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The Dire Wolf Is Back
- tonijn 2y agoVery cool, but is it ethical?
- api 2y agoWe cause lots of things to go extinct. Doesn't seem any worse.
- wombatpm 2y agoMad Science means never having to ask “What’s the worst that can happen?”
- krxci 2y agoThis is a deeply philosophical question. But it's highly dependent on the circumstances of a particular animal's extinction. Is it ethical to resurrect the Wolly Mammoth into our current climate when it's significantly warmer than the climate of the Ice Age? Likely not. Was a species hunted to extinction? Maybe restoring that population would ease our collective conscience to some minuet degree. So maybe bringing back some of these species is being done so as an apologetic gesture? Perhaps out of hubris? To be fair, we're notoriously cruel to the animals that we farm for mass food production and less directly to wild animals (when human activity destroys their habitat). Images of such farm operations might remind you of conditions imposed on alleged dissedents by dictatorial regimes. You know, those same conditions that are condemned as atrocious when imposed on humans by humans. And this kind of treatment is still absolutely prevalent today on humans and other animals.
- bell-cot 2y agoEthically, how is it different from (say) Kentucky Kennels LLC trying to breed some Great Danes which drool less?
- AIPedant 2y ago[dead]
- evanb 2y agoHmmm, are you suggesting that the scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn't stop to think whether or not they should? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3j9muCo4o0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3j9muCo4o0
- burnished 2y agoWould it be ethical to let all this lightning striking the castle's copper spire go to waste?
- leesec 2y agoPlease provide the unethical case
- thomassmith65 2y agoIs it ethical to make exaggerated claims in order to raise money? No. The article is one red flag after another.
- MisterTea 2y agoPaywalled so I have to ask, why the dire wolf? Why not an animal that humans drove to extinction like the dodo bird? Is it because dire wolves sound cool and were in video games?
- donalbrecht 2y agoHaven’t read full article either. But dogs have an incredibly well studied genome and are generally incredibly well understood. And due to cloning efforts, performing implantation of lab grown embryos is established protocol. Wolves are also well studied and understood, so even tho dire wolves aren’t super closely related, the dog baseline is a great control. This would be a lot harder to do with an extinct species we don’t know well.
- projektfu 2y agoI would guess that it has to do with much more available genetic information on dogs and more existing CRISPR work with them. However, I do not know if these wolves will give us a lot of information. That said, the dodo is on Colossal's list of projects, along with the wooly mammoth and the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger).
- Pet_Ant 2y agoI'm guessing it's a mixture of practical concerns and something that captures the imagination of investors.
- globnomulous 2y agoMy guess is that it is indeed because they're charismatic megafauna.
- shakna 2y ago> Colossal’s dire wolf work took a less invasive approach, isolating cells not from a tissue sample of a donor gray wolf, but from its blood. The cells they selected are known as endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), which form the lining of blood vessels. The scientists then rewrote the 14 key genes in the cell’s nucleus to match those of the dire wolf; no ancient dire wolf DNA was actually spliced into the gray wolf’s genome. The edited nucleus was then transferred into a denucleated ovum. The scientists produced 45 engineered ova, which were allowed to develop into embryos in the lab. Those embryos were inserted into the wombs of two surrogate hound mixes, chosen mostly for their overall health and, not insignificantly, their size, since they’d be giving birth to large pups. In each mother, one embryo took hold and proceeded to a full-term pregnancy. (No dogs experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth.) On Oct. 1, 2024, the surrogates birthed Romulus and Remus. A few months later, Colossal repeated the procedure with another clutch of embryos and another surrogate mother. On Jan. 30, 2025, that dog gave birth to Khaleesi. The process seems to have dictated this. They needed an easy surrogate, a dog, and wolves required no need of introducing anything new into the genome, it's "just" reactivating what is already there.
