Genetic Scientists Mix Dire Wolf and Grey Wolf Genes, Producing Ethics Debates
Romulus and Remus become a social media sensation, as fans enjoy the “Game of Thrones” connection.
The last time I reported on the scientists at Colossal Biosciences, they had have created a genetically engineered mouse dubbed the “woolly mouse” as a step towards their goal of resurrecting the woolly mammoth.
The end product of their work was a new breed of mouse exhibiting several mammoth-like traits.
Now, the team has done something that I would have thought impossible: Using genetic technology to revive an animal even cuter….the dire wolf.
SOUND ON. You’re hearing the first howl of a dire wolf in over 10,000 years. Meet Romulus and Remus—the world’s first de-extinct animals, born on October 1, 2024.
The dire wolf has been extinct for over 10,000 years. These two wolves were brought back from extinction using… pic.twitter.com/wY4rdOVFRH
— Colossal Biosciences® (@colossal) April 7, 2025
As with the mice, Colossal Biosciences used genetic engineering to recreate traits of the extinct dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus). Two genetically modified gray wolves, named Romulus and Remus, after the mythological twins, were born in October 2024.
These wolves were engineered using CRISPR technology to incorporate 20 genetic edits that mimic dire wolf characteristics, such as larger size, stronger jaws, broader heads, white coats, and unique vocalizations.
The dire wolf once roamed an American range that extended as far south as Venezuela and as far north as Canada, but not a single one has been seen in over 10,000 years, when the species went extinct. Plenty of dire wolf remains have been discovered across the Americas, however, and that presented an opportunity for a company named Colossal Biosciences.
Relying on deft genetic engineering and ancient, preserved DNA, Colossal scientists deciphered 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 during three separate births last fall and this winter—effectively for the first time de-extincting a line of beasts whose live gene pool long ago vanished. TIME met the males (Khaleesi was not present due to her young age) at a fenced field in a U.S. wildlife facility on March 24, on the condition that their location remain a secret to protect the animals from prying eyes.
And while the company may be keeping the puppies hidden from the public, Romulus and Remus have become a media sensation. Part of the excitement is based on the dire wolves being a key feature of the popular HBO series, Game of Thrones. Colossal Biosciences is claiming a “de-extinction” success, and plans now include reviving a red wolf species.
They are big, for one thing, and have dense, pale coats not found in gray wolves. Colossal, which was valued at $10 billion in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern United States.
Beth Shapiro, the chief scientific officer of Colossal, described the wolf pups as the first successful case of de-extinction. “We’re creating these functional copies of something that used to be alive,” she said in an interview.
The animals will remain in captivity. But the technology that the company has developed could potentially help conserve species that have not yet gone extinct, such as the critically endangered red wolf, which is largely limited to North Carolina.
In 2022, red wolf-coyote hybrids were discovered in Texas and Louisiana. On Monday, Colossal also announced that it had produced four clones from the hybrids. Hypothetically, introducing these clones to North Carolina could improve the genetic diversity of the red wolf population there and help the species avoid extinction.
Interestingly, the author of Game of Thrones is an investor in the company.
Dire wolves have been brought back from extinction by genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences.
George R.R. Martin is a Colossal Biosciences cultural advisor and investor, while Peter Jackson loaned his Iron Throne prop for a photoshoot.
(https://t.co/HR2nCmIByx) pic.twitter.com/u9RcLFhcwU
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) April 7, 2025
And while the puppies are certainly cute, the branding of this as a “de-exctinction” is questionable.
This is misleading and harmful. Dire wolves are not back from extinction. Dire wolf DNA is not in this wolf. They only altered its DNA to express phenotypes that are like that of a dire wolf. It’s like modifying an elephant to be very hairy and claiming the mammoth is unextinct https://t.co/ouuASM6xLo
— Immanuel Ethics Kant (@ManuelEthicKant) April 7, 2025
There are other ethical considerations as well. Dire wolves were specialized predators that primarily hunted large herbivores such as bison, horses, and camels. Many of these megafaunal species either went extinct or experienced significant population declines at the end of the last Ice Age, likely due to climate change and super-charged human hunting abilities (especially when they paired up with regular dogs).
The only way these dire wolves become a revived species is
1) The entire genetic sequence is from actual dire wolves;
2) The breed on their own; and,
3) They can thrive in the wild.
I do not see this happening anytime soon.
Currently, as cute as Romulus and Remus are, they are a novelty and a species confined to zoological enclosures. But the howl is so precious.
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Comments
Don’t murder me
I beg of you don’t murder meThe 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
Elon: Next I’m going to buy Dead & Co. and replace John Mayer with Billy Strings…. 🙂
When I awoke the Dire Wolf…six hundred pounds of sin; Was grinning at my window, all I said was “Come On In!”
Don’t murder me.
Now dadblame it…I want to pick up my Takamine and play but the dire wolf showed up after 40 years of picking and grinning. I had met the dire wolf 27 years ago and we played a game of cards. He showed up to collect in the form of a stroke that froze my left hand.
Yes, he did indeed murder me.
