Even so, there will undoubtedly be debate to come over how much Romulus, Remus, Khaleesi, and the rest of their intended pack match the ancient creature who died out millennia ago. For starters, it is impossible to directly clone an extinct species. You need a living cell. In the case of these dire wolves, this was created by editing 20 genes in gray wolf cells—a technique Lamm previously told us is part and parcel with natural speciation, albeit in this case it’s been controlled to recreate the lost, desired characteristics of a dire wolf.
Still, Lamm acknowledges there are traits we’ll never be absolutely certain on. For instance, the vocalizations of his dire wolves.
“We do know that if you look at the neck size of our dire wolves compared to normal wolves, they’re bigger, which we know affects the vocalization we hear today. Is it exactly the same vocalization as it was 10,000 years ago? We have no way of knowing what percentage of that’s learned behavior versus what percentage of that’s normal.”
Still, Colossal remains bullish about their research, which used advanced multiplex gene editing to introduce precise genetic edits at 20 loci across 14 genes. More impressive is how these techniques have innovated cloning technology. Whereas cloning previously required extensive tissue samples, including quantities of bone marrow, pieces of skin, and perhaps scraps of an ear, the less intrusive techniques Colossal has pioneered from DNA blood extractions could very well change how we protect endangered species, extinct or otherwise.
Saving the Red Wolf and Beyond
The choice of naming Colossal’s first two dire wolves Romulus and Remus is a telling one. Some debate went on internally over whether one of the two brothers should be dubbed Ghost, in reference to the most famous direwolf on Game of Thrones, but the decision was made to save that for down the road as the pack grows. In the meantime, no single dire wolf in Colossal’s first crop would stand out over another. Instead the names they did settle on would harken back to an ancient, and more wolf-friendly, set of values.
While during the last several thousand years, wolves have regularly been associated with evil and dangerous imagery in the popular (and largely Christian) imagination, there was a time when the creature’s likeness carried different connotations, and it hadn’t been hunted to extinction in Europe and near enough that in North America. In fact, Romulus and Remus were the mythological figures credited with founding Rome, the ancient city that would become an empire—and which was supposedly nurtured by the literal mother’s milk of a she-wolf who fed and raised these two brothers.
