De-Extincted” Dire Wolf Pups Are Growing Up | Beth Shapiro
About The Episode
In 2024, scientists claimed they achieved the unthinkable: the birth of dire wolf pups, reviving a species that vanished thousands of years ago. Now, those pups are growing—and changing. Evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro reveals what it’s like to watch these predators mature into modern beasts.
For more, check out the extended interview with Beth Shapiro.
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BETH: it was the first time that I'd been in a closure with Romulus and Remus and felt a little nervous. So, they are definitely way more wolf-like in their behavior than they were even five, six months ago, they really don't want to get close to you. But they are different from each other. It used to be, in the very beginning, Romulus was more likely to come up to you and hang out and see you and he has become really like, "I don't trust you. I don't like you," and he's really big. They're about 115 pounds now and so it's a little bit-
HAKEEM: Oh, wow.
BETH: I'm 115 pounds so this is not something that I'm very excited about hanging out with. And so, you walk in there and you think, "Oh, they are dire wolves, I am probably not supposed to be here." But when I was there a few months ago, Khaleesi still had been in that puppy phase and she wasn't yet in the large expansive enclosure with her brothers, she was still kept a little bit separate from them. We've since started to introduce them and that's going really well but I walked right in and the first thing she does is jump up on you and put her giant, giant wolf paws on your shoulder and she started chewing on my collar and I'm thinking, "Oh."
HAKEEM: Oh, boy. Oh, man. Those are fangs right next to your neck. You're a brave researcher.
BETH: Yeah. So, she, at some point, will have more of these behaviors but she's still a puppy, she's lovely though. And it's so inspiring to see this. You spend so much of your time in the lab staring at a dish, staring at things you can't see to actually be able to see these wolves, to see the dire wolves running around in this secure and expansive ecological preserve has just been ...
HAKEEM: That is amazing.
BETH: I don't know, it makes me emotional just thinking about it.