Colossal Biosciences claims three pups born recently are dire wolves, but they are actually grey wolves with genetic edits intended to make them resemble the lost species
The company that did this didn’t directly clone Dire Wolves. Instead, they identified several “key traits” that defined the species external morphology and then edited wolf DNA to gain those traits.
First, this obviously isn’t bringing the species back. It’s more like artificial convergent evolution than anything else. But even if you accept that bringing a species back that will fit the same ecological niche and resembles the old species is “bringing it back,” there’s a much bigger problem. We cannot know what the “key traits” for a dire wolf are.
We don’t know what key traits are actually required for dire wolves to re-inhabit their ancient ecological niche. All we have are their skeletons. We don’t know what their fur was like. We don’t know if they had any key soft tissue adaptations. We don’t know if they have any unique behaviors that were key to them surviving in their niche. Imagine trying to bring back bowerbirds if you didn’t know anything about their nest building behaviors. You could try to modify something similar from a similar species, but if all you had are their skeletons, you would have no idea that they were famous in life for making their elaborate nests.
No one alive has ever seen a dire wolf. No one has ever spoken to someone that has seen one. No one has ever read an account of what these animals looked like, behaved like, and lived like. We’re just assuming here that their behavior is identical to other wolf species, and that the only differences are the major morphological ones. We can’t know what these creatures were truly like, as they were hunted to extinction long before writing was ever invented. And there’s nothing in the oral histories either, beyond just maybe stories about great big wolves that might, by some miracle, be a distant remembrance of them.
Also, for perspective:
the two species share 99.5 per cent of their DNA
And humans and chimpanzees share 98.8% of our DNA. Imagine if we went extinct, all you had was our bones, and some space alien landed and tried to bring us back by modifying chimp DNA. If they had nothing else to go on, how close do you think they would actually manage to really bringing us back? Odds are they would end up with something more akin to various ancient hominid species than our present human race.
I 100% was sold on the hype, but I think it’s still interesting having had my expectations tempered. I don’t think it could be argued they are original dire wolves. Maybe it could be argued they are a modern rendition of what those researchers believe a dire wolf would look like.
I think it could be argued to be its own unique species now, which could be named as a dire wolf for lack of a better name. Whether or not the changes they made have made them unable to breed with grey wolves is probably also an important question on what these animals are exactly.
The stated goal of the company seems to be to reintroduce similar extinct animals to the best of our ability and help introduce genetic changes to threatened species to better adapt to climate change.
I think the company calling the animal they made a dire wolf is mostly for marketing purposes at the end of the day though. Still really cool research! I hope they continue to get funding for this and other projects.
As with bringing back bowerbirds, even if you were to perfectly recreate humans from the DNA of chimps in a world where all humans had gone extinct, they’d hardly be what we call human. Without all of the culture that we’ve created, developed, and shared for tens of thousands of years, we’d just be a slightly more intelligent than average blank slate.
Even wild animals have learned cultural behaviours, particularly social animals like wolves. Hell, were dire wolves even social?
The company that did this didn’t directly clone Dire Wolves. Instead, they identified several “key traits” that defined the species external morphology and then edited wolf DNA to gain those traits.
First, this obviously isn’t bringing the species back. It’s more like artificial convergent evolution than anything else. But even if you accept that bringing a species back that will fit the same ecological niche and resembles the old species is “bringing it back,” there’s a much bigger problem. We cannot know what the “key traits” for a dire wolf are.
We don’t know what key traits are actually required for dire wolves to re-inhabit their ancient ecological niche. All we have are their skeletons. We don’t know what their fur was like. We don’t know if they had any key soft tissue adaptations. We don’t know if they have any unique behaviors that were key to them surviving in their niche. Imagine trying to bring back bowerbirds if you didn’t know anything about their nest building behaviors. You could try to modify something similar from a similar species, but if all you had are their skeletons, you would have no idea that they were famous in life for making their elaborate nests.
No one alive has ever seen a dire wolf. No one has ever spoken to someone that has seen one. No one has ever read an account of what these animals looked like, behaved like, and lived like. We’re just assuming here that their behavior is identical to other wolf species, and that the only differences are the major morphological ones. We can’t know what these creatures were truly like, as they were hunted to extinction long before writing was ever invented. And there’s nothing in the oral histories either, beyond just maybe stories about great big wolves that might, by some miracle, be a distant remembrance of them.
Also, for perspective:
And humans and chimpanzees share 98.8% of our DNA. Imagine if we went extinct, all you had was our bones, and some space alien landed and tried to bring us back by modifying chimp DNA. If they had nothing else to go on, how close do you think they would actually manage to really bringing us back? Odds are they would end up with something more akin to various ancient hominid species than our present human race.
Thomas Nagel: “What is it like to be a bat?”
Colossal Biosciences: “lol who cares as long as it looks like a bat?”
Silicon Valley is full of tech bros that dropped out of college before they finished their philosophy courses. And damn does it show.
I 100% was sold on the hype, but I think it’s still interesting having had my expectations tempered. I don’t think it could be argued they are original dire wolves. Maybe it could be argued they are a modern rendition of what those researchers believe a dire wolf would look like.
I think it could be argued to be its own unique species now, which could be named as a dire wolf for lack of a better name. Whether or not the changes they made have made them unable to breed with grey wolves is probably also an important question on what these animals are exactly.
The stated goal of the company seems to be to reintroduce similar extinct animals to the best of our ability and help introduce genetic changes to threatened species to better adapt to climate change.
I think the company calling the animal they made a dire wolf is mostly for marketing purposes at the end of the day though. Still really cool research! I hope they continue to get funding for this and other projects.
It’s 96% for chimpanzees. Over 60% for bananas
As with bringing back bowerbirds, even if you were to perfectly recreate humans from the DNA of chimps in a world where all humans had gone extinct, they’d hardly be what we call human. Without all of the culture that we’ve created, developed, and shared for tens of thousands of years, we’d just be a slightly more intelligent than average blank slate.
Even wild animals have learned cultural behaviours, particularly social animals like wolves. Hell, were dire wolves even social?
Their “ecological niche” was eating us. We wiped them out or made them into pets. No need to bring them back!
Really? A species that was hunted to extinction after humans entered North America, and you think their ecological niche was eating humans?
They weren’t hunted into extinction, their megafauna prey was. Humans outcompeted them