Game of Thrones fans have raved about the dire wolf since the show’s first episode, admiring the white canines for their nearly unnatural strength and ferocity.
The bad news for those wanting to meet one was that they were extinct, and had been for at least 10,000 years.
Until Monday—when a startup announced it had successfully brought back dire wolves and that they had three cubs to prove it and showcased them in a Time magazine photoshoot.
Colossal Biosciences, which ultimately wants to bring back wooly mammoths, revealed it had used DNA from a fossil skull to create the first dire wolves born since they became extinct.
Two males—named Romulus and Remus, for the mythical brothers suckled by a she-wolf before founding ancient Rome—were born six months ago and are now living on an undisclosed wildlife refuge. One more female, Khaleesi—named for a Game of Thrones wolf—was born January 30, along with a second female who was born in January but died 10 days later.
Colossal Bioscience’s scientists used DNA from a tooth found in Ohio and estimated to be 13,000 years old, and a 72,000-year old skull found in Idaho. They mapped the genome, rewrote gray wolf DNA, then implanted that DNA into genetically engineered dog embryos which they implanted in domestic dogs as surrogate mothers. It is based on the technique which produced Dolly, the first-ever cloned sheep.
It is the first species ever to be “de-extincted,” although some scientists argue that they way it was done mean it is technically not a resurrection.
Romulus and Remus now tip the scales at 80 pounds each but could grow up to 150 pounds, or more than three times the weight of an average pit bull. They are fed a diet of deer, horse meat, beef and puppy chow having been weaned at eight weeks from their dog mothers. They are 99 per cent genetically identical to gray wolves; among the tiny differences is their polar-bear like fur.
The dire wolf—dire is from the Latin word for “terrible,” a reference to their presume ferocity—once roamed America from South America to Canada and had been extinct since around 10,000 B.C., probably because their prey, which included small wooly mammoth, mastodons, giant ground sloths, American camels and ancient bison also became extinct at the end of the last Ice Age.
Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm defended the resurrection of the extinct species in an appearance on Monday’s edition of conservative commentator Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Rogan called it “real life Jurassic Park.” But Lamm said it was not about entertainment. “I was interested in synthetic biology,” he said. “This idea that we could engineer life. And that we could use AI to make it even better. How do we do directed evolution?”
Colossal hasn’t only experimented with dire wolves. The company, which was founded in 2021 and employs 130 scientists, wants to bring back the woolly mammoth, the dodo, and the Tasmanian Tiger, also known as the thylacine, which only became extinct in the 1930s. In March, Colossal made headlines for creating 36 woolly mice, including two named Chip and Dale, using genetic instructions from a mammoth.
“The only unintended consequence was that they were cute as f---,” said Lamm on Rogan’s podcast. “People lost their minds.”
The company’s investors include George R. R. Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones books, and Peter Jackson who directed Lord of the Rings. He allowed the company to photograph the wolves on the Game of Thrones throne that he had bought in an auction.
Scientific history is filled with examples of new species quickly becoming invasive. Native species can be totally destroyed, and instances of cloning has created defective and even painful issues in animals or the surrogate mother.
“There’s a risk of death. There’s a risk of side effects that are severe,” Robert Klitzman, director of the bioethics master’s program at Columbia University, told Time. “There’s a lot of suffering involved in that. There are going to be miscarriages.”
Others worry that the animals are now entering a world that is hardly natural for them. For wolves from a species which used to run free, even a wildlife preserve might feel like solitary confinement. And if the company brings back woolly mammoths, it could be even harder for them to adjust to the industrialized world.
Lamm said that the company is working to understand the ecological impact of their re-creations, which he called “speciation” and call it a “moral imperative” because of the danger under which many living species find themselves.
But they company has also faced backlash.
“When we started the business we didn’t have any scientists,” said Lamm. “They’re like, ‘this is tech bros wanting to see cool animals.‘” But Lamm defended the growth of his business, calling humans Earth’s “apex predator.”
“We inject our curiosity in choices every day,” he said. “We overfish the ocean, we over hunt something, in the case of the thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger), the Australian government put a bounty on its head and killed it off. Every time we cut down the rainforest, every time we drink hydrogenated water, we are playing God on some level. We humans are very good at changing the natural flow of things.”
