Game of Clones: The Fantasy of De-Extinction

Romulus. Remus. Khaleesi. No, this isn’t the start of a Game of Thrones reboot - it’s the names given to three genetically modified puppies born in a lab and hailed as “de-extincted” dire wolves. Headlines call it “magic.” Scientists call it “progress.” George R.R. Martin cried. But the real tragedy here isn’t the tearful joy of a fantasy author - it’s the quiet, unchallenged exploitation behind this biotech vanity project.

Because let’s be honest: these aren’t dire wolves. They’re designer dogs.

Despite the hype, what Colossal Biosciences has produced is not a return from extinction, but a Frankenstein hybrid made using grey wolves, domestic dogs, and a pinch of ancient DNA. Even the experts are saying it: “genetically modified grey wolves,” “hybrids,” “not actually dire wolves.” But let’s say they were - would that make it any better?

Fiction Dressed as Science

The whole spectacle is dressed in nostalgia and pop culture references. Dire wolves are trendy thanks to television. Their supposed rebirth makes for a good headline. Add a celebrity investor and a private 2,000-acre preserve and it all starts to feel more like Jurassic Park meets Silicon Valley than science in service of the planet.

But beneath the PR gloss, animals are being treated as nothing more than raw material. Cells taken from grey wolves. Eggs from dogs. Surrogates implanted with edited embryos and forced to give birth by caesarean section - just to produce something that looks a bit like a creature that disappeared 10,000 years ago.

That’s not conservation. That’s exploitation.

The Illusion of Emancipation

This isn’t about saving species. It’s not about ecological restoration. And it certainly isn’t about respecting animals. It's about power - over life, death, and genetics. It's about humans playing god, then applauding themselves for it.

These puppies weren’t born free. They were made. Designed. Owned. Destined to spend their lives on a private facility, monitored and managed like bio-tech exhibits. They aren’t ambassadors for nature - they're billboards for a billion-dollar company.

The irony? Dire wolves once roamed freely, powerful and wild. Now their "successors" are laboratory products with brand consultants and cultural advisers.

Consent? Never Heard of It.

Every step of this process is soaked in supremacism. No animal volunteered to be harvested, dissected, genetically rewritten or used as a surrogate. No dog signed up to carry cloned embryos. And the resulting wolves? Created for human fascination, not for their own sake.

They are not ends in themselves. They are means to a marketing campaign.

Extinction Isn’t a Glitch to Patch

Scientists admit the ancient DNA was too degraded to clone. So they tweaked a living genome until it looked “close enough.” Just 20 edits to 14 genes out of 19,000. That's all it took to create a wolf that’s a little bigger, a little whiter, and conveniently more telegenic.

But calling this “de-extinction” is like gluing feathers on a lizard and calling it a phoenix.

Extinction is not a challenge to reverse - it’s a warning. A symptom of exploitation, habitat destruction, and indifference. If your response to extinction is to recreate the victim in a lab while continuing business as usual, you haven’t solved the problem. You’ve monetised it.

What About the Animals Still Here?

While the world gawks at faux-dinosaurs in fur coats, real species are being pushed to the edge - and beyond. Forests are vanishing. Oceans are dying. Billions of animals are used, discarded, and erased every year. But apparently, they’re not exciting enough. Not mythical enough. Not marketable enough.

Conservation isn’t camera-friendly. But cloning? That gets headlines. That gets investment.

Colossal has already made moves to clone red wolves, allegedly to “increase genetic diversity.” Sounds noble, until you remember that red wolves exist right now - and their biggest threat isn’t their genetics. It’s bullets, bulldozers, and bureaucrats.

No gene-editing kit will fix that.

Romanticising Control

When people cry over lab-created wolves and call it “magic,” what they’re really celebrating is control. The power to recreate life. The thrill of resurrection. It flatters the human ego: we’re not just part of nature - we can rewrite it.

But justice for animals isn’t found in gene sequences and staged photo ops. It’s found in rejecting their use entirely. It’s found in recognising that they’re not ours to own, breed, edit, or replicate. Not when they’re alive, and certainly not when they’re gone.

The Future Isn’t a Zoo of the Past

This obsession with “bringing back” extinct animals is a distraction. It encourages a mindset where nothing is truly lost, where destruction is temporary and consequences can be reversed with enough money and tech.

It's a lie.

And worse - it normalises the very mindset that caused the extinction in the first place: that animals are resources. That we can fix ecological collapse without addressing the industries and ideologies responsible for it.

You want to honour dire wolves? Stop making replicas. Stop using animals as experiments. And start protecting the beings we’re still lucky enough to share the planet with - while they’re still here.

Because extinction is forever. And no amount of genetic tinkering will change that.