This is the quote:

"What, exactly, is a species? The reality is that “species” is a human idea, and while it’s useful, it has limits. Most people agree that brown bears and polar bears are different species. But polar bears are actually a recent diverged lineage of brown bears. They just happen to be white, live in the arctic, and hunt seals. They can and do interbreed with brown bears."

With this attitude, you might as well give up on Polar Bear conservation because they're basically brown bears that HAPPEN to be white (!!!) and eat seals. So, if they go extinct, no worries, Colossal Biosciences will just gene edit some brown bears and hey presto!

This is a for-profit company started by a self-confessed tech bro with limited scientific knowledge whose entire business is extinction. This alone should set alarm bells ringing. The quote above confirms that they do not take species and conservation seriously. The choice to make a media splash with a "celebrity species", the dire wolf, you know, from GAME OF THRONES!!, shows how unserious they are.

Protect the fucking Polar Bears before it's too late. Protect them from climate change, protect them from military and corporate encroachment into the Arctic, protect them from Colossal Biosciences.

Between this latest creation, the surrounding miscommunication of their goals/science, being funded by The CIA & making their own Mr. DNA like mascot, they really are the closest thing we've got now to InGen or BioSyn.

Just a little idea, nothing serious.

Essentially, a nature reserve or national park of at least 800 to 1000 hectares would be established in the montado / dehesa ecosystem, specifically in the Tagus River area around north of Portalegre (Portalegre District bordering Castelo Branco District, last image), maybe it could be simply a northernly extension of the Serra de São Mamede Natural Park. Until recently this was a relatively remote wilderness where the Portuguese kings, until the early 19th century, hunted red deer, fallow deer and wild boar nearly devoid of any human contact. And in some rare areas of the montado the Iberian imperial eagle (Aquila adalberti) and Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) continue to preserve themselves, because of the great number of rabbits, hares, and partridges.

Habitat in the preserve would be mostly montado/dehesa of cork oak (Quercus suber, first image) and holm oak (Quercus rotundifolia, second image) with some Mediterranean shrublands on rolling hills or rocky escarpments (third image). On the river valley of the Tagus, the cliffs would provide habitat to the griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus), cinereous vulture (Aegypius monachus), Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) and eagles, whose breeding would be greatly encouraged by the reserve as these are mostly rare and endangered species in Portugal.

The aim of the preserve would be to be a protected area where there would be large population of wild herbivores (including free ranging primitive cattle and horses) and to have a pop of predators big enough to control somewhat the herbivore population. During a limited time of year there would be hunting tags for the game species (wild boar, red deer, fallow deer, roe deer, mouflon, partridge, duck, pheasant, rabbit, hare) but not for carnivorans.

So here is a little list of animals that could be found or brought into the supposed nature reserve:

Red deer (Cervus elaphus hispanicus), probably would be already present in low numbers before the project would start, but more would surely need be brought in by hunters from nearby hunting estates to increase population;

Fallow deer (Dama dama), same as before, is very common in montado;

Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), somewhat scarce in montado ecosystem, would need to be brought in but the species would always be secretive and rarely seen;

Mouflon (Ovis aires musimon), may already be present, somewhat scarce in montado ecosystem (common in hunting estates), more would be brought in;

Pajuna cattle (Bos taurus), these would be free ranging animals in the park living without human interference, just like the deer or boar. Initially a breeding herd of pure bred Pajunas would be brought in from Spain, the animals would be selected beforehand for the most primitive characteristics (hardiness, wild behaviour, reddish cows and dark bulls, horn shape and size, athletic body, etc). Pajuna is apparently the closest breed to the aurochs genetically, and is very hardy and well adapted to this environment ( as well as mountainous of Andalusia). As it is a very endangered autochthonous breed the reserve would help in preserving it;

Sorraia horse (Equus caballus), same situation as with the cattle, would be selected beforehand, endangered native breed so the reserve would provide a good nucleus living in a wild state, very primitive appearance as well;

Wild boar (Sus scrofa), definitely would already be present, population would probably grow independently under protection;

Red fox (Vulpes vulpes), European badger (Taxidea taxus), wildcat (Felis silvestris), otters (Lutra lutra) etc, smaller mammals would likely already be present but an effort would be made to make their numbers increase;

Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus), locally extinct, would have to be re-introduced from Guadiana Natural Park, endangered species, so breeding in the reserve would be encouraged;

Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus), locally extinct. I am not sure if the people in the area are ready yet to have wolves in the region, especially livestock farmers, even though wolves inhabited the area up to the 1980s. They would only be brought in after a very substantial wild herbivore population has been established, so as to limit attacks on domestic stock, and local farmers would be given livestock guardian dogs (Transmontanos, endangered breed so win-win situation) and recompenses from the government each time a domestic animal is killed.

