Game of clones: Dire wolves reborn as Colossal unleashes world’s first de-extinction [PIX! + VID!]

Interesting Engineering ^ | April 07, 2025 | Neetika Walter

[T.B. Yoits]

Yeah, it's all fun and games until you see one drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic's...

...and his hair was perfect

[Jonty30]

Time will tell.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Agreed, very loaded threshold. Look at some of the humans who can breed!

[T.B. Yoits]

These things were extinct for a reason.

Playing God will not go well.

[Lean-Right]

Stacey Abrams doesn’t fit that bill?

[No name given]

Exactly.

[Waverunner]

Already been done, by nature expressing recessive genes..

[Texas Fossil]

Bump.

That vanity kills.

[KC_Conspirator]

Dire wolves are not as big as depicted in fantasy or fiction. Whew. Now where is that guy with the DnD miniature with a goblem riding a dire wolf.

[Veto!]

Adorable cub. I actually like animals better than people and am delighted with this news.

Mastodons, anyone?

[EnderWiggin1970]

Canine gene sequences were changed to match a bunch of the Dire Wolf gene sequences. Not a clone. A facsimile.

That's a good way to put it. My guess is these pups will have an abnormally high number of health problems as they mature. But it's interesting as I wondered if this approach would ever be viable (I recall reading about the initial effort to bring back mammoths in high school almost 40 years ago.)

[CatHerd]

Me too. Sloths are so adorable.

I want a cute baby wooly mammoth. I’ll ride him to the grocery store and hang my shopping bags off his curly tusks for the trip home. He’ll mow my grass and I’ll sell his poop for fertilizer and deer repellent.

[House Atreides]

I’m HOLDING OUT FOR A DIREDOODLE.

[Ignatz]

How do they plan on releasing these back into the wild?

Coming soon to a city park near you!

[Cold Heart]

Skinwalker Ranch supposedly found a dead one in a creek on their property. They ID’d it by size & shape comparison. They were supposed to genetic test but I never heard any announcement.

[Bikkuri]

"Hope I live long enough to see Giant Sloths Slobs"

Plenty of those to go around, lol.

[TigersEye]

What next? Saber Tooth Tigers and Cave Bears?

I guess that would reduce the human traffic in the National Forests.

[KarlInOhio]

Probably can, but the breed will have no genetic diversity. Who knows how that will work out?

Dire pugs

[waterhill]

They are here in Henderson County TX. Not really a secret. It’s Black Beauty Ranch. It’s closed to visitors/ gawkers.

[waterhill]

OK I’m wrong again (suprise!). They have a tour bus for 50 bucks once a month. Or you can schedule a private tour for an easy 250 a head. Just outside of Athens TX.

Not sure about gawking at wolf pups though.