So what's the genetic difference? If the copy was good enough, surely they would be dire wolves? Also, what is the motivation to bring back dire wolves?

[–] vaguerant@fedia.io 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I'm not the president of genetics, but dire wolves are apparently super different to present-day wolves. They're not even in the Canis genus. Regular grey wolves are Canis lupus and dire wolves are Aenocyon dirus. Canis and Aenocyon split off from a common ancestor 5.7 million years ago.

To create these new dire wolves, scientists modified 14 genes to express traits they considered to simulate the appearance of dire wolves--I specifically say simulate because in at least one case (the white coat), they took a gene from regular ass-dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) rather than replicating the original dire wolf coat.

I'm guessing, but there's probably more than 14 genes that changed since these two species diverged almost 6 million years ago. These wolves are almost certainly much, much closer to Canis lupus than Aenocyon dirus.

Sources:

[–] Rooskie91@discuss.online 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Lol ass-dogs

On a serious note, does anyone else get some serious Dunning-Kruger vibes from this? Like serious scientists and experts in the field are very specificly saying that these are not dire wolves. The only people saying they are dire wolves are the owners of the private company that made them. A company with an invested economic interest in people believing them. I'm not an expert geneticist, but I hope you'll excuse me if I believe the scienctists over the people saying, "you can tell it's a direwolf by the way that it is!" so that they can make money.

[–] Pregnenolone@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

It’s not Dunning-Kruger because the scientists know they’re lying. It’s just capitalism.

[–] oce@jlai.lu 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Bringing back species that disappeared because of humans and restoring ecosystems are possible ones. Jurassic Park is another.

[–] ReluctantZen@feddit.nl 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

that disappeared because of humans and restoring ecosystems are possible ones

Yeah, 10,000 years ago. Is it really restoring when the ecosystem has been functioning for such a long period without it? Wouldn't it sooner disrupt it?

[–] nalinna@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yes. It's utterly useless now (and they aren't being introduced into existing ecosystem to my knowledge). They view it as a proof of concept for more recently extinct species as well as a potential tool for restoring species to ecosystems in the future as extinction events pick up speed.

However, it should be noted that extinction events are a symptom, not the core problem, so I'm not sure exactly where we'd restore extinct species to, since human use of the land is the root cause of most ecosystem collapses, and it's unlikely that they can rebuild populations in the places they died out of (and the land probably won't be yielded back anyway).

Super cool stuff that they did regardless, but can't figure out how it's going to accomplish what they seem to want to accomplish.

[–] oce@jlai.lu 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There are a lot of species that we made disappear in the last 150 years that could be beneficial to restoring current ecosystems.

[–] ReluctantZen@feddit.nl 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Totally, but the dire wolf is not one of them

[–] arrow74@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago

They do plan on using the tech for those applications though.

The "dire wolf" is just a media strategy to show off their technologies.