The three dire wolves now residing at Colossal Biosciences’ secure facility exhibit distinctive physical characteristics that distinguish them from modern gray wolves, validating the company’s genetic engineering approach to de-extinction. With their white coats, broader skulls, more powerful jaws, and muscular builds, these animals embody the physical traits that made dire wolves formidable predators in prehistoric North America.
“The wolves, which range in age from three to six months old, have long white hair, muscular jaws, and already weigh in at around 80 pounds—on track to reach 140 pounds at maturity,” according to reports from observers who have seen the animals. This substantial size difference from modern gray wolves (which typically weigh 70-110 pounds) reflects the dire wolf’s evolutionary adaptation for hunting larger prey animals that roamed North America during the Pleistocene epoch.
The distinctive white coat represents one of the most visible successes of Colossal’s genetic engineering approach. Unlike the darker fur depicted in Game of Thrones, real dire wolves had light-colored coats, as evidenced by paleogenetic findings. Achieving this trait required sophisticated genetic modifications to ensure the coat color was expressed correctly without causing harmful side effects that sometimes accompany these genes in modern wolves.
Beyond visible characteristics, the genetically engineered wolves also display behavioral traits consistent with their ancient predecessors. Their vocalizations, especially howling and whining, match what scientists have long theorized about dire wolf communication based on their anatomical structure. These behaviors emerge naturally from the genetic modifications, suggesting the engineering has successfully captured essential aspects of dire wolf biology.
The genetic engineering process identified and modified approximately 20 genetic differences across 14 genes. These precise edits targeted specific traits without disrupting the thousands of other genes that dire wolves share with modern gray wolves. This approach—modifying only what’s necessary to recreate the distinctive aspects of dire wolves—represents a foundational principle of Colossal’s de-extinction technology.
“We’ve taken a gray wolf genome, a gray wolf cell, which is already genetically 99.5% identical to dire wolves because they’re very closely related,” explained Beth Shapiro, Colossal’s Lead Paleogeneticist. “And we’ve edited those cells at multiple places in its DNA sequence to contain the dire wolf version of the DNA.”
While some scientists have questioned whether these animals are “true” dire wolves, given that they are essentially modified gray wolves, Colossal maintains they have successfully resurrected the functional essence of the species. The debate highlights philosophical questions about species identity that extend beyond technical genetic discussions into broader considerations about what defines a species in the era of genetic engineering.
For conservation purposes, the physical traits of these de-extincted dire wolves may prove less important than the technologies developed to create them. The same genetic engineering approaches that produced white coats and powerful jaws in dire wolves could potentially help preserve critically endangered species facing genetic bottlenecks or adapt vulnerable populations to changing environmental conditions in our rapidly warming world.
