No, the Dire Wolf Has Not Been Brought Back From Extinction (newscientist.com)
- Reference: 0176959067
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/04/08/0215244/no-the-dire-wolf-has-not-been-brought-back-from-extinction
- Source link: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2475407-no-the-dire-wolf-has-not-been-brought-back-from-extinction/
Beth Shapiro of Colossal told New Scientist that just 15 modifications were based on dire wolf DNA, primarily targeting size, musculature and ear shape. Five other changes involve mutations known to produce light coats in grey wolves. A 2021 DNA study revealed dire wolves and grey wolves last shared a common ancestor about 6 million years ago, with jackals and African wild dogs more closely related to grey wolves.
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2475407-no-the-dire-wolf-has-not-been-brought-back-from-extinction/
Re: in other words (Score:2)
A movie fetish? I'd have thought furry myself...
great idea (Score:5, Interesting)
We barely understand the environment enough to safely bring back animals that went extinct in the past 250 years. Why would it be a good idea to bring back a super-predator that would outcompete the closest relatives, and decimate all their prey (and all kinds of other fun new things they will decide to eat)?
That sounds stupid.
Why did they pick this one? Because they can't actually do it. But it is relatively easy to make a few edits, creating a new breed of wolf that is somewhat larger than the existing ones. (Still not a benefit;) And because they can make the color of its coat look more similar to the extinct one (but still not the same). And the result is a non-beneficial breed, fraudulently advertised as bringing back an extinct species. For the purpose of showing the company can DO something/anythiing, so it can GET MORE FUNDING.
However, they have already thoroughly illustrated that they do not have any motivation for planetary benefit, that they will act against us, that they are irresponsible, and that they are money-grubbing liars. Who have access to standard gene editing technology (CRISPR I presume).
Yay.
Re: (Score:2)
The answer is simple: The dire wolf is probably actually an inferior predator than the modern wolf. It might be bigger, but not better.
Selective breeding (Score:3, Interesting)
Oddly, how the centuries of selectively breeding domesticated animals is never discussed as possibly harmful to the ecosystem.
[1]https://wildlife.org/australia... [wildlife.org]
Australia uses poison sausages to tackle feral cat problem -- April 29, 2019 by The Wildlife Society
Australia has eliminated an estimated 211,560 feral cats since it decided in 2015 to kill 2 million of them by 2020. The cats prey on threatened rodent and marsupial species native to the country. As part of their effort to eradicate the cats, wildlife
[1] https://wildlife.org/australia-uses-poison-sausages-to-tackle-feral-cat-problem/
Re: (Score:3)
If you never see it discussed, then you are selective in your reading.
OTOH, domesticated animals and plants have LOTS of defenders. Many more, and better funded, than do the defenders of the wild, and those are more numerous than the defenders of genetically modified innovations. (Not necessarily better funded, though.)
Re:great idea (Score:4, Funny)
I'm guessing it's due to them being featured on Game of Thrones, a show about medieval toiletry.
Re: (Score:3)
It's virtually guaranteed their wolf won't act like a Dire wolf. What's suspicious is that it only took 15 gene edits -- that strongly points to them matching on a few phenotypic features. For reference two random humans have single digit millions difference in their DNA (granted maybe only a few thousand or less actually make a difference). Anyway, this is the genetic engineering equivalent of a brunette dying her hair and claiming to be a blonde. Or a chick wearing makeup and claiming that's her face. You
Re:great idea (Score:4, Interesting)
It's more than that. Behavior is not necessarily in the genome. Wolves in particular have a culture to them; they grow up in packs and are trained. That culture, like human cultures, is byproduct of their environment. DNA is not the code of life the way it's been discussed, it's simply an important, but not the only, piece in a vast puzzle that makes up living organisms.
Dire wolves existed at a period in time when the environment supported it. Climate change (mostly the ice age ending) led to the extinction of various forms of megafauna like the [1]wooly mammoth [colossal.com] (which Colossal also aims to bring back), which led to the extinction of their species. They fit within an ecological niche for the environment at the time, and they're gone because that environment is now gone too. Bringing them back won't change that; dire wolves and wooly mammoths cannot survive today not because of their genomes but because the global environment doesn't support megafauna any more.
But also, understand what Colossal Biosciences actually is. It's a story. It makes cool sense to "bring back wooly mammoths". It's better than "bringing back dinosaurs" because those creatures are closer to our own time and Jurassic Park put the kibosh on that. As you correctly pointed out, these aren't dire wolves, they're grey wolves with a few gene edits; we're genetically closer to bananas than these things are to true dire wolves. That's not the point. The point is the story, which helps them raise money, do cool science, and develop tools around life science that they then [2]spin out to create new businesses [businesswire.com], and make [3]educational videos [youtube.com] about ecological preservation. It's not a bad idea overall, but they do misrepresent what they're doing for the sake of the story and sound like [4]hippy idiots [cbr.com] to make the emotional play on what they're doing.
It's a weird company.
[1] https://colossal.com/mammoth/
[2] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220927005221/en/Colossal-Biosciences-Spins-Out-Form-Bio-to-Revolutionize-Computational-Life-Sciences
[3] https://www.youtube.com/@itiscolossal/videos
[4] https://www.cbr.com/ben-lamm-dire-wolf-interview/
Re: (Score:3)
> Climate change (mostly the ice age ending) led to the extinction of various forms of megafauna like the [1]wooly mammoth [colossal.com] (which Colossal also aims to bring back), which led to the extinction of their species.
