A group of scientists claims to have brought back to life a species of wolf that went extinct more than 10,000 years ago – but is it true?
Here’s all we know about the three pups created by Colossal Biosciences, a genetic engineering company which claims to have “de-extincted” the dire wolf.
What does Colossal say?
On Monday, Colossal posted a clip showing two of the pups, named Romulus and Remus (after the mythical founders of Rome who, as legend has it, were brought up by a wolf), howling.
“Sound on”, the enthusiastic post on X reads. “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.”
Another pup, named Khaleesi after the character in Game of Thrones, was born on 31 January this year.
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Colossal are the same company that created woolly mice in their quest to revive the woolly mammoth, and their goal is to fix extinction by “combining the science of genetics with the business of discovery”.
In the X post, Colossal explained how the pups were “brought back from extinction” using genetic edits which came from a complete dire wolf genome which was “meticulously reconstructed” from ancient DNA found in fossils of a 13,000-year-old tooth from Ohio and a 72,000-year-old inner ear bone from Idaho.
Grey wolves were chosen as the donor species for establishing cell lines as they are the closest living relative of dire wolves.
The company edited grey wolf DNA in 20 places over 14 genes to bring about specific changes like a lighter coloured coat, hair length, patterning, as well as body size and musculature.
Fertilised eggs were then implanted into surrogate dogs. So the pups look and maybe sound like dire wolves, but they are not a complete genetic match.
The research has other limitations. The wolves won’t learn to live in the wild. Beth Shapiro, the chief scientific officer of Colossal, said while she would “love to know the natural behaviour of a dire wolf,” the pups are “essentially living the Ritz Carlton lifestyle of a wolf.
“They can’t get a splinter without us knowing about it,” the New York Times quoted her as saying.
What do other scientists say?
Adam Boyko, a geneticist at Cornell University who was not involved in the project, told the New York Times: “It’s exciting that we can make functional versions of extinct species.”
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But he claimed the pups can’t truly be dire wolves as they are not being brought up in dire-wolf packs where they would learn their behaviour.
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And while the dire-wolf genes being carried by the pups could shed some light on the biology of the extinct species, Dr Boyko suggested there are many other genes which may have contributed to making dire wolves distinct from other wolves.
“We don’t know what that number is,” he said. “It could be 20, or it could be 2,000.”
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The New Scientist also looked at Colossal’s claim of having recreated dire wolves and weren’t entirely convinced.
In an article entitled “No the dire wolf has not been brought back from extinction” they noted Dr Shapiro’s claim grey wolves and dire wolves share 99.5 per cent of their DNA, but “since the grey wolf genome is around 2.4 billion base pairs long, that still leaves room for millions of base-pairs of differences”.
Given that there were only 20 gene edits it’s not close to having the genetic make up of the dire wolf. But as Colossal’s Beth Shapiro told the magazine: “if they look like this animal, then they are the animal.”
