My early grey wolf sightings were through glass.
Wolves tease us that we know them. The wagging tail, the emotive greetings, the games with sticks – all so familar, thanks to their highly successful domestic descendant. But there is a restless edge, an aloof defiance. Wolves mesmorise, terrify and charm. They can be appallingly difficult neighbours, a whisper in old folklore, or present a humbling and exquisite beauty. We want to believe that they are symbols of wilderness, yet they confound us again by scavenging rubbish in Romanian towns.
I’ve seen a lot of wolves in the wild. I’ve read their travels by the nervous fidgets of nearby elk. I have followed their footprints through ancient forests. I’ve seen how they adapt: from sleek and lean under the abrasive Gujarati sun –
– to the obvious clothing for Canadian winters.
Wolf genes remain a puzzle. The degree to which grey wolves can be neatly divided into subspecies, or even viewed as a sort of ‘aggregate species’ with messy hybridising edges, remains extremely controversial. They live, and we ponder, as humans are wont to do.
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I also saw my first dire wolf through glass.
Just bones in London’s Natural History Museum, as befits the extinct; a patchy postcard from a colder, wilder epoch. This dire wolf may have heard sabre-tooth cats snarl – we will never know. But its species left its genome behind, and from that scientists now know that it is only a very remote cousin to any living species of wolf. Perhaps we should rename them.
It is their current title – dire wolf – which has lit up the world’s media this month. A miracle was shouted from the rooftops: the dire wolf’s extinction has been reversed! Gorgeous white puppies on show. First living, breathing dire wolves in 12,000 years are here!
Only it wasn’t true. It wasn’t even close to being true. As Indian molecular biologist Arun Panchapakesan explains in this article, what actually happened was a company tweaked a tiny part of the grey wolf’s genetic code so that some grey wolf pups would very, very slightly mimic dire wolves. He estimates that the changes are about 0.02% of what is necessary for a full replica. And even at 100%, it would still be a masquarade. The dire wolf cannot be brought back. Not by pretending, nor by cloning – fossil DNA is simply too degraded.
While scientists across the globe scrambled to correct the narrative, the company made a second, even more explosive claim: the supposed cloning of four red wolves. This shy, long-nosed, extremely endangered canid is native to the swamps and woods of the south eastern USA. The company actually cloned Texan coyotes, but its claim to be contributing to red wolf conservation has been accused of undermining the real efforts.
A genuine red wolf, in Knoxville Zoo
It is all very frustrating, but such is often the way with canids. The human aspect interests me, however. One of the greatest joys in nature is to hold a fossil, using science and imagination to learn about Earth’s past. We need to play this game – not just for the glorious thrill of wonder, but to learn how small our modernity is against the grand backdrop of time, and to see the foundation from which our current ecosystems have grown.
Researching dire wolves is fascinating. But trying to actually breathe life into one? Apart from the distraction from real conservation and the simple fact that a dire wolf without its ecosystem would have no meaningful context, there are also ethical concerns about cloned canids – it is hard to see how such an unnatural arrival into the world cannot harm their welfare.
In the meantime, grey wolves run on through the woods, deserts and plains, mercifully unaware of the circus.
Grey wolf tracks in Poland
A Walk with Wildlife 
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