The startup that cried dire wolf
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What were direwolves and when did they go extinct?
Direwolves, not just a thing from Game of Thrones, not just Jon Snow's best friend. Direwolves walked the Americas for millennia, up until about 14,000 years ago when maybe their primary food source dried up or humans hunted them to extinction, no one was taking notes. But we know they were a bit bigger than gray wolves, they ate a lot of meat, and their bite could crush bones.
Has the startup Colossal really brought direwolves back from extinction?
And now we know that apparently direwolves are back A startup called Colossal says they've brought these pups back from extinction. They say they've got three of them, but are these direwolves they brought back actually direwolves? And whether they are or aren't, should we be trying to bring direwolves back? Like, why? We are going to ask on Today Explained.
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This is Today Explained.
Not a lot of people have seen these direwolves that have come back from extinction up close and personal. Like DT Maxx from The New Yorker is one of the few who has.
Okay, so first of all, we just got to get this out there. We either have to put direwolves in quotes or we have to give them a name. Like, I don't know, we could do anything like... How about Diet Direwolves? Yes, exactly. These so-called direwolves were created by extracting DNA from a 72,000-year-old direwolf inner ear bone and a 13,000-year-old direwolf tooth.
They determined its closest living relative is the gray wolf, so then they made 20 edits to gray wolf DNA to include those direwolf-specific genes.
That animal looks like a direwolf, it will behave like a direwolf, and it is a direwolf.
This is insane, actually. These are not direwolves by any definition.
But the other point is it doesn't really matter when you're seeing them because, you know, you're seeing something, you know, that's absolutely amazing. I mean, you're seeing something that, so there's two bright white wolves. I did not see them where they live. I saw them where they were brought to be seen, which was far, far away.
And you can't tell us where that was, but it's somewhere in the northern United States, I've read. Yeah.
Who are the key people behind Colossal and the de-extinction effort?
Yeah, I do hold bigger secrets as a journalist, but I'm not supposed to tell you where. But so what happens, okay, so first of all, I see a couple of people I know from the reporting on the piece. I see George Church, who looks as much like Gandalf as any human being on this planet who holds tenure. And I also see Ben Lamb, the guy who founded the project, looks a lot like, it's Johnny Snow, right? Yeah. The point is, like, it's the perfect setup. And then there are these two bright white teenage wolves. So, you know, even any wolf is impressive. So it's not... I mean, I have actually seen wolves before for another article, strangely enough.
How did Colossal genetically engineer the so-called direwolves?
So a wolf carries its own weird kind of authority with it. But these, they do look different. And again, I'm not an animal morphologist. So, you know, I've been told pale, but they're white. And they're... They're like celebrities. I mean, there's no other way, you know, there's no other way to describe it that they're delightfully, blissfully heedless of how much like money and effort has gone into the creation of them. They're basically, you know, they're in this enclosure. They're doing little things wolves do and dogs sometimes do. One pees, the other rolls in it. But, you know, they're majestic.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What were direwolves and when did they go extinct?
0:03–0:28
2
Has the startup Colossal really brought direwolves back from extinction?
0:28–3:33
3
Who are the key people behind Colossal and the de-extinction effort?
3:33–4:13
4
How did Colossal genetically engineer the so-called direwolves?
4:13–4:52
5
What is the scientific and ethical debate about calling these animals direwolves?
4:52–9:30
6
How much funding has Colossal raised and what is their business model?
9:30–11:07
7
How difficult is it to resurrect extinct species like the direwolf?
11:07–17:04
8
What will happen to the revived direwolves and can they be reintroduced into the wild?
17:04–26:42