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The Dire Wolf Is Back

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Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#121

Post by Ericson2314 »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #119

I think it's ethical, but I hate that it's fake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_wolf#DNA_evidence Look at this caldogram and text > The sequences indicate the dire wolf to be a highly divergent lineage which last shared a most recent common ancestor with the wolf-like canines 5.7 million years ago. The study also measured numerous dire wolf and gray wolf skeletal samples that showed their morphologies to be highly…

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/science/colossal-dire-wol...

This however disagreed with Wikipedia, and said there was some inbreeding. That helps make this less fake.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#122

Post by pmags »

calf wrote: post #105
pmags wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, species/lineage/population distinctions are quite fuzzy at the level of divergence under consideration here (dire wolves vs gray wolves). Here's what was actually have done according to the New Yorker article, starting with a gray wolf genome as the baseline: After almost a year of computational genetic analysis, Colossal researchers used Crispr to make twenty edits on fourteen genes. Fifteen edits were derived…

I don't get it, so dire wolves were only 20 gene changes from gray wolves? Not thousands of tiny,crucial changes all over their respective genetic codes?

Above I'm just reporting what the New Yorker reports that Colossus has accomplished.

Reading between the lines, I take the reporting to imply that these 20 edits are what Colossus thinks is sufficient (at least for marketing purposes ;-) to recapitulate some of the key phenotypic traits of dire wolves.

Does that make them actually dire wolves? Not in my opinion.

I'd probably describe the genetically engineered pups as "isogenic with parental gray wolf genomes with the addition of 20 allelic edits that recapitulate key aspects of the dire-wolf phenotype" (or something to the effect; Colossus hasn't published anything by which to evaluate their claims).

I don't work on canids, but a quick PubMed search turns up this paper:

Perri AR, Mitchell KJ, et al. Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage. Nature. 2021 Mar;591(7848):87-91. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-03082-x. Epub 2021 Jan 13. PMID: 33442059.

The analyses in that paper suggests quite a bit deeper divergence between dire wolves and gray wolves than the New Yorker articles implies.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#123

Post by silexia »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #45
silexia wrote: post #36

Farmer here. The return of the regular wolf has been a tragedy of historic proportions. Wolves slaughter tons of livestock for fun. Farmers are not allowed to protect their herds at all. What will a dire wolf do to livestock if we bring them back? So dumb.

Don't farmers get reimbursed for livestock lost to natural predators?

Not in the USA. There a variety of random government programs that give money in ways that do not make sense. It would be better to have zero government support and have the market naturally raise prices up a bit to cover things directly. Right now, government programs are set up to take care of a variety of special interests, most of which are silly and don't really help farmers and are very wasteful. I had four government people visit my farm for several hours recently and spend several weeks writing papers, all for a possible $25k well grant. The admin costs far surpass that, and most of the farmers using these programs don't really want what they are getting that much.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#125

Post by inkcapmushroom »

silexia wrote: post #36

Farmer here. The return of the regular wolf has been a tragedy of historic proportions. Wolves slaughter tons of livestock for fun. Farmers are not allowed to protect their herds at all. What will a dire wolf do to livestock if we bring them back? So dumb.

[dead]

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#127

Post by lolinder »

generalizations wrote: post #102
lolinder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collosal would face less pushback if they were upfront about the fact that they aren't a serious attempt at solving any ecological issues but that maybe they could push the tech forward enough that someone else could use it to solve real problems. There's nothing wrong with building cool proof-of-concept tech as a prestige project that might actually lead to real solutions some day, but Collosal's dire wolf lookalike…

I suspect the environmental pushback is from a vocal minority which dislikes the cynical lip-service companies have found it necessary/expedient to give. "nor a direct path" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there - I see no reason to push back against a company that is figuring out how to run back the extinction process. If you're claiming that their attempts yet a solution, then your point is as useless as expecting…

> a company that is figuring out how to run back the extinction process

Are they, though? This isn't a dire wolf, it's a wolf with a few genes tweaked to make it look more like a dire wolf. I see no evidence that they have any intention of pursuing the far more arduous task of actually preserving an endangered species or restoring one with all of its actual DNA, and I don't see a compelling reason to believe that introducing a lookalike in the wild will do anything to fill the gap left by the real thing.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#128

Post by lolinder »

shadowgovt wrote: post #88
lolinder wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, good, so when that happens they'll be making some flimsy claims about conservation and combating climate change to justify creating a poor imitation of Jurassic Park that wealthy and middle class people can visit.

I think people are conflating (fiction writer) Michael Crichton's claims of Jurassic Park being for the wealthy and well-connected with the real-world economics of a zoo.

Can you elaborate?

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#129

Post by octopoc »

bbor wrote: post #103
lolinder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every project I've seen of theirs has been like this one: take an existing animal and tweak its genome very slightly to make it look kinda like the extinct one, then declare that they've brought back the extinct species. Never mind that it's still just a wolf with 14 very specific genes tweaked. That could be just a limitation of the current technology and one that they're working on fixing—maybe some day they plan t…

Plus, at a certain point we should probably ask what we're even doing here. At the same time and using the same ostensible "pro-environment" framework, we: 1. refuse to engage in biome modification to save soon-to-be-homeless species like the Axolotl, 2. are willing to go to great lengths to preserve existing biomes exactly as they are, such as opening up owl hunting permits to protect the western US's shittier owls…

A big reason why we should support biodiversity is that once an animal is extinct, it's practically impossible to bring it back. With small effort now we can avoid great effort later. And any ecosystem is so unbelievably complex that we just aren't yet at the point where we can predict exactly how things will adapt.

I haven't read Red Mars but these are both very different from an abiotic landscape. You can easily go back to an abiotic landscape on Mars because that's the default. It doesn't take delicacy. And, an abiotic landscape is extremely simple compared to an ecosystem. We can easily predict what will happen if we go back to one.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#130

Post by aerostable_slug »

lolinder wrote: post #127
generalizations wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the environmental pushback is from a vocal minority which dislikes the cynical lip-service companies have found it necessary/expedient to give. "nor a direct path" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there - I see no reason to push back against a company that is figuring out how to run back the extinction process. If you're claiming that their attempts yet a solution, then your point is as useless as expecting…

> a company that is figuring out how to run back the extinction process Are they, though? This isn't a dire wolf, it's a wolf with a few genes tweaked to make it look more like a dire wolf. I see no evidence that they have any intention of pursuing the far more arduous task of actually preserving an endangered species or restoring one with all of its actual DNA, and I don't see a compelling reason to believe that int…

> introducing a lookalike in the wild will do anything to fill the gap left by the real thing

The dire wolf may not fill a valuable niche, but I believe it's at least plausible that herds of engineered woolly mammoths would have a positive environmental impact.

I personally don't care if they "really" restore an extinct animal or not (perfect clone vs. hairy elephants). Their creations are cool proofs of concept for the genetic engineering tooling that they're creating and captures public/investor imagination much more than more mundane (but monetizable) aspects of the work, like working with massive amounts of data, gene editing tools, etc.

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