- api 2y agoContaining fragments doesn't mean this is a dire wolf, or does it? Biological categories like species are fuzzy anyway. There is tremendous variation within each species. But where do you draw a line? It's something that perhaps has more in common with a dire wolf than extant wolves. Maybe it looks like one. Does it act like one? Do we have any way of knowing?
- bell-cot 2y ago> Containing fragments doesn't mean this is a dire wolf, or does it? Only the Marketing Dept. (and some gullible-when-it-pays-to-be reporters) think they are Dire Wolves.
- pmags 2y agoYes, species/lineage/population distinctions are quite fuzzy at the level of divergence under consideration here (dire wolves vs gray wolves). Here's what was actually have done according to the New Yorker article, starting with a gray wolf genome as the baseline: After almost a year of computational genetic analysis, Colossal researchers used Crispr to make twenty edits on fourteen genes. Fifteen edits were derived from Colossal’s study of the dire-wolf genome and five tweaks were derived from scrutiny of the gray-wolf genome. 20 edits and 14 genes -- clearly some related to coat color, however: But the genes that guided coat color presented a problem: they carried with them a risk of blindness and deafness. (In humans, variations of these genes can lead to Waardenburg syndrome, which causes pigmentation deficiencies, among other problems.) So the group decided to edit a different gene that, when expressed in dogs, also codes for a lighter coat. So the coat color alleles are NOT the dire wolf alleles.
- calf 2y agoI don't get it, so dire wolves were only 20 gene changes from gray wolves? Not thousands of tiny,crucial changes all over their respective genetic codes?
- pmags 2y agoAbove I'm just reporting what the New Yorker reports that Colossus has accomplished. Reading between the lines, I take the reporting to imply that these 20 edits are what Colossus thinks is sufficient (at least for marketing purposes ;-) to recapitulate some of the key phenotypic traits of dire wolves. Does that make them actually dire wolves? Not in my opinion. I'd probably describe the genetically engineered pups as "isogenic with parental gray wolf genomes with the addition of 20 allelic edits that recapitulate key aspects of the dire-wolf phenotype" (or something to the effect; Colossus hasn't published anything by which to evaluate their claims). I don't work on canids, but a quick PubMed search turns up this paper: Perri AR, Mitchell KJ, et al. Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage. Nature. 2021 Mar;591(7848):87-91. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-03082-x. Epub 2021 Jan 13. PMID: 33442059. The analyses in that paper suggests quite a bit deeper divergence between dire wolves and gray wolves than the New Yorker articles implies.
- toolslive 2y agoUnrelated. The article uses the word "decimated". It seems to me a lot of people misinterpret the meaning of this word. It does not mean "kill 90%", but "kill on in every 10" aka 10%.
- rcxdude 2y agoMeanings shift with time. The original meant that (doled out as a very harsh collective punishment by the Romans: groups of 10 would draw straws and be forced to kill the one who draw the short straw). Now it's meanining is more along the lines of 'severely reduced', where how much is 'severely' depends on the context.
- NilMostChill 2y agoindeed, this particular one though has the added complication of having part of it's meaning contained in the composition of the word. It's usage is still changing, obviously , but for me it's a more difficult transition because of the 'deci'
- saghm 2y agoI think this one is already past the past the inflection point, to be honest. I see people using the word with the new meaning far more than the old one; hell, I see people complaining about how the word is used more than I see it used for the original meaning. My take is that the original meaning is so narrow that it's almost inevitable that any more broad usage that appeared would overtake it to the point of drowning out the original.
- ianburrell 2y agoMeanings shift quickly. Decimate was first introduced circa 1600 from Latin to mean "destroy every tenth". By 1660, it started to mean "destroy large number".
- indoordin0saur 2y agoThe word is from 'decimatio' which appears in original Roman histories written well before 1600.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoWe're overdue for a horse archer empire as well
- fifticon 2y agoshouldn't be too long at the rate we are going.
- logicchains 2y agoI never realised the Dire Wolf was a real historical animal, not just a fantasy one like the Owlbear.
