Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Dire Wolf Is Back

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 208 posts

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#131

Post by aerostable_slug »

gorfian_robot wrote: post #52
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

farmers/ranchers always wanna bitch bout something (at least in the US). and we like the myth/nostalgia of the small operations out on the frontier so that's gets a lot of play.

A local small farmer nearly got bankrupted when mountain lions killed most of his alpaca herd along with a bunch of sheep and goats. The cats engaged in surplus killing and didn't bother eating most of their kills (the state thought perhaps a mother was teaching a cub hunting skills, but it's not like they got an interview with Mom).

Easy to talk smack until it happens to you or someone you know.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#132

Post by shadowgovt »

lolinder wrote: post #128
shadowgovt wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As people have noted in other threads: Zoos, generally, maximize revenue (and community value, which is its own ineffable thing that matters a lot... The economics of zoos aren't just in dollars and cents, they're also in the local community thinking of them as a shelter, care space, and opportunity to see exotic animals without going to another continent and not, say, an animal-prison and a blight on the community, the kind of opinions that matter when zoos need more land to operate or want to form research or educational partnerships with neighboring institutions) by being a place the public can afford to go.

As far as I can tell, the idea of a dinosaur zoo as an exotic locale on its own island is... Pretty much a whole-cloth invention by Michael Chrichton. Based loosely on Disney, and even Disney's first two theme parks are places a public can drive to (and Disney works hard to keep prices down against the onslaught of the supply-demand curve of "very few parks that everyone wants to go to at least once in their lives"). It's an idea very detached from reality and I'm pretty sure it was a plot device to make sure our characters were trapped on the island instead of being able to just walk to the gate and drive away.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#133

Post by naravara »

lolinder wrote: post #65
johnecheck wrote: post #34

Here's[0] a recent editorial about Colossal, the company behind this. Basically, they make some flimsy claims about conservation and combating climate change to justify creating a poor imitation of Jurassic Park. Naturally, there's some real moral dilemmas that they gloss over in pursuit of the money a few wealthy people will pay to be able to say "I saw a Mammoth!" [0]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/editor…

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…

I really don’t even see the point in “deextincting” animals that went extinct due to climate or geological changes. They’re not even fit for the present ecology anymore. De-extinction of species that died due to industrialization or human stress on the environment makes a lot more sense since there is, presumably, a vacant ecological niche they could be filling. Like bringing back the passenger pigeon or dodo bird, or repopulating the oceans with species that have been critically overfished. But who cares about bringing back wooly mammoths and giant sloths?

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#134

Post by fragmede »

lolinder wrote: post #65
johnecheck wrote: post #34

Here's[0] a recent editorial about Colossal, the company behind this. Basically, they make some flimsy claims about conservation and combating climate change to justify creating a poor imitation of Jurassic Park. Naturally, there's some real moral dilemmas that they gloss over in pursuit of the money a few wealthy people will pay to be able to say "I saw a Mammoth!" [0]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/editor…

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…

14 isn't enough for you, though it is enough to influence looks to the point that it does look different enough, but how many genes need to be changed for it to count, for you? There's some 40 million differences between humans and chimpanzees, but only about 700 that are unique to humans.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#135

Post by red-iron-pine »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #130
lolinder wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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.

In a world that's rapidly getting warmer and more inhospitable to currently existing life, why do you think a wooly mammoth will 1) succeed at anything, and 2) have any sort of positive impact.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#136

Post by oyashirochama »

vrosas wrote: post #69
johnecheck wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any number of species ? Maybe in theory, but propping up an entire ecosystem in collapse is well beyond Colossal's reach and incentives. This money and research would be better spent preventing the ecosystems from collapsing in the first place. If we fix climate change, I could see an argument for investing in restoring the ecosystems that were destroyed. But 'de-extincting' a species without addressing the root caus…

Climate change is only one reason for extinctions. Humans also tend to hunt a lot of things out of existence, like the dodo, that Colossal is also trying to bring back.

Non climate hunting and direct habitat destruction is likely the largest cause of the current mass extinction event going on, life will eventually find a way to take advantage of humans like rats and pigeons already do or avoid it entirely like bats do.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#137

Post by whyenot »

I wish people would focus more on increasing dog lifespans instead of stuff like this. How about a Bernese Mountain Dog that lives 15+ years instead of 7 years.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#138

Post by iSnow »

altairprime wrote: post #80
MisterTea wrote: post #3

Paywalled so I have to ask, why the dire wolf? Why not an animal that humans drove to extinction like the dodo bird? Is it because dire wolves sound cool and were in video games?

Because Game of Thrones popularized the idea of a dire wolf as an exceedingly rare protector of children, which helps them persuade investors that there is a viable luxury market for this product. They named one “Khaleesi”, so it’s not a coincidental reference.

House of Stark will still be happy to hear their heraldic animal is back.

But yeah, clever marketing by this company.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#140

Post by iSnow »

tokonoma wrote: post #49
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.

A recent study in Germany concluded that permanent electric fences are an effective long-term solution for protecting livestock from predators. granted - the upfront cost is significant. In regions where the wolf population has returned. Rather than placing blame on the wolves, there is a need for policy change that allows for coexistence where the return of wolf to the ecosystem offers ecological benefits. These pol…

Well, even more recent reports from Germany also claim that wolves are damn clever to cope even with e-fences. Unfortunately, the question of wild wolves roaming the country now has become a cultural war issue where you can easily guess the left/right divide.

For our ecosystem, a well-managed wolf population is probably a good thing, but rationality is about to go out the window over here. Of course, wolves do not slaughter herds out of pure fun, but also true is that the can wreak quite a bit of economic damage if they break into a holding pen.

Post reply on HN