A bit more on Colossal, the company who claimed to have "brought back the dire wolf". they are claiming the patents on the animals they de-extinct, so even if they actually do bring back the mammoth, they will all belong to Colossal.
They have not resuscitated the dire wolf.
// Article in French //
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Ils n’ont pas ressuscité le loup sinistre.
I feel like being told by #indigenous Elders it would be nice if they could bring back the #bison , but then deciding dire wolves are a better choice is totally missing the point of their self-stated mission. I’d don’t think we can really call dire wolves a keystone species. https://www.thefp.com/p/is-dire-wolf-real-colossal-deextinction #direwolf #genetics #geneediting
Hey Everyone:
They didn't resurrect the dire wolf. They altered a grey wolf to look like what they thought a dire wolf looked like.
Stop spreading this bullshit story, please. Thanks.
#deExtinction: "The American company #Colossal changed only 14 genes to produce its cute "#direwolf" puppies. Curiously, all 14 are genes with effects on the appearance of animals, being linked to the colour, thickness and length of the fur and the size of the animals.
Is #resurrecting a species now just #cosplaying an extinct animal with a current species? To top it off, George R.R. Martin himself - yes, the author of #GameofThrones - signs the scientific article as well. And he is an investor in the company. He compared the feat to a form of "magic". Only if it's to magically fatten his bank account even more."
I've found all the discourse about Colossal Biosciences "Dire wolf" announcement very annoying, because it seems like a lot of the exchanges have been between a bunch of pedantic nerds and what is probbaly Colossal's marketing/public-outreach department.
Honestly, I think both camps are wrong in their own way, and it's turning into more of a shouting match than anything.
The core problem is that there are many different definitions of species, none of which are perfect, and almost all of them cease to be meaningful in cases where horizontal gene transfer occurs.
• „Erleichterter Abschuss: Schutzstatus soll herabgestuft werden – Bundesrat befasst sich mit Jagd auf Wölfe“
• „Vor 13.000 Jahren ausgestorben: US-Genetiker bringen Schattenwolf zurück“
#biodiversity #artenschutz #direwolf #schwarwel
There's a whole lot of debate around the whole #DireWolf thing, but it neither meaningfully affects me nor can I meaningfully affect it, so I've just decided to go "Oh, dire wolf DNA. Neat." and leave it at that.
In this world, there's enough ticking me off without adding yet another hill to die on.
I'll answer myself: te dire wolf thing was some disappointing bullshit.
Serves me right for doubting myself and for having hope.
Useless trivia I recently stumbled upon:
Gil Gerard, who played Buck Rogers circa 1980, was in a 2009 film named Dire Wolf.
Game of #clones: Colossal’s new #wolves are cute, but are they dire?
#ColossaBiosciences claims it has revived an #extinct species, but scientists outside the company are skeptical.
It’s making a bold new claim—that it has actually “de-extincted” an animal called the #direwolf. Inside a preserve roam three striking snow-white wolves—which a startup called Colossal Biosciences says are members of a species that went extinct 13,000 years ago, now reborn via #biotechnology.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/08/1114371/game-of-clones-colossals-new-wolves-are-cute-but-are-they-dire/
From "artificial intelligence" to "de-extinction", stop automatically believing what corporate marketers try to sell you.
