In a stunning achievement, scientists have brought back an animal that went extinct some 13,000 years ago—and a lot of people are not quite ready to celebrate.
The genetically engineered wolf pups resemble the dire wolf, an ancient, long-gone species.
The move is being heralded as a potential watershed in efforts to preserve endangered species from extinction.
But, well... we have a precedent for this sort of thing, albeit a fictional one: Jurassic Park, the 1993 blockbuster about a theme park full of dinosaurs reborn through the magic of genetic engineering.
It did not go well, as you may remember! And this whole dire wolf thing has Jurassic Park on the minds of many.
As Jeff Goldblum famously put it in that film, "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
The wolves, created at Colossal Biosciences, sound like they might have catastrophic potential similar to a park full of T-rexes and velociraptors.
Dire wolves were much larger than the grey wolf we know today, which are their descendants. The pups born so far, which range between three and six months old, already weigh in around 80 pounds and are on track to be 140 pounds when fully grown. Not exactly the kind of thing you want running around our highly populated land.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
Colossal Biosciences says there's nothing to worry over, however—the pups are not actual dire wolves, but a sort of hybrid that looks a lot like dire wolves.
They were created out of the blood of currently living gray wolves and egg cells from domestic dogs, which they modified genetically using CRISPR technology. That material was used to make embryos, which were also carried by domestic dogs.
But, you know, everyone said not to worry about the velociraptors at Jurassic Park either! And online, a lot of people were not trusting this new development.
Others had ethical objections to the new dire wolves.
But many people, especially Game of Thrones fans, were thrilled at the news—and especially that one of the pups was named after GoT character Khaleesi.
The sort-of dire wolves may be part of a whole extinct menagerie—Colossal has previously announced plans to recreate versions of the dodo and the woolly mammoth.