- shadowgovt 2y agoThere's a reason horses are so fast; they co-evolved in the Americas with something they had to outrun.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- glacier5674 2y ago[dead]
- mkl 2y agoThat seems much more likely to be cheetah-ancestors than dire wolves.
- p_ing 2y agoIt's not just an MtG card. https://scryfall.com/card/ice/230/dire-wolves https://scryfall.com/card/ice/230/dire-wolves
- evanb 2y agoEven if it weren't a real extinct animal it wouldn't have just been an MtG card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_Wolf_(song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_Wolf_(song)
- ourmandave 2y agoOh shit, the next instagram thing will be DnD cosplayers trying to get selfies with them.
- imzadi 2y ago
- billnad 2y agoSo disappointed that this isn't an article about the Grateful Dead
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoIn the timbers of fennario..
- BoxOfRain 2y agoThe wolves are running round The winter was so hard and cold Froze ten feet 'neath the ground Don't murder me, I beg of you don't murder me...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoUsername checks out
- mikey-k 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK948fIFYpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK948fIFYpE
- gambiting 2y agoI got really excited that it's about Minecraft's once popular modpack
- natebc 2y agoDire is still at it. New pack for Minecraft 1.21 updated as recently as a few weeks ago! https://feed-the-beast.com/modpacks/126-ftb-presents-direwolf20-121?tab=about https://feed-the-beast.com/modpacks/126-ftb-presents-direwol... You can even see some history/stats for all the Direwolf packs: https://feed-the-beast.com/modpacks?search=direwolf&sort=featured https://feed-the-beast.com/modpacks?search=direwolf&sort=fea...
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- githubholobeat 2y agoThere is an article about this in Time magazine, no paywall. https://time.com/7274542/colossal-dire-wolf/ https://time.com/7274542/colossal-dire-wolf/
- freedomben 2y agoThanks, that's a terrific article
- lightedman 2y agoIts a horrible article. Grey wolves and dire wolves arent even genetically related in a way that allows for this sort of gene editing and we have known this for a few years now. If anything, a dire wolf is closer to a red wolf.
- ryanwhitney 2y agoYep, an absolutely empty PR grab. And seems not closer to a red wolf either, but entirely distinct from wolves as we know them. Only similar via convergent evolution.[0] 0: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dire-wolves-were-not-really-wolves-new-genetic-clues-reveal/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dire-wolves-were-...
- mmmrtl 2y agoIt seems their deeper sequencing of dire wolf samples clarified the phylogeny - they claim the dire wolf's closest living relative is the gray wolf, at 99.5% identity. The 2021 study was only able to sequence the dire wolf genome at 0.23x coverage and put a 0.56 probability on their species tree (Fig 2A). https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/255832/1/NatureDireWolves_authorversion.pdf https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/255832/1/NatureDireWol...
- alexggordon 2y agoArchive.org link https://web.archive.org/web/20250407131025/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/14/the-dire-wolf-is-back https://web.archive.org/web/20250407131025/https://www.newyo...
- johnecheck 2y agoHere's[0] a recent editorial about Colossal, the company behind this. Basically, they make some flimsy claims about conservation and combating climate change to justify creating a poor imitation of Jurassic Park. Naturally, there's some real moral dilemmas that they gloss over in pursuit of the money a few wealthy people will pay to be able to say "I saw a Mammoth!" [0]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/editorial-mammoth-de-extinction-is-bad-conservation/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/editorial-mammoth-de...
- MrBuddyCasino 2y agoIn the beginning, only "a few wealthy people" could afford cars. This does not seem like a very good argument against anything new.
- buttercraft 2y agoYeah, as if we're all going to be riding dire wolves and mammoths to work in a few years...
- MrBuddyCasino 2y agoWe'll perhaps visit them at the zoo.
- lolinder 2y agoOh, good, so when that happens they'll be making some flimsy claims about conservation and combating climate change to justify creating a poor imitation of Jurassic Park that wealthy and middle class people can visit.
