No question, the dire wolves born by Colossal Biosciences are super-cute and growing into stately animals. But some experts question whether they are dire wolves or should have been born at all.
Dire wolf brought back after extinction raises ethical questions
Questions about animal welfare and allocation of resources rise after a company revives the dire wolf.
Just more than a week has gone by since Colossal Biosciences, the company seeking to bring back the woolly mammoth, revealed it had produced three live dire wolves puppies – Remus, Romulus and Khaleesi – resurrecting a species that died out as many as 13,000 years ago.
The Dallas-based biotech firm has reveled in compliments and been hit with criticism over the “de-extinction” of the dire wolf. And there’s been a lot of questions, too.
The Colossal team posted a preliminary preprint paper on April 11, compiling their dire wolf ancient DNA findings and history of the animal and submitted a similar paper for academic peer review, a process that can take many months.
The research paper details how the researchers spent more than a year to “decode the dire wolf’s evolutionary history,” Colossal said in a statement. “We generated high-quality ancient genomes from dire wolves that lived 13,000 and 72,000 years ago. Our analyses show that dire wolves interbred extensively with the lineage that ultimately evolved into gray wolves, suggesting that dire wolves and gray wolves are much more closely related than previously thought.”
Dire wolves were originally thought to have more likely been relatives of jackals. But Colossal’s findings suggest the dire wolf goes back about 4.5 million years ago with ancestors including a mix of South American canids (the family of mammals such as wolfs and dogs) and a prehistoric wolf that eventually gave rise to gray wolves, dogs, coyotes, and dholes, Colossal’s chief science officer Beth Shapiro told USA TODAY.
But there’s still plenty of questions being asked of Colossal. Here’s a few.
Why is Colossal attempting to bring back extinct species?
Colossal has said their vision of restoring the woolly mammoth would not only prove that a massive extinct animal can be brought back but that the mammoth, if it could be reinserted into the Arctic region, would improve the ecosystem and help combat global warming.
At the same time, research on de-extinction can also be used to protect endangered species from going extinct, in the case of the mammoth, the research can help protect endangered elephants, the company says. “To have a real proof point that there is technology today that could be fundamentally changing to that fight against biodiversity losses is incredible,” Matt James, chief animal officer at Colossal, told USA TODAY earlier this month.
Colossal also produced two litters of Red Wolf puppies; the Red Wolf is an endangered species here in the U.S.
What about the unintended consequences?
“We’re messing with nature. We’re genetically engineering these wolves,” said Dr. Robert Klitzman, director of the Masters of Bioethics at Columbia University and author of “Am I My Genes? Confronting Fate and Other Genetic Journeys, echoing concerns of some experts while speaking April 12 on CNN. “If we start tinkering with genes, there may be unexpected problems.”
Colossal’s Shapiro counters in an email exchange with USA TODAY. “Any new technologies carry some risk of unintended consequences – biotechnologies are not unique in this way,” she said. “For each of our de-extinct species, we are working with partners to evaluate these risks and develop detailed plans for both expected outcomes and for how to mobilize if something unanticipated occurs. Importantly, we have to remember that there is tremendous risk in being too scared of these tools to explore what benefits they can bring. Doing nothing is also a decision with consequence, and that consequence is that we will continue to lose the battle against extinction.”
Why is Colossal calling these dire wolves, when they are not?
Since Colossal’s announcement, many scientists have disagreed with the company’s description of the pups as de-extincted dire wolves, instead calling them “genetically modified gray wolves,” according to fact-checking site Snopes.com.
The pups “are better understood as slightly-modified gray wolves rather than true dire wolves,” according to National Geographic.
Colossal used a gray wolf genome – which is 99.5% identical to the dire wolf genomes – and edited the genome to make it even more similar to the extinct dire wolf, altering their size and musculature, as well as the color of their coats, Shapiro said. So the dire wolves born by Colossal share 99.5% of the same genetics as the original dire wolf.
Whether you consider the pups as dire wolves “depends on whom you ask,” Snopes.com said. “Either way, Colossal was able to achieve an impressive scientific feat: It extracted DNA from dire wolf fossils, then used that information to edit genes in gray wolf embryos so the pups would more closely resemble dire wolves.”
Colossal pushed back on the criticism. “Why is the scientific community wasting time bickering about species concepts rather than celebrating this monumental achievement and its implications? It’s obvious most critics would rather complain than contribute,” the company said in a statement. “Through our dire wolf and woolly mouse announcements, Colossal has generated more attention and funding for conservation than anyone has in decades. That’s the kind of ‘insanity’ the world needs.”
What is the next extinct species Colossal is going to resurrect?
Colossal has set a timeline of having a mammoth calf born in 2028, and “that deadline is highly likely,” the company said in a statement. Research on the Australian thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), driven to extinction less than a century ago, is ahead of schedule. And Colossal is also attempting to bring back the dodo, which went extinct more than 300 years ago.
Mike Snider is a reporter on USA TODAY’s Trending team. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com
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