Podcaster and media personality Joe Rogan has made his feelings clear about Colossal Biosciences 'bringing back' the dire wolf after the species was thought be extinct for 10,000 years.
The American biotech company has been accused of playing God by Rogan, who opened up about bringing dire wolves back from the dead after so many millennia of being gone.
While most will remember dire wolves as the colossal beasts from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books and its live-action Game of Thrones adaptation, they're unlike the other fictional creatures like White Walkers and dragons.
Dire wolves were thought to be the same size of the largest modern forms of gray wolf, living across the Americas from the during the Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene periods that range from 125,000–10,000 years ago.
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Despite seemingly being wiped out by the Quaternary extinction event that likely took away the dire wolf's prey, Colossal Biosciences has brought them back with a bang.
The Texas-based team used ancient DNA from two dire wolf samples, and over a course of months, a litter of three (Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi) were born with the dire wolf's signature white coat. Colossal Biosciences has used similar methods to create a 'wooly' mouse with similar traits to the extinct wooly mammoth, but speaking on his The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Rogan has accused CEO Ben Lamm of unnaturally meddling in the order of the world. Sitting down with Lamm, Rogan said: "If I was going to grill you, if I was a reporter, it'd be, what right do you have to invade the natural process of nature and to inject your curiosity and your ability to create new life?"
Saying that the human race has become the apex predator on the planet, Lamm referred to how we overfish and overhunt, which leads to the loss of species like the dire wolf. Defending the resurrection of the dire wolf, Lamm continued: "Every time we cut down the rainforest, every time we drink hydrogenated water, we are playing God on some level...We humans are very good at changing the natural flow of things."
When shown photographs of the dire wolves, a stunned Rogan said, "Ladies and gentlemen prepare yourself cuz this is truly f**king crazy." He then called them 'nature's cute little murderers'.
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Lamm goes on to explain that while the experiment was a success, there are no plans to reintroduce the trio into the wild. Still, he admitted that Colossal Biosciences wants to create 'two or three more'.
Although Colossal Biosciences has previously clapped back at comparisons to Jurassic Park, it continues to be compared to Michael Crichton's sci-fi story.
Others have been critical and maintain it's still a case of playing God. On X, one skeptic complained: "Hot take but I don’t think the dire wolf’s de-extinction is something we should be celebrating. There are countless works of fiction that warn about the dangers of humans playing god, but we never listen."
Another added: "Humans need to stop playing god. Over 99% of all species is extinct. We don’t need to create another problem."
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However, a third concluded: "Lies. They spliced gray wolf DNA to mimic dire wolves—it’s not the same. You can play God all you want, but you’ll never be God."
The question is, what will Colossal Biosciences bring back next? As long as its not the velociraptor, we'll be happy.