- lukan 2y agoTrue philantropists it seems. (Never mind, that they never conserved anything)
- 2y ago
- silexia 2y agoFarmer here. The return of the regular wolf has been a tragedy of historic proportions. Wolves slaughter tons of livestock for fun. Farmers are not allowed to protect their herds at all. What will a dire wolf do to livestock if we bring them back? So dumb.
- gambiting 2y agoWhere is this? In US the deer herds have grown so much out of control that they are worse than biblical locust - they trample and eat everything they find because there is no natural control of their numbers, until they eat everything they can find and starve. At least in theory wolves are meant to thin out their numbers. >>hat will a dire wolf do to livestock if we bring them back? Is a dire wolf any worse than regular wolf here? >> Wolves slaughter tons of livestock for fun. Almost no predator slaughers their prey "for fun". Hunting has a massive cost to it - risk of death, injury and expenditure of energy always have to be balanced with the potential gains. Wolves hunt when they are hungry, not because they are bored.
- silexia 2y agoHunters are happy to take all the deer that they are legally allowed to. This is the fault of poor government management of hunting. Do some actual research on wolves. They will kill a dozen cows in a day in a pen and not eat any of it.
- gambiting 2y ago>>They will kill a dozen cows in a day in a pen and not eat any of it. To be honest with you - I don't even know where I'd begin to look for stats like these - have you got any links I could read? I was only really able to ask Gemini about it which seems to confirm that wolves generally don't kill animals for any reason other than sustenance but obviously LLM so I accept it might be fully wrong - https://g.co/gemini/share/e1ce79cd97de https://g.co/gemini/share/e1ce79cd97de
- glacier5674 2y ago[dead]
- ashenke 2y ago> "He explained that I was looking at a plan for a restored ecosystem. It was also a perfectly adapted money machine. There was a large area where the ancient elephants could graze, and this would be funded, in part, by carbon-offset payments from governments and corporations. The carbon value of a single elephant is about two million dollars, he told me. (An elephant increases biodiversity, in part, by spreading seeds in its dung and by crushing dense vegetation on forest floors, giving slow-growing trees the space to survive.) He added that the interesting educational opportunities and “sexiness factor” of Colossal’s creations would make its carbon credits “trade at a premium.”" So it's a startup, valued at 10 billion?! How exactly do they plan to make money? Seriously, could anything be more 21st-century? Resurrecting extinct animal species (ones that supposedly went extinct naturally, mind you, not because of humans – what's the point then?) just to reintroduce them into parks and sell carbon credits.
- vrosas 2y agoThe real prize is the technology and techniques to do this sort of stuff. CRISPR is a fascinating technology that we're just now seeing the benefits of[0] 0 - https://www.labiotech.eu/in-depth/crispr-technology-cure-disease/ https://www.labiotech.eu/in-depth/crispr-technology-cure-dis...
- jkmcf 2y agoI'm unsure we want or need a real Dire Wolf, but American Alsatians have been bred for a while: https://www.marvelousdogs.com/american-alsatian/ https://www.marvelousdogs.com/american-alsatian/
- quuxplusone 2y agoThank you; the opening paragraph of that article was fantastic. > American Alsatians were first bred to create a family friendly dog breed that looks like a dire wolf. (The dire wolf is an ancient North American wolf species that became extinct around 13,000 years ago.) This dog has all the benefits of looking like a dire wolf, but it is calm and gentle enough to be a great pet. They are an intelligent, loving and gentle family dog [...] "Has all the benefits of looking like a dire wolf" is a great phrase, and I think highly relevant to the OP article here and the disagreement I see in the HN comments between the people who think "the benefits of looking like a dire wolf" are self-evident and those who think they're non-existent. :)
- culi 1y ago"looking like a dire wolf" is exactly what Colossol has done. They just used CRISPR to modify some genes in a dog to give it traits of the dire wolf (white hair, large size, etc)
- keepamovin 2y agoSubscribe now to witness the rise of the Dire Wolves, step by primal step: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPX4tm-J2bU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPX4tm-J2bU Colossal has just released a 1970s style nature documentary about the Dire Wolf pups (now quite large)
- bookofjoe 2y agohttps://archive.ph/Iko9w https://archive.ph/Iko9w
- zombiwoof 2y agoWhat could go wrong
- droptablemain 2y agoBe neat if they opened a theme park on a remote island filled with de-extinct creatures.
