Latest news with #HankGreely
USA Today
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
A company tried to bring back the dire wolf. Is it the start of 'Jurassic Park'?
A company tried to bring back the dire wolf. Is it the start of 'Jurassic Park'? Show Caption Hide Caption Dire wolf brought back after extinction raises ethical questions Questions about animal welfare and allocation of resources rise after a company revives the dire wolf. 'We see no possible way this could go wrong,' wrote the Jurassic World account on X, in tongue-in-cheek response to the news. Most experts USA TODAY spoke with agreed that attempts to de-extinct animals, like the dire wolf, result in animals that are not the same as their ancestors and are actually hybrid animals. Ethicists and conservationists appear to be divided on attempts to bring back extinct species – and whether the efforts matter. A company owned by a wealthy businessman re-creates an extinct apex predator and lets it roam on a private ecological preserve. That's no longer just the plot of a 1990s science fiction movie. Colossal Biosciences announcement that it had used the DNA of an extinct ice age-era dire wolf to breed new, live wolves has sparked excitement, and some fear. There's certainly eerie similarities to 'Jurassic Park' – the movie where dinosaurs came back to life. 'We see no possible way this could go wrong,' wrote the social media account for the spin-off movie franchise Jurassic World, in tongue-in-cheek response to the news. Despite parallels between the movie and Colossal's work, scientists and ethicists say a world where prehistoric animals are roaming city streets and gobbling up humans isn't likely to become a reality anytime soon. 'People say, remember Jurassic Park? And I say, remember Jurassic Park was fiction,' said Hank Greely, a Stanford University law professor who specializes in the ethical quandaries of biotechnologies. 'Fiction needs to be dramatic. ... Utopias are not dramatic.' But some conservationists are expressing wide-ranging concern about the unintended consequences that could arise as researchers continue to try to resurrect versions of extinct animals. 'Everybody's excited about the technology, and rightly so – it's just amazing what they've done,' said Dave Strayer, a senior scientist emeritus at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in New York. 'But unless they're only talking about raising these animals to be kept in a zoo or private collections, they're going to be releasing them into the wild – and what happens then?' What's the purpose? Most experts USA TODAY spoke with agreed that attempts to de-extinct animals, like the dire wolf, result in animals that are not the same as their ancestors and are actually hybrid animals. Scientists create these animals by engineering DNA that matches important traits of the extinct animal into a modern animal's DNA sequence. Colossal's dire wolves are, in essence, gray wolves with about 20 handpicked genes from dire wolf DNA that re-create key characteristics of the species. 'They're a genetically engineered life form that hasn't existed before that has some attributes of dire wolves,' Strayer said. But ethicists and conservationists appear to be divided on attempts to bring back extinct species – and whether the efforts matter. Colossal has no plans to release its dire wolves into the wild, said Beth Shapiro, the company's chief science officer. They live in an undisclosed location on a 2,000 acre protected ecological preserve where they are restricted from leaving and are monitored, she said. Researchers intend to watch how these animals interact with their ecosystem to derive insights for future projects, Shapiro said. But Colossal is working on long-term projects to create genetically engineered versions of the woolly mammoth, dodo bird and Tasmanian tiger with the intention to help repopulate some of those species in the wild. Some conservationists believe certain species should eventually be placed in their natural habitats to help restore the ecosystems, while others have expressed unease about reintegrating them into the wild, saying the "cool" factor alone is enough reason to de-extinct animals. "We do a lot of things because they're cool. Coolness is underrated as a reason to do things in academic discussions," Greely said. "It would be really cool to see a woolly mammoth, and it would be really cool to see a giant ground sloth, and that's worth something." Impact on ecosystems Ben Novak, the lead scientist at Revive and Restore, a biotech nonprofit in the de-extinction space, argued that the extinction of certain species can hurt other animals in an ecosystem through domino effects related to their food chains and habitats. A 2018 World Wildlife Foundation report found that humans have eradicated 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970. By thoughtfully reintroducing specific extinct or threatened species back into their ecosystem, the same way conservationists transplant living species, Novak said he believes they can help protect other animals in those areas. The nonprofit is working on reviving populations of the black-footed ferret and passenger pigeon, among other animals. But because these genetically constructed animals aren't identical to their ancestors, some worry that they won't necessarily behave as their ancestors would when placed in their ancestral environment. Strayer said that introducing a species that has been long gone could be the equivalent of an invasive species, acting in ways difficult or impossible to predict. Also, humans have gotten used to these animals being gone – and aren't always happy when they come back. In the West, the reintroduction of gray wolves into areas they lived in just 100 years ago has generated enormous controversy. Ranchers complain about predation on their herds and city dwellers fear having wolves living too close for comfort. 'We have centuries of history of deciding a species has a desirable attribute, deciding we know what will happen when we introduce it into a new place and then discovering we were wrong,' Strayer said. 'What will we do if they don't behave as we hope?' he said. 'Who decides if they even should be released into the wild? What kind of plan is in place to deal with unintended consequences? And who pays for it?' Animal welfare concerns Experts also raised concern about the treatment of de-extinct animals and those used to help create them. Efforts to re-create extinct animals require extensive testing – and potentially failed attempts. Animals that birth de-extinct species could experience miscarriage, stillbirth, early death and possible pain, suggested Jay Odenbaugh, a professor of philosophy at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. 'It is morally wrong to cause a sentient being unnecessary suffering,' Odenbaugh wrote in a 2023 article published in the Cambridge University Press. That doesn't appear to have been the case with the dire wolf constructs, said Shapiro, who told USA TODAY that none of the animals used in Colossal's dire wolf program suffered undue pain. Several of the pregnancies were resorbed early on and some of the pregnancies did not establish after the embryo transfer, she said. After the births, all of the surrogate dog mothers were given to the American Humane Society who adopted them to human families. Odenbaugh also noted the obligation to conserve and restore biodiversity can be outweighed by concern about animal welfare in some circumstances, but it requires active debate and consideration. However, he questioned the moral purpose of de-extincting animals if they aren't integrated into ecosystems. 'There's a sense in which we're creating animals only to frustrate them,' he told USA TODAY. The moral dilemma around conservation De-extinction projects raise a moral quandary for many conservationists who fear that the technology could make people less concerned about humanity's impact on species they are driving to the brink. Ronald Sandler said he's excited about what Colossal's dire wolf project means for science. But the risk, he said, is that it could create a distraction that dissuades people addressing the root causes of why species go extinct in the first place, such as habitat degradation, pollution, overfishing and climate change. He views de-extinction as a new tool conservationists might be able to use to help ecosystems – not the end-all-be-all of the profession. Greely agreed. "It's hard to save endangered species, but it's going to be a lot harder to de-extinct them," he said.
