hang around humans used to be *them*, we’ll be in trouble.
Somebody suggested the other day that lions should be introduced to Northern Australia. Plenty of feral pigs and donkeys for them to eat.
About as good as my idea to save the polar bears by introducing say 20 breeding pairs to Antarctica.
The wooly mammoth gene would be good. Already done with mice but as Sarah Hoyt says, please put in the tusk gene. They’d be adorable.
My daughter made the same suggestion.
Recreated with Gene Editing, not really Dire wolves.
But I see them being released and changing the balance of things in nature for a decade or two….
Well…at least those (alleged) shape-shifter Dire wolves that hang out at Skinwalker ranch will have some company.