(Slate) – We shouldn’t be celebrating “de-extinction.” We should be focused on the species that are currently in danger.

What we’re really looking at, it seems, are gray wolves modified to be dire wolves of George R.R. Martin’s books rather than living, breathing replicas of the actual prehistoric carnivores that hunted bison, horses, camels, and baby mammoths in packs during the Pleistocene. They look like the animal actors on the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones. Given that Martin is both an investor in and adviser to Colossal, it feels awfully convenient that the company is heavily promoting wolves that are the spitting image of those in his fantasy series. The canids might be “dire wolves” in the fictional sense, but they are not literally dire wolves. (Read More)