That's the question many scientists and wolf lovers have been asking.
A report surfaced earlier last week from Colossal Biosciences claiming they had altered a gray wolf's DNA with dire wolf characteristics.
The bioengineering company claims to have bred three gray wolves with dire wolf characteristics using DNA from extinct dire wolves, which died off between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago. Dire wolves were much larger, more aggressive apex predators, but they are a completely different species from today's gray wolf.
Alyx Harris, operations manager at Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary, just west of Cochrane, said the recent announcement has spread a lot of misinformation.
"The reality of it is, is that they have not brought back the dire wolf; more so, it is a genetically modified gray wolf. If we look back at what dire wolves truly looked like, I don't even think they even had white coats. I think that's more just from the Game of Thrones show, so it's pretty crazy to think we're trying to bring back a dire wolf when we're not co-existing with our regular wolves that are a keystone species and so important to our ecosystem. I think there are some bigger things that we need to be focusing on rather than bringing back extinct animals like the dire wolf."
Harris also shared that dire wolves and the current wolf populations are different species.
"Through evolution, they did have very similar looks to themselves, but they are actually very different species."
Harris's experience working with wolf-dog hybrids has provided her with insight into how different wolves are compared to domesticated dogs. She's also afraid of bioengineering companies creating new hybrids strictly to make money and cash in on current trends, like how popular dire wolves became after they were part of the Game of Thrones HBO television series.
"When it comes to wolfdogs, these are animals that, just because they have some dog content in them, they don't just magically become like our domestic dogs. With our wolfdogs, even some of the animals that only have 30 per cent or so wolf in them, they are considered low-content wolf dogs, even they come with some pretty major challenges. With more wolf content, you have so, like 'Nova', is a high-content wolfdog. He's upwards of 90 per cent approximately of wolf content. So, yes, he's social towards humans, but he behaves more like a socialized captive wolf than he does a domestic dog. He's a classic example of, just because you get them at a young age and they're well socialized and raised around humans, he does not act anything like a domestic dog. He's very far from it."
To learn more about their sanctuary, click here.