CBC
09-04-2025
- Science
- CBC
A biotech company has, sort of, revived the long-extinct dire wolf
It's a fierce, majestic beast that disappeared thousands of years ago, save for artistic renderings in books and on screen, as in Game of Thrones. Or, maybe, it's just a grey wolf with a few tweaks. American biotech company Colossal Biosciences made a surprise announcement Monday, claiming it had brought the dire wolf back from the dead, thus achieving the company's first successful "de-extinction." Colossal showcased videos of the fluffy white wolf pups roaming in its 2,000-acre habitat at an undisclosed location in the northern U.S., marking a big win for the company that is also working on reviving the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger. But some scientists say that while the wolves' existence is an impressive feat, they are not exactly as advertised. "I want to see some peer-reviewed papers coming out of this, to get a better sense of what actually was done and what's known and what's not done," said Hank Greely, director of Stanford University's Center for Law and the Biosciences. He says seeing the puppies put a smile on his face, and was a welcome surprise in an otherwise bleak news landscape. But in his view, the creation is more of a "dire-ish wolf." "I do think that it is important for people to remember that these are not dire wolves. There are grey wolves that have some dire wolf characteristics," Greely said. "On the other hand, they seem to be closer to dire wolves than anything else anybody's seen for 13,000 years, and that's pretty cool. And they're cute as hell." Once hunted large prey The large wolf species roamed the Americas for more than 100,000 years, before going extinct some 13,000 years ago. It was believed to have hunted large prey like horses, bison and giant sloths, and to have disappeared largely because its prey species went extinct — partly because of hunting by humans. Colossal's chief scientific officer Beth Shapiro says scientists extracted DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old inner ear bone from a dire wolf skull, and extracted and sequenced the DNA to assemble genomes. They determined the grey wolf was its closest living relative — "99.5 per cent identical" in DNA, she says — and similar in appearance but bigger, more muscular and with a lighter coloured coat, wider skull and stronger jaw. Scientists then altered grey wolf cells to give them dire wolf traits, making 20 edits in 14 genes before creating embryos and implanting them into large domestic hounds. Three of the eight dogs used as surrogate mothers gave birth to dire wolves, Shapiro said, and the mothers were then adopted out anonymously through the American Humane Society — "so, somewhere out there, there are families that have adopted a dog that gave birth to a dire wolf, and they don't know." Colossal says two male pups, Romulus and Remus, were born on Oct. 1 — putting them now in the early stages of adolescence — while Khaleesi, a female, was born on Jan. 30, and is almost at the age where she can be "introduced to the boys," Shapiro said. Kevin Campbell, a professor at the University of Manitoba's Department of Biological Sciences, says while the pups look very much like dire wolves, it's hard to know how similar they are physiologically. "They edited 20 different mutations… which affected 14 genes. And to put this in perspective, a wolf probably has 22- or 23,000 different genes," he said. "Right now what we have is a 99.999 per cent grey wolf, with .001 per cent dire wolf." Bringing back the phenotypes Shapiro acknowledges the pups are not exactly the same as the dire wolves of yore, but says the idea was to create something with the same characteristic features that can live a healthy life in the modern age. "When we're thinking about de-extinction, we're not imagining that we're going to recreate something that's genetically identical to something that used to be alive," she told CBC News. "This is impractical and probably also not what we want. Instead, we want to bring back these phenotypes, the extinct traits that defined this species." Colossal CEO Ben Lamm says the project started about two years ago, as a way to get people talking about wolves and saving the critically endangered red wolf. On that front, the private, Dallas-based company simultaneously announced Monday it had also produced four cloned red wolves using a new, less invasive technique it developed while working on the dire wolves. Lamm says several Indigenous American communities have expressed interest in having dire wolves reintroduced on their land, but says that would be a complicated process requiring extensive consultation with landowners, governments and other stakeholders. For now, Colossal is closely studying the dire pups and has no plans to introduce them to a wild habitat. Some have criticized Colossal's de-extinction projects for taking attention away from the less flashy work being done by organizations dedicated to conserving existing species and their habitats. Joe Walston, head of global conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society, says he appreciates that de-extinction projects can inspire people to think about species conservation, and he's not opposed to using technology as one tool to help preserve species like the red wolf. But most species, he says, can recover at an "incredible rate" if their habitats are simply conserved and left alone. "We have tigers, we have lions, we have wolves themselves, we have these great predators ranging this earth which are in trouble and need our help," he said. "Sometimes we get too distracted by the newness of something and forget that what we have already on Earth at the moment is the most remarkable assemblage of species the world has ever seen."