- AdamJacobMuller 2y agoProbably should hire more than 1 IT person, and, don't skimp on the generators and battery backups for the electric fences.
- tcmart14 2y agoNow that is crazy talk! What do you think can possibly go wrong?
- culi 1y ago"de-extinct" is clickbait. They just used CRISPR to modify a few genes in a domestic dog
- archagon 2y agoWinter is coming.
- givemeethekeys 2y agoThe term "dire" in "direwolf" comes from the Latin word "dirus," which translates to "terrible" or "fearsome." This name reflects the wolf's large size and predatory nature, as well as its status as a formidable hunter during the Pleistocene era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_wolf
- Ericson2314 2y agoI think it's ethical, but I hate that it's fake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_wolf#DNA_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_wolf#DNA_evidence Look at this caldogram and text > The sequences indicate the dire wolf to be a highly divergent lineage which last shared a most recent common ancestor with the wolf-like canines 5.7 million years ago. The study also measured numerous dire wolf and gray wolf skeletal samples that showed their morphologies to be highly similar, which had led to the theory that the dire wolf and the gray wolf had a close evolutionary relationship. The morphological similarity between dire wolves and gray wolves was concluded to be due to convergent evolution. Members of the wolf-like canines are known to hybridize with each other but the study could find no indication of genetic admixture from the five dire wolf samples with extant North American gray wolves and coyotes nor their common ancestor. This finding indicates that the wolf and coyote lineages evolved in isolation from the dire wolf lineage. There are a lot of extant species that are as closely related as the wolf. Cheating based on phenotype sucks. We want real genetic diversity! Best case, the female wolves they just just made are suitable mothers for the next round of hybrids, so they converge over time.
- Ericson2314 2y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/science/colossal-dire-wolf-deextinction.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/science/colossal-dire-wol... This however disagreed with Wikipedia, and said there was some inbreeding. That helps make this less fake.
- LordDragonfang 2y agoDo you mean "interbreeding?" If so, I'd like to see the actual source for that claim.
- Ericson2314 2y agoYes I do mean interbreeding. The rest of the NYT article ought to cite the source. I can no longer read it so you better check yourself.
- whyenot 2y agoI wish people would focus more on increasing dog lifespans instead of stuff like this. How about a Bernese Mountain Dog that lives 15+ years instead of 7 years.
- 999900000999 2y agoWhy does this feel like they’ll eventually get to modifying humans and this is a first step. ‘Son, you weren’t an accident, you were custom designed to be smarter than Einstein, faster than Bolt, with musical attitude rivaling Mozart.’ Sounds like a dystopian nightmare waiting to happen. Ban it now.
- fragmede 2y agojust because a couple of writers wrote some sad stories?
- VerminOctopus1 2y agoThis is a marketing gimmick and a frankly fraudulent claim. They edited a few genes in a wolf genome and called it a job well done ready for marketing. However, this is not a true recapitulation of the ancient genome of the dire wolf, rather a crude attempt at it. I’m not impressed.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nikolay 2y agoMeanwhile, we can't even heal sinus infections. Watch the video [0]. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyz8qS6piQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyz8qS6piQY
- ineedasername 2y agoPer the original monster manual, it was never gone. I had to track down a source but it looks accurate. [1] Amazing that pearl clutching over D&D rule changes has now extended to New Yorker magazine. [1] http://realmsofauria.blogspot.com/2016/02/d-basic-monsters-dire-wolf.html?m=1 http://realmsofauria.blogspot.com/2016/02/d-basic-monsters-d... . . . /s
- forgetmunch 2y ago[flagged]