Dire Wolves have been in the headlines lately with the claim by Colossal Biosciences that they brought them back from extinction. Some of you may recall that as a puppy, I proclaimed myself to be a Dire Wolf! To be honest, I’m not sure what inspired this belief that I’d grow up to be a fierce prehistoric wolf, popularized in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, and last seen more than 12,000 years ago. However, over the years Angel Chuck Billy worked really hard to disprove it. Now with the introduction of Romulus and Remus, two pups who supposedly contain Dire Wolf DNA mixed with Gray Wolf genetics, they do exist. And yet rather than celebrate, I find myself having a dire existential crisis!
If only Chuck Billy were here! How could he refute this description that these newly bred Dire Wolf pups resemble me? According to various sources, these pups have “fluffy, snow-white fur, that is longer, thicker, with a larger stature and stronger jaw than the wolf.” Now look at this photo of me as a puppy. You can clearly see that description applies to me! Finally proof I am a Dire Wolf!
However, although Chuck Billy isn’t here to refute this claim, there are plenty of scientists who do. Rather than actually breeding real Dire Wolves, they argue that Romulus and Remus are simply designer dogs, no different than the breeding practices used for centuries to make the variety of dog breeds that we enjoy today. As Chuck Billy explained in “From Wolves to Pampered Pets,” (March 2, 2021) “In 40,000 years, dog breeding went from accidental in its prehistoric roots, to being bred for function, to a career in and of itself! The establishment of kennel clubs in the 19th century were so that humans could identify breeds, set breed standards, monitor bloodlines, and manage legitimate breeding practices for healthier dogs. Leading us to today where dogs come in all shapes and sizes, and serve a variety of roles to humans.”
I can practically hear Angel Chuck Billy arguing today that by making some edits to the Gray Wolf’s genetics, scientists didn’t really bring back the Dire Wolf from extinction. Instead they simply added to the long history of humans genetically changing Gray Wolves to fit their needs. An article by Joe Hernandez and Rob Stein in NPR agrees. Using DNA extracted from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old inner ear, “Colossal scientists made 20 edits to the Gray Wolf genome — including 15 edits in 14 genes that were the ‘exact extinct variants’ — to create animals with Dire Wolf traits.” Leading critics to question, are they the real thing, or just a scientific rendering of what a Dire Wolf may have resembled? After all, no one has actually seen a Dire Wolf in quite some time. This article goes on to share a statement by Maarten Larmuseau, a professor of genetic genealogy at KU Leuven in Belgium, that argues, “Dire Wolves were a distinct species, genetically distant from Gray Wolves. You can’t ‘bring back’ a species just by making another animal look vaguely similar.”
This reminds me of another post Chuck Billy wrote, “Dire Wolves in Dire Straits,” (January 26, 2021). He too shared the argument that Dire Wolves weren’t wolves at all, but their own distinct animal. “Using genetic samples from dozens of Dire Wolf remains at universities and museums from across North America, scientists recovered about one-quarter of the nuclear genome and the full mitochondrial DNA across five specimens, ranging in age from about 13,000 to more than 50,000 years old. This DNA analysis revealed a distinct lineage that split off from the rest of the canines approximately 5.7 million years ago.” So did this recent attempt to add Dire Wolf DNA to the Gray Wolf’s even make sense? Chuck Billy went on to share in this post that “there is enough evidence for scientists to debate removing Dire Wolves from Canis dirus, and instead reclassifying them as Aenocyon dirus.”
What does all this mean? I don’t have a clue, and probably neither did Chuck Billy when he wrote it. But what got my attention is in his January 2021 post, Chuck Billy concluded, “that some scientists have gone as far as to suggest our current depiction of the Dire Wolf should be adjusted to include red fur, a bushy tail, and more rounded ears. Do I dare suggest floppy ears so as to more resemble our Dire Wolf, Asa?”
So you have to ask yourself, based on the current description of the designer Dire Wolves, Romulus and Remus, and Chuck Billy’s research that Dire Wolves could have traits similar to mine, did my self-proclaimed prophecy of being a Dire Wolf finally come true? Or maybe Chuck Billy was right all along, and there are no such things as Dire Wolves in modern society? Perhaps Dire Wolves are best left in the past, and within the pages of books?
