Just the phrase “dire wolf de-extinction” evokes many things including Game of Thrones. It seems very cool. However, the new claim by biotech Colossal Biosciences that they brought back these unique canines (they were real but are now extinct) seems to me about as real as those giant mythical canines on the TV show. Yet it’s all over the media and only some outlets are questioning the claim.
Why should we care if Colossal seems to be hyping what is really just production of moderately gene-edited gray wolves?
This kind of hype is toxic and harmful to science including public trust. Some people, apparently even top U.S. administration officials, now believe the dire wolves are back too.
To be clear, the three produced gray wolves with fifteen gene edits making them genetically a smidge more like dire wolves are not a de-extinction event.
Colossal Biosciences wrongly touts supposed dire wolf de-extinction
What’s the only good news from this story?
It’s just April and yet we already have a candidate for The Screamers Science Hype Award for 2025. A top candidate.
Scientists have pushed back on this hype. I agree with my colleague Graham Coop in the post below. I also liked a post from another one of my colleagues, Jonathan Eisen, who invoked “Crying wolf” on this arguably fake news.
Joking aside, this stuff about species concepts is such transparent BS. [deleted & reposted, as first draft was too annoyed.] www.newscientist.com/article/2475…
— Graham Coop (@gcbias.bsky.social) 2025-04-08T21:50:13.253Z
I don’t know why, but some kinds of science hype annoy me much more than others.
What’s actually going on here and what about the mammoths?
Making this more aggravating, I bet the top scientists at the company know they didn’t achieve dire wolf de-extinction.
Beth Shapiro? George Church? If you read Graham’s post above, there’s some major hand-waving in there from Shapiro like “everybody can disagree and everyone can be right.” Not in this case.
The firm’s first-ever animal de-extinction claim is clearly wrong. Why would they do that?
It could be an effort to raise more capital and get more attention to the company. BBC science journalist Roland Pease also raised the good question of how these de-extinction (dire wolf, mammoth, dodo, etc.) efforts could ever produce some return on investment. I don’t see how unless they potentially sell access to the pseudo-de-extincted animals or license some new tech for some other purpose. Bring back (de-extinct) specific dead pets or people?
Mammoths, dodos, and more
See more on my view of the company’s efforts that they claim are heading toward woolly mammoth de-extinction. We’re likely to see them incorrectly claim that mammoth de-extinction also worked in coming years too, when in fact they will likely have just made some genetically modified elephants with a handful of mammoth genes. Maybe there’s some intact mammoth cells still frozen in Siberia that could be used for cloning?
It wasn’t that long ago that the firm also came out with woolly mice supposedly on the path to making the mammoths return.
I still would argue if we’re going to de-extinct something, let’s go for another more decently departed canine that may have been extinguished due to human activity: woolly dogs. Maybe Colossal could put the woolly gene from mammoths into gray wolves and bingo?
We’ve been genetically engineering animals since 1974, when the first transgenic mice were made. Modifications of mouse genomes by using homologous recombination in mouse embryonic stem cells was first reported in 1989 (a year before I started using HR to modify mouse genomes), and resulted in the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine being awarded to Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans, and Oliver Smithies.
Scientists have been “humanizing” mouse genes for decades- I put entire Mb-sized genomic fragments containing human genes into mice a couple of times. They were still mice.
Embryos from many mammals use the homologs of the same genes for development of specific traits. I’m impressed that the Colossal scientists were able to pick genes for modification that would modify the wolf’s phenotype without sacrificing the survival of the embryos. We should keep in mind that the success rate of live births from SCNT is always low…3 were born out of at least a hundred that were placed into the dogs’ uteruses. I am curious about why certain ones survived and others didn’t…may be unanswerable.
@Jeanne, Good points. I thought of the humanized mice too. They are still mice.
I also agree that the science is impressive.
I’ve made many genetically modified mice and even that can be challenging.
Working with canines is a lot harder and then there are elephants…I wish they wouldn’t go there.
As I’ve said, they don’t have a convincing rationale.
The recent talk of improving the environment via this work seems like bunk to me.
Very good information. I happen to be a home of 2 Samoyed that look a bit similar and smiled at the announcement. However, the Samoyed still is being bred after 2000 plus years and has nothing to do with the Dire Wolf. Don’t like this because my community might start thinking of my domestic pets and show dogs as a wolf breed. Not even close. They are from northern Russia and were bred as babysitters, sledge pullers, and ate Salmon and herded reindeer. An all around helper dog. Very sweet and smart. However, the dire wolf is an identification mistake waiting to happen. A bit of a worry.
@Lee, I have a 100lb White German Shepherd that also looks kind of similar to these edited gray wolves.