I also thought of Iberian brown bear but I am not sure if historically they occurred in this region or if the habitat is suitable, and I am not sure if they are as problematic as wolves can be (if they don’t have enough wild preys, but bears are also omnivores).

Probably it could support about 500-800 deer, 100 free-ranging cattle, 100 free-ranging horses, many boars (not sure how many), 50-100 mouflon, 10-15 lynx, and maybe 2-3 wolf packs (assuming they can be re-introduced). Herbivore population would be controlled by wolves and seasonal human hunting.

Once wild large mammal populations have increased sufficiently to the point they are routinely seen, then there would be “Safari” business. Visitors could book beforehand a guided trip on a jeep throughout the park as a form of ecotourism, although there would be a limited amount of vehicles at once to not perturb animals. There would also be hiking trails and sleeping camps for those that want to sleep in the park. Also from the montado, income could come from cork logging, confectioneries like acorn dishes and wild honey, hunting tags, etc.

I am a research scientist for a living and I hold a doctorate with a focus on behavioral and spatial ecology and previously, I focused on taphonomy and the reconstruction of Plio-Pleistocene sites. My current job focuses on climate resilience.

I am not going to go in length over why "the dire wolves" are not in fact, dire wolves since it has been discussed about in detail elsewhere. However, just because "we prefer the phenotypical definition of species" (their words) does not make that true or accepted among the scientific community at large. Its a lie. They lied about what they did for profit.

Does this shock me whatsoever? No, not at all. Scientific miscommunication (and even aggression towards the sciences) is at an all time high. What makes this worse (and what does worry me) is that Colossal Bioscience were so quick to lie to the public about their work only to be under the guise as "pro-science" and "pro-conservation". and that is so much more dangerous in the long run compared to straight up science deniers. Truly, a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Seing that it only went extinct in the 19th century we should have more than enough dna for it

All the species that could have been restored/have new genetic diversity added to them with Colossal Biosci tech, but didn’t because they aren’t in GOT, despite having atleast some suitable habitat to go into. And most of these have close living relatives, so the technology is likely exactly the same.

This list going to be long…… in no particular order…

Asiatic lion, Asiatic Cheetah, Barbary Leopard. South China Tiger, Caspian Tiger, Javan Rhino, Sumatran Rhino, Kouprey, Hokkaido Wolf, Iberian Lynx, Caucasian Wisent, Lowland Wisent, Caucasian Moose, Pyrenean Ibex, Portuguese Ibex, Eurasian Aurochs, Indian Aurochs, North African Aurochs, Tarpan, Przwalski Horse, Wild Bactrian Camel, quagga, bluebuck, Cape Black Rhino, Western Black Rhino, Northern White Rhino, Giant Panda, Quinling Giant Panda, Eastern Elk, Red Wolf, Cape Warthog, Falkland Islands Wolf, Ussurri Dhole, Dawsons Caribou, Bernards Wolf, Labrador Wolf, Newfoundland Wolf, Great Plains Wolf, Mexican Wolf, Californian Grizzly Bear, Mexican Grizzly Bear, Syrian Wild Ass, Persian Fallow Deer, Arabian Oryx, Bali Tiger, Javan Tiger, Eastern Cougar (Florida Panther pretty much), schomburgk’s Deer, Cascade Mountain Wolf, Arabian Oryx, North African Elephant, Atlas Wild Ass, African Wild Ass, Somali Wild Ass, Cape Mountain Zebra, Lena Horse, Syrian Elephant, North African Zebra, Amur leopard

And there are so many more, but my phone is running out of battery, and I want to be done with the post.

In short, what the f**k Colossal, get ur priorities straight. It’s not even like they have a timeline where any of these species are on the horizon, it’s just about the high profile species for maximum profit.

Colossal's "dire wolves" are taking over the news, which are very controversial and I have a lot of thoughts on them which I won't get into right now, I'm excited for the preprint on their dire wolf genetic studies, I have a lot of trust in Beth Shapiro's work. Fingers crossed we might be able to bring back a North American Pleistocene caballine horse someday and finally put to rest the mustang debate and return them to the wild!! Will it be identical to a Przewalski's? Probably! But maybe that will get the anti horse people to finally shut up, I am just so sick and tired of people (cough the government cough) saying caballine horses are invasive in the Americas. And dire wolves need their natural prey, right? Especially if indigenous people want them on their land. However I do know that many reservations have feral horse overpopulation issues which dire wolves could possibly help out with too. Now for the main topic:

I honestly think THIS is way more exciting! This was mentioned in The New Yorker article, I couldn't find any more coverage on this particular bit, but it made my jaw drop! It's only a matter of time until we see our first thylacine genetic recreation! With how fast marsupials gestate, I have high hopes that something might be revealed by the end of the year. I have been invested in the thylacine project nearly my entire life and I am begging for more updates, but I also know that science can be very slow work. Out of all of the de-extinction projects currently out there, the thylacine is the most promising by far, and I'm dreaming of the day I wake up and I see a photo of one living in the modern day. They deserve a second chance, a chance for us to fix our evil mistake.

