The Dire Wolf Has Not Been Revived: Problems for Conservation Biology

In early April, Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences claimed they had resurrected the long-extinct Ice Age dire wolf using gene editing techniques such as CRISPR on gray wolf genes. These edited genes were then inserted into eggs that were carried to term by domestic dogs. In a big press splash and social media frenzy, Colossal revealed the white-colored wolves to the world as a supposed model for the conservation of imperiled species.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum tweeted about how this “marvel of ‘de-extinction’ technology can help forge a future where populations are never at risk.” He continued, “The only thing we’d like to see go extinct is the need for an endangered species list to exist.” We all share that dream, Mr. Burgum, but true conservationists aren’t interested in sci-fi futures where near-extinct animals live in captivity for the sake of thwarting true protections.

Science does not support this methodology as a viable future to save wildlife. Colossal chose to genetically engineer a designer wolf-dog straight out of Game of Thrones, cherry-picking some traits that they thought might resemble a dire wolf such as larger size. But they are ignoring most other morphological characters that define dire wolves as a separate species from living wolves. Dire wolves had very strong jaws and a bone-crushing dentition, beginning to approach hyenas.

Dire wolf DNA that has been extracted from Pleistocene fossil material: a recent peer-reviewed paper analyzed the fragmentary nuclear genome of dire wolves compared to living canids (see Perri et al., 2021, Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage). Dire wolves fall out genetically as closer to jackals than to gray wolves, and appear to be a unique and ancient North-South American canid lineage that diverged as far back as 6 million years ago from gray wolves and coyotes.

Fossil dire wolves turn out to be so different from modern wolves (Canis lupus) that they were given a whole new genus to mark them as distinct from the gray wolf and its living relatives. Dire wolves are in their own group: Aenocyon dirus, a lineage which went extinct about 12,900 years ago.

Colossal’s own scientists team agreed, differing markedly from their media team.

In a detailed and technical scientific paper released as a preprint before peer review, Colossal scientist Gregory Gedman and a slew of credentialed co-authors analyzed reconstructed paleogenomes from fragmentary ancient DNA extracted from two fossil specimens of dire wolf. Their results bolstered previous research indicating that the dire wolf lineage diverged early, before the split between black-backed jackals and other wolf-like canids, about 4.5 million years ago in the Miocene Epoch. Colossal’s DNA analysis was sensitive enough to pick up two or three modeled gene flow events through the history of the dire wolf lineage where admixtures (hybridization) of other canid lineages enriched dire wolves. The proposed gene tree might support some past Ice Age gene flow from dire wolves into the lineage that lead to gray wolves and coyotes. But that is a far cry from saying that genetically engineered modern white-colored gray wolves are the same as dire wolves.

Colossal’s project isn’t even close to de-extincting dire wolves, and that’s a good thing. Where would they live?

Habitat loss is one of the primary drivers of population declines and extinctions. The loss of habitat for rare or imperiled species is a major issue neglected by this GMO wolf experiment. Colossal is keeping its three white wolf hybrids in a zoo-like enclosure, hardly their native habitat.

Elon Musk shared Colossal’s post and joked about ordering a mini mammoth from the tech company. At least, I hope it was a joke. While this billionaire fantasizes about having the coolest pet in town, his pet project – DOGE – is gutting the very agencies tasked with ensuring species don’t go extinct in the first place.

The negative implications for threatened and endangered species conservation are profound. Wild animals are more than a sum of genetic characters and phenotypic looks. They are part of a complex ecosystem with food webs, behavioral interactions, and population dynamics. Wild species need habitat, and plenty of it, to survive. No amount of technology can fix this need, and intact habitat must be conserved to allow endangered species to thrive.

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