“You’ll train them yourselves, you’ll feed them yourselves and if they die, you’ll bury them yourselves.” Eddard Stark
I read on X, “We got actual Dire Wolves before we got ‘The Winds of Winter‘” IYKYK.
In any event, I agree with the Xeet above, these really aren’t dire dolves. And yes, it’s impossible to overstate how gigantic this can of worms is…and this says nothing about the potential adverse impact on the animal’s health by editing significant portions of its genome. And, it’s being done for purely cosmetic reasons. This obviously isn’t going to end well.
Dire Wolves eat large herbivores. I demand they be released into PETA backyards immediately, where they can feed on the vegans first.
OK, but can’t we release them in DC first?
Wherever backyards occur!
Now, what eats Turtles?
Shredder
While I agree that three individuals is still functionally extinct, I see that the de-extinction goalposts are already being fitted with wheels for moving.
Why do they need to be released into the wild? Their ecological niche is missing. “Alive in captivity” is a valid non-extinct state.
Maxim 14 : “Mad Science” means never stopping to ask “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
If it can be done, it must be done!
that mimic dire wolf characteristics,
This. They are mimics, at the moment. However, if you can duplicate the entire DNA and stick it into an egg… I presume you can try to grow the full real thing.
Has anyone asked Colossal if they watched the movie Jurassic Park and whether they understand it as a how-to or a warning?
And, of course, this demands the Malcolm quote:
“…your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
I am ok with this, though, on one condition: <em?they only be released in really large cities and places like DC. Sure some will escape those areas, but the rest of the country can handle them. But definitely in places with atrocious anti-gun and anti-self-defense laws.
This is so ridiculous outside my understanding of genetics. But, I read a lengthy X-thread that explained why that is thought to be impossible with current technology. We simply can’t recreate an embryo from genetic material collected from sample tissue. A few years ago, there were synthetic human embryos (good grief) that were created using stem cells. Absent the availability of those stem cells, those synthetic embryos couldn’t be replicated, at least not now. Additionally, one complicating problem they have with dire wolves specifically is modern wolves and dire wolves are surprisingly dissimilar, genetically. While they have a common ancestor, that ancestor itself went extinct tens of millions of years ago. Contemporary grey wolves are more genetically similar to domestic and wild dogs than they are to dire wolves, which I thought was surprising.
This is the classic ship of Theseus dilemma, how much can be substituted and not be that which is proclaimed. Do they need 100 %, 95% DNA or what to be a
“true ” dire wolf? Is this a new species of animal, a grey wolf/dire wolf/hound(surrogate mother) hybrid perhaps?
I can hardly wait to be the first kid on the block to grow tusks and a tail!
There are easier ways to get people to nickname you Porky.
My Australian Shepard dog, sleeping on the couch next to me, heard the video of these howling pups playing and immediately woke up, ran over to me and tilted his head staring at the computer screen.
Do you suppose something ancient and primal alerted him, or was this just artificial intelligence of another kind intruding on his dreams?
Animals are very keen on their hearing. I would imagine novelty alone of the subtle differences in the tones of the howl piqued his curiosity. However, there could certainly be more as you suggest.
well hollywood gets to reproduce
why not these animals
Dire wolves, an apex predator of their time, went extinct because they HAD to. There were sound ecological reasons why these late Pleistocene wolves could no longer survive.
Ever since we’ve been told the popularized myth of the end of the passenger pigeon, extinction has been viewed by the gullible as being almost as bad as racism, leading to this “wouldn’t it be cool if…?” brand of genetic science.
I suspect they went extinct because they used gas stoves.
If they didn’t want them to die, they shouldn’t have called them dier.
We can start walling off the worst cities and study what makes Dire such great predators. This is one case where there should be no firearms.
Should have named them Ghost
And White Wind ( Grey in GOT)
And Nymeria for the female
Dude, where’s my flying pterodactyl?
But: can they compete in Women’s sports?
Leslie, everything about CRISPR scares me. COVID-19 wasn’t bad enough?
Just because science can do something doesn’t mean it should. There was are better ways to spend the time money and energy than to bring back failed species.
“God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man, Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs.”
God created humans to give less fortunate species another chance 🙂
There are other reasons the megafauna may have gone extinct that are related but distinct to the ones mentioned. Ecological footprint and metabolic demand are the two that come to mind right away.
The larger the animal, the more competition rears its head. Living space for a viable habitat becomes crowded, food to meet organismal demands becomes harder to find, etc.
Microorganisms and small animals (think insects) are considered some of the least advanced (complex?) organisms on the planet, yet they are the most successful (numerous?). It somewhat questions the relationship between “advanced” and “successful” and how you define each term.
I used to think the younger dryas impact hypothesis was complete bunk. But, the last several years, I’ve grown less skeptical. I think there is some possibility that there was a significant comet/asteroid impact roughly 11-years that did cool the earth significantly which created a die-off particularly of megafauna.
11K-years.
Is there any chance that this technology could be used to de-extinct the traditional Democrat, who valued “the content of one’s character”?
Just because we can do a thing, it does not follow that we should.
Next, they’ll be resurrecting the extinct dire dove.