201–208 of 208 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point far in the future, humanity will populate an entire planet with custom designed species, something like the engineers from prometheus. If only there were a way to live long enough to see all that.
Maybe the future lightcone denizens are of masters of physics. Perhaps one day they get bored of building Dyson spheres and decide to tap into the past for amusement. Maybe they have unimaginable access to such vast energies that they can capture every photon that ever left earth and effectively reverse the lightcone. Maybe they can sample the neural state of every lived human with exacting precision and wholly creat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Wikipedia does not have an opinion, and is not a source according to Wikipedia. Always use the sources the Wikipedia users to cite anything. If Wikipedia does not have a reference, don’t cite it.
Anyone can go and read the article themselves and decide if this text is credible.
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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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point far in the future, humanity will populate an entire planet with custom designed species, something like the engineers from prometheus. If only there were a way to live long enough to see all that.
Maybe the future lightcone denizens are of masters of physics. Perhaps one day they get bored of building Dyson spheres and decide to tap into the past for amusement. Maybe they have unimaginable access to such vast energies that they can capture every photon that ever left earth and effectively reverse the lightcone. Maybe they can sample the neural state of every lived human with exacting precision and wholly creat…
Be neat if they opened a theme park on a remote island filled with de-extinct creatures.
I'm unsure we want or need a real Dire Wolf, but American Alsatians have been bred for a while: https://www.marvelousdogs.com/american-alsatian/
Thank you; the opening paragraph of that article was fantastic. > American Alsatians were first bred to create a family friendly dog breed that looks like a dire wolf. (The dire wolf is an ancient North American wolf species that became extinct around 13,000 years ago.) This dog has all the benefits of looking like a dire wolf, but it is calm and gentle enough to be a great pet. They are an intelligent, loving and ge…
I never realised the Dire Wolf was a real historical animal, not just a fantasy one like the Owlbear.
The fantasy 'dire wolf' and the real 'dire wolf' have close to zero in common, except that the real dire wolf was adapted for eating megafauna and thus had the strongest bite of all canines. And therein lies the problem, they went extinct because their prey went extinct - unless you bring back the mammoths for them to hunt, they're never going to survive in the wild; and are essentially "a wolf with a bigger appetite…