That's a weird way to spell [2]"Humans murdered the shit out of megafauna more and more efficiently as they moved to areas where local megafauna didn't have time to evolve even behavioral defenses against human predation." [ourworldindata.org] Climate change moved roughly in sync across the globe, human arrival did not, and guess which one is more tightly correlated with mass extinctions selectively targeting megafauna?
[1] https://colossal.com/mammoth/
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but the claim "we're genetically closer to bananas than these things are to true dire wolves." is just bonkers, and detracts from the rest of your argument. We aren't even closer to dire wolves than these things are. They're probably about as close to dire wolves as we are to, oh, orangutans.
Re: (Score:2)
> them matching on a few phenotypic features
If that.
Given that we don't exactly have HD videos from 12,000 BC what they're doing is at best making guesses at what might be a few phenotypic features.
Re: (Score:2)
Do we have any DNA samples? (We might well, but I don't know.)
Re: (Score:2)
12,000 years ago is close enough that we do stumble across remains in arctic areas that have some degree of preservation.
Re: (Score:2)
The focus is on Woolly Mammoth, and apparently it does have ecological benefit. Along the way there will be some woolly mice (and dire wolves I guess?) because gestating a mammoth takes 2 years and is rather expensive. It's an interesting project.
Re: (Score:2)
Mammoths *might* be reasonable...but not woolly ones. Even so I doubt there's any place they could live. It would probably be more reasonable to modify some elephants to have the desired characteristics, and not pretend that you're "bringing back the mammoth".
Re: (Score:1)
Relax, these aren't actual Dire Wolves. They're designer gray wolves, and will probably be available to buy as status symbols for the super-rich before much longer.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm holding out for a [1]tiger with wicked-long ears [google.com].
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=watchmen+ozymandias+cat
Re: (Score:2)
> Relax, these aren't actual Dire Wolves. They're designer gray wolves, and will probably be available to buy as status symbols for the super-rich before much longer.
Honestly? I figured that was the entire purpose of their Dire Wolf focus. Lots of people liked the Dire Wolves in the books. The show pretty much ruined the whole point of the Dire Wolves, but people still liked the little they showed of them. Of course some ultra-wealthy person out there is going to want to have one or more, perhaps one for each of their children, and the runt of the litter for their step-kid. I expect we'll be seeing them featured in red carpet events as "service animals for the ultra-eli
Re: (Score:2)
The evolutionary process doesn't really think things through and is to a high degree a bunch of random genetic modifications where it doesn't understand the outcome. What's the difference?
BRING BACK HONEST POLITICIANS (Score:1, Flamebait)
If they can bring back direwolves, wolly mammoths, and other extinct species...
BRING BACK HONEST POLITICIANS.
Oh wait. Trump fired all the scientists. Because they could "do science".
If only they could "do math".
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=_FJgcocQ7ng
Re: (Score:2)
What honest politicians?
Re: BRING BACK HONEST POLITICIANS (Score:2)
I think he means the ones that would say they would help the people that vote for them and then tried but couldn't do it all for legitimate reasons. As opposed to Trump, who tells his followers he will make the world better for them and then starts to fire them and raise prices on them so his friends don't have to pay taxes.
Re: (Score:1)
Well, the taxpayers pay $400,000 per year for Donald, for a total of 1.6 million.
His friends paid several times that in campaign contributions. So basically, everyone gets what they paid for.
Re: BRING BACK HONEST POLITICIANS (Score:2)
How does higher prices for gas, cars, houses, rent, utilities, groceries, basically everything come to 400k? Also how do you even put a value on cutting down hundreds of years old trees to turn into lumber?
Re: (Score:2)
Bernie Sanders.
Re: (Score:2)
Have those ever existed?
Remember that history is written to tell the story that those who hold power want to be told. It's only when it's no longer (obviously) relevant that historians tell the truth...and by then they're relying on records that were written when it was relevant.
Hint: There never was a "golden age" in the past. Not for most of the people. (Well, there are arguments the most of the time in pre-agricultural groups it was better for most people...but don't be too sure about that. There's
I have a bad feeling about this (Score:1)
I think these people are so preoccupied with whether they could bring back Dire Wolves that they didn't stop to think about whether they should.
Frog DNA sequences (Score:2)
Just so long they didn't fill gaps with frog DNA sequences.
The summary is factually incorrect. (Score:2)
The company took grey wolf DNA and edited it to be *genetically identical* to dire wolves.
Trying to claim that "these aren't real dire wolves" because the DNA was edited instead of natural is like opening a Ship Of Theseus debate. It's not relevant outside of philosophy.
If they allow these wolves to breed - which they plan to - the next generation will be 100% dire wolf.
Re: (Score:3)
> The company took grey wolf DNA and edited it to be *genetically identical* to dire wolves.
There are many thousands of important differences and far more less important ones and they only changed a handful, not even 100. So these are really about 15/7843rds dire wolf or something. Not zero, but closer to that than 1 if you must be binary.
> If they allow these wolves to breed - which they plan to - the next generation will be 100% dire wolf.
The result will likely be more grey wolf than the parents because of how genetics work, probably not a pure grey wolf, but that’s somewhat plausible because they added so few genes and selection at fertilization is quite random.
Tech bro scientists (Score:2)
I hate these headlines saying "scientists say they brought back dire wolf" (see wired). This is giving science such a bad name. this is a PR stunt by a startup that obviously has no morals or integrity.
please don't murder me (Score:2)
The wolf came in, I got my cards
We sat down for a game
I cut my deck to the queen of spades
But the cards were all the same