But they aren’t (really) telling BIOLOGISTS that it’s either a new species or an actual Aenocyon dirus. They’re coming up with a description for the public. And, yes, it is a hyped description, that probably has some commercial motivation. I won’t call it a dire wolf. (“Dire-ish wolf” at most.) But I won’t pile on Shapiro and the others for it. In part, because I don’t think doing so is “toxic to science as a whole” (“the world will little note nor long remember”).
And, at least, unlike the hype so often usefully attacked in this blog, it isn’t harming people, or even their wallets.
I agree it is more a public relations move than a deeply felt belief by the scientists. But I think it’s wrong to consider it completely indefensible because the species concept is so fuzzy. And whatever these cute puppies are (other than cute puppies), I think they are closer to dire wolves than anything else we’ve seen in 10,000 years. Dire-ish wolves – or maybe Grey Dire-ish Wolves.
Also, you didn’t answer my two express questions to you:
• Won’t you be interested in seeing how they grow up?
• Don’t you think they are cool?
@Hank,
The science is cool and, yeah, I will follow the pups, which are also cool. I just think the company focused more on PR than science with this.
I’m calling them “Dire-ish Wolves.” Or, when trying to be more precise, “Grey Wolves Genetically Modified in a Dire Wolf Direction.” I wouldn’t – and won’t – call them “dire wolves” for lots of reasons, of which DNA differences are only one.
But I won’t dump, too heavily, on Beth Shapiro (great scientist) for saying it. Give me a clearly correct definition of a species and I might disagree but no such thing exists. Or, to be more accurate, there are definitions of “species” that are simple, straightforward, and wrong. [Stolen from HL Mencken’s ” there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong,” with thanks to Quote Investigator.] She is using, or saying that she is using, a morphological definition (which seems to me to blend in a bit into a lay understanding interpretation). Ok, but I feel the same to those using other definitions. I’m not a thorough nihilist but on the defining species, I think all the answers are somewhat right and somewhat wrong. “You pays your money and takes your choice.”
If lay people want to call whales “fish,” insisting that they are wrong is probably not very helpful, though saying “well, they do have some things in common with fish, but scientists don’t call them that because….,”. (That’s something I disliked about the book, Why Fish Don’t Exist”.) Words can mean different things in different contexts to different audiences. So I won’t call them dire wolves and agree that people should explain why they aren’t dire wolves, while acknowledging that they (seem to be) more like dire wolves than anything that has been seen in 10,000 years.
It was a brilliant move to shift focus from mammoths and birds, both (for different reasons) technically VERY hard, to dire wolves, which are technically easier, in part because we know a LOT about canid genetics and reproduction, including the 2 to 2 1/2 month wolf gestation period (22 months for Asian elephants!). And, if it works, as it seems to (to some extent), you end up with adorable looking puppies! Maybe hairy elephant calves are cute; I doubt that dodo chicks are cute. But big furry puppies?
And won’t it be interesting – won’t YOU be interested – to see how they develop, and behave, as they grow up? They won’t be dire wolves, but they are something new that contains, and may tell us something about, something gone.
How will Colossal make money? Despite the disclaimers, I suspect by leasing future animals (not these three, I expect) to zoos and animal parks. And if they are well treated and in a good environment (including a good number of beasts of the same species, whatever species you call it), I’m ok with that.
And, besides, Paul, don’t you think it is COOL?
Hi Hank,
I’d say they’ve turned science into a circus with cute puppies. Science doesn’t need that kind of stuff now.
As I wrote, I also expect this is a stepping stone toward some at best half-baked claims about de-extincting mammoths just by making furry elephants and that has far more risks like hurting wild elephants somehow.
On one level, it doesn’t even matter how we define a species because whatever dire wolves were and whatever these new gene-edited wolves are, they are definitely not even close to the same thing. You know?
The firm’s scientists probably do not actually believe these new wolves are dire wolves so even just on that level it’s sad to see them saying something else. How about saying instead something like, “Look at these cute gray wolf puppies that we made to be more similar to dire wolves?” Too accurate?
Just because there’s no one clear definition of species, doesn’t mean one can or should make up whatever is convenient for the moment. And biologists should know better than a layperson.
Might they be a different species from the parent wolf? Unclear until they try to cross them back to the parent to demonstrate more than superficial changes akin to different dog breeds.
But even if you establish that you’ve made a new species, that does not in any way allow you to claim that the species you created is the *same* as one that went extinct. No self-respecting biologist should be making that claim.
Is it interesting science stripped of the hype? Sure. But overhyped PR-driven science is toxic to science as a whole.