The giant wolves from Game of Thrones can create a carnage

After thousands of years in the gloomy kingdom of death, they are now allowed to run freely in their natural ecosystem. About the same, the American biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences presented its three adorable creations Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi, who met the public’s more or less interested looks in early April.

The company’s research manager Beth Shapiro claimed that the kids were the first successful examples that extinct species can be revived. What we got to see would represent three giant wolves, Canis Diruswhich really died about 12,000 years ago.

Thanks to Modern genetic engineering Were they now back on earth, in an enclosure in a secret place. Foundation of a wolf female.

A number of stingy biologists and other scientists quickly objected that it was rather Ordinary wolves, which have received some minor gene changes to look different. For example, white fur, different ears and maybe a larger body. The body size remains to be discovered as the three small giant wolves grow up.

Wolf by the way? When the giant wolf The entire genetic mass was mapped from fossil 2021 It emerged that it was separated from the wolf of life’s family tree almost six million years ago. The giant wolf is therefore much closer with, for example, the Schakalen and the African wild dog than with today’s wolf. Why had the company Colossal not chosen to start from any of these animals instead, the critics wondered?

One that not hung up on such small things was the American politician Doug Burgum, who according to Washington Post Had met the lead for Colossal a week before the presentation of the giant wolves.

He is the Republican and the minister who is now responsible for the large country’s natural resources and national parks.

« If we are saddened that a species die out, we have now had the chance to recreate it, » he then enthusiastically In a speech a week after the presentation.

He then stabbed a number of species that the audience might want to recreate. For example, the Dront. And the letter pigeon (Carrier Pigeon). But there he probably meant the hiking pigeon (Passenger Pigeon), which was a very common bird in North America before. It was extinct in a short time in the early 1900s due to extensive logging and hunting.

« Choose your favorite species and call Colossal, instead of collecting money for animals to be put on the list of endangered species. »

That list Think He does not. It is too extensive and must be severely cleared. A species that end up there never comes from there – much like Hotel California, he said in the speech. Without problematizing more about the reason why it is so.

A few days later, the Trump administration presented one amendment in the law to protect threatened speciesEndangered Species Act, which was signed by Richard Nixon in 1973.

They want to change the meaning of the word « damage », so that it no longer includes destruction and damage to the species’ living environments. It is the most important cause of today’s rapid loss of animals, plants and other organisms.

So it does not really go together with the meaning of the law, you might think.

On the other hand, it goes together with the ambition to be able to increase the pace of activities such as forestry, mining and drilling after even more oil without extra hassle.

And if we find that we then lack some species, we can recreate them. Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi have taught us that.

The question is where to live.

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