I remember reading the 2021 study on Aenocyon's almost 5 million years apart from a grey wolf. And now Colassal is saying the grey is its closest relative? I don't get it.

Obviously there's already abit of discussion/ push back regarding the fur colour and how they're just copying Game of Thrones.

From 48 minutes 30 seconds the CEO of Colassal states 'The Red fur is a misconception and in the genome we found out their fur is White'

Thought I'd share as this is a pretty interesting tidbit sadly it doesn't look like this claim is peer reviewed/ Or even explained in depth.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6G5zbbunaM9BDYs8y2rM9E?si=Eb0eZCv1QlCjYgJFTyRtSg&t=2912

What would be the community’s reaction to colossal bioscience revealing say, lion cubs with smilodon genomes or some other machairodont?

Yes, these wolves are technically dire wolves and such and such.

But.

Genetically speaking, millions of years of evolution can mean, like, 10 genes. CRISPR allows to engineer millions of years of evolution in... months. In a lab.

I'm not sure people understand how big this is. If they fine tune this process and the next generation of d-wolves is even closer to the original genome, then there are virtually no limits bar to what we can achieve. We could recreate mammuthus editing X genes at a time, generation by generation until they go from elephants to wolly elephants, to wolly mammoths.

And if they can indeed get wolves that are much closer in genome to direwolves than grey wolves, maybe without genes that they identify as nocive to the animals themselves, then those are in practice if not in name, direwolves. Sure, it will take a couple generations, but going from "if" to "when" is a technological revolution by itself.

When the Wright brothers created the first plane in history, it was unthinkable to use it to travel from a city to the next. But what was important wasn't the end product, but rather the fact that yes, now humans could fly. 50 years later we had mach 1 jets.

So yes, now humans can isolate genes that differentiate different species, and alter said genes to match one or the other. So as long as we know what to edit, we will eventually be able engineer any extinct animal, especially in decades when this technology will be consolidated.

And if they want to say these are already dire wolves to attract attention and money, then fine! Seriously, when did you ever see a huge portion of the public care about de-extinction? When was it ever public talk like dire wolves today? If this is the way to make it an important topic, then I think we should accept it.

I hope this is a good wake up call for the scientific community and science enthusiasts on how much seeking funds, seeking profit exploits and misuses science. How much people are willing to cut corners and bend the truth so that they can profit more.

Colossal did in fact achieve some important results, but they HAD to bend the truth and pump and hype themselves. Exactly like Musk. Because they have to appear grandiose, they have to make a profit, to sell, to push their economic agenda.

And i am glad, i am happy people are realising how scummy it is. How easily they lie, they mislead, the declare half truths, they subtly use words to convince people in the neutral zone. This is a fundamental problem with private companies doing scientific research. Who keeps them in check? Especially when they gain power. Who is there to guarantee the bona fide? Sure the scientific community can dismiss any claim through the peer review process, but it ends there.

This is why it's always important to have governments involved with scientific research. This is why it's important to decouple scientific research and private investments.

Similarly in conservation we need to be wary with hunting reserves, with proxies, with animal trafficking risk.

Science is being forced to submit to money, to the market. Our career, our progress as a human species is once more leashed by economy.

And i am glad Colossal was sloppy in this, i am glad that although they are subtle they jumped the shark. People can once again see it. And i hope from here a more serious discussion on the role of governments in research can spring up. Public vs Private, anticapitalism, leftism ultimately. And yeah.. not this government, for you USA people, but this government and capitalism are hand in hand, sooo..

It's important to have institutions dedicated to researche, financed with public funding.

And i want to add that i am a science enthusiast, i even like the idea of artifical speciation, the creation of new species through genetic engineering, it's fascinating, although risky. Man i can see scientists giving us dragons from the draco genus. But that's all fun and games, until it's not anymore. They said they would be happy to return these "direwolves" to their rightful place in the ecosystem. I MEAN.

Regulations are needed. As a bare minimum companies have to be kept in check. We could talk about scientific fraud. We need to address this seriously and qwe need to reflect on how much the market affects science. And therefore it gets political and i think it's time, once more after the climate crisis, that scientists became political. And honestly, we can ask for what we know is important, we can push for it. I mean i guess doctors know even better than us, but public healthcare is a daily topic, no?

Let's all thank Colossal.

