Colossal Biosciences recreated Dire Wolves

Romulus and Remus do the same things that puppies do: chase, fight, bite, sniff. But there’s something very unpuppy about the snow-white 6-month-olds — for starters, their size. At their young age, they already measure nearly 4 feet long, tip the scales at 80 pounds, and can grow to be as tall as 6 feet and 150 pounds, Time has reported. Then there’s their behavior: The angelic activity that puppies display in the presence of humans — trotting up for a hug, a belly rub, a kiss — is completely absent. They keep their distance, backing away when a human approaches. Even one of the caretakers who raised them since birth can only get so close before Romulus and Remus flinch and back away.

This is not the behavior of domestic dogs, this is the behavior of a wild wolf: the puppies are wolves. Not only that, they are dire wolves, which means they have reasons to be lonely. The dire wolf once roamed the American range, which stretched as far south as Venezuela and as far north as Canada, but not a single wolf has been seen in over 10,000 years, when the species went extinct. However, many gruesome wolf remains have been discovered in America, and this has provided an opportunity for a company called Colossal Biosciences.

Woolly Mammoth, Dodo, and Thylacine

Relying on clever genetic engineering and ancient DNA, Colossal scientists decoded the dire wolf genome, rewrote the genetic code of the common gray wolf to match it, and, using domestic dogs as surrogate mothers, brought Romulus, Remus, and their sister, 2-month-old Khaleesi, into the world in three separate births last fall and this winter—in effect, the first time that a line of animals whose living gene pool is long gone is extinct. The dire wolf is not the only animal that Colossal, founded in 2021 and now employing 130 scientists, wants to bring back. Also on the wish list to stop extinction are the woolly mammoth, the dodo, and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger.

Back in March, the company surprised the scientific community with the news that it had copied the DNA of a woolly mammoth to create a woolly mouse, a bizarre creature with long golden fur and the accelerated metabolism of a mammoth’s fat. If this all sounds like PT Barnum, the company has the answer. Colossal claims that the same techniques it uses to restore species from the dead could prevent the extinction of existing animals that are threatened with extinction. They say that what they learned from restoring the mammoth could help them create stronger elephants that can better survive the devastating effects of climate warming. Bring back the thylacine, and you could help save a related marsupial known as the quoll. The techniques learned to restore the dire wolf could also be used to support the endangered red wolf.

Center for Biological Diversity

“We are an evolutionary force right now,” says Beth Shapiro, Colossal’s chief scientist, speaking of humanity as a whole. “We are deciding what the future of these species will be.” The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that 30 percent of the planet’s genetic diversity will be lost by 2050, and Shapiro and Colossal CEO Ben Lamm insist that genetic engineering is a vital tool to change that. Corporate leaders often see technology not simply as a moral good but as a moral imperative—a way for humans, who have driven so many species to the brink of extinction, to reconcile with nature. The woolly mouse, to a lesser extent, and the dire wolf, in a seismic scientific sense, are the first steps in that direction.

But not everyone agrees. Scientific history is replete with examples of newly introduced species becoming invasive species—the doctrine of the unintended consequences of human bites when we play too sweetly with other animals. An exotic pet escapes and multiplies, wiping out native species. A frog introduced to kill beetles ends up killing the marsupials that eat the frogs. And genetic engineering is still in its infancy. Nearly 30 years after the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the technology still causes problems in cloned animals, such as large birth sizes, organ defects, premature aging, and immune system problems. Moreover, cloning can be difficult for the surrogate mother carrying the cloned embryo.