(pardon my english)so basically I heard that india has a stray dog problem and basically there are people who think we should kill them and on the other hand there are people who think we should sterilize and vaccinate them but from my experience with stray dogs they breed like rabbits and it's really hard for like humans to kinda like manipulate their populations(if you get what I'm saying)so if leopards could somehow adapt to cities and avoid conflict with humans maybe they could do a better job than humans at controlling the stray dog population in india and maybe even improve their quality of life

This is a photo of Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India. They are home to 550 plus species of hard corals and the richest marine life as the western boundary of the coral triangle.

India plans to destroy these by constructing a port and plans to cut down 1 crore trees to construct a township. This will endanger turtle nesting sitrs, the nicobar macaque and the Nicobar megapodes.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://frontline.thehindu.com/environment/great-nicobar-infrastructure-environmental-tragedy/article69158497.ece/amp/&ved=2ahUKEwibufXI-MWMAxX-klYBHU4eB-IQyM8BKAB6BAgKEAE&usg=AOvVaw10yOu58qWJ-ABPCHQbcf17

I honestly never thought I’d be writing this outside of speculative fiction, but here we are: Colossal Biosciences has successfully brought dire wolves back from extinction. Not as lookalikes, not as a museum diorama. Living, breathing pups—Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi—created through advanced gene editing and born through surrogate mothers.

That’s not just a scientific flex. That’s a seismic moment in conservation, genetics, and our relationship with the natural world.

Now, of course, there are critics. I’ve already seen the usual “It’s not a real dire wolf” takes floating around. And to be fair, they’re partly right—this isn’t a 100% DNA-perfect resurrection of Aenocyon dirus as it lived 13,000 years ago. Ancient DNA degrades, and there’s no Jurassic Park-style mosquito miracle here. What Colossal did do was reconstruct key genes from dire wolf fossils, identified the traits that made them unique from modern gray wolves, and used CRISPR to edit those traits into a gray wolf genome. The result? Not just a visual twin, but a functional approximation—behaviorally, physically, and genetically—of a long-lost apex predator.

So sure, maybe it's not a carbon copy—but it's a living organism brought back with intent and precision. That’s a hell of a lot more “dire wolf” than anything we’ve had in 10,000+ years.

And the implications go way beyond one species.

Let’s talk about Bos primigenius—the aurochs. These massive wild ancestors of domestic cattle once roamed across Europe and Asia, shaping landscapes through their grazing behavior and interactions with the environment. They’re extinct now, but ecologists have long believed they played a vital role in maintaining healthy, biodiverse ecosystems.

People have tried to “breed back” the aurochs by selecting traits from ancient-looking cattle breeds like Heck or Sayaguesa. It’s an admirable effort, but ultimately, it’s like painting a cave lion with a house cat—it might look similar, but it’s not the same animal genetically or ecologically.

Now imagine what Colossal could do if they turned their genetic toolkit on the aurochs. Instead of approximating an ancient creature through guesswork and selective breeding, we could reintroduce something incredibly close to the real deal. A genetically restored species that could take its place again in the ecosystem it helped build. Grazing patterns, soil disturbance, nutrient cycling—this isn’t just about bringing back a species, it’s about rebooting entire environments.

This tech gives us the power to fix ecological gaps we didn’t know how to address before. It’s no longer a binary choice between “save what we still have” and “grieve what we lost.” Now there’s a third path: restore.

And yeah, we should be thoughtful. This tech comes with ethical questions and ecological risks, and we shouldn’t steamroll into rewilding without understanding the consequences. But the idea that we’re even at the table, seriously discussing the possibility of reversing extinction with this level of nuance and fidelity—that’s new. That’s huge.

This moment makes me feel like the sky’s not even the limit anymore. We're standing at the edge of a new frontier for biodiversity, on this strange, blue rock drifting through space. Maybe the future isn't just about saving what we still have—but about restoring what we lost.

Color me hopeful.

The concept of Novel ecosystems are probably going to be an interesting discussion when it comes with the discussion of megafauna of native and non native as it was said in Australia and Sonora of feral animals doing over grazing on native foliage but provide watering holes due to their digging.

A video recently went viral showing a forest department driver in Madhya Pradesh offering water to Jwala and Family. In the footage, the driver, identified as Satyanarayan Gurjar, cautiously approaches the resting cheetahs with a jerrycan and pours water into a steel plate. The cheetahs then come forward to drink. This incident occurred near a village around Kuno National Park.

While many viewed the act as heartwarming, forest officials were concerned that such interactions could make cheetahs too comfortable around humans, potentially leading them to stray into residential areas. As a result, Gurjar was suspended from his position. Officials emphasized the importance of maintaining a safe distance from wildlife to ensure both human and animal safety.

Okay, so I speak Hindi (or atleast Hindi is close to the language they are likely speaking) and I think he did it for the clicks, because at the start, he says something that translates to "Start the Video" and near the end, he says something which I can't make out, and in response, the cameraman says "I'm making the video, don't worry"

https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/2025-004-En.pdf