Eleanor reacts to the dire wolves
This is our dog Eleanor. She’s a Great Pyrenees/German Shepherd mix, just over one year old. We rescued her last September — some heartless jerkbag had dumped her out out of a moving vehicle in a random neighborhood. Fortunately she was unhurt, but she needed a home, and here we are.
I love her more than I love most people, and it’s only by deliberate exercise of will that I’ve waited this long to put any pictures of her up on this blog. But now I have an excuse!
As you’ve probably heard by now, the company Colossal Biosciences is claiming to have brought back the dire wolf by editing a gray wolf genome. The story made the cover of Time, and you can read that popular article here.
I am not above staging cute pics of Eleanor, but in this case it wasn’t necessary: this is a completely un-staged photo of her watching a video about the dire wolves. Which is pretty crazy, because in six-plus months she’s hardly ever shown any interest in anything on a screen.
Do I have thoughts about the de-extinction of the dire wolf, and the looming de-extinctions of woolly mammoths and thylacines and whatnot? In general I’m all for it. I understand that some folks have principled objections, and that’s fine; like any human enterprise, none of this is going to be perfect, not in planning or execution or outcome; but ultimately these critters are extinct because of us, directly or indirectly, and if we can fix that, even approximately and imperfectly, I’m here for it. Also, I probably couldn’t stop it if I wanted to, so if I’m wrong, not much is gonna break.
Parting shot:
For an animal lover I’ve posted surprisingly little about pets — our box turtle Easty has made it in a couple of times, and our kitty Moe made a cameo appearance in this pig-head post. We’ll see if that holds now that I’m cohabitating with the very photogenic Mademoiselle Floueffeur de Floueff.
Source: https://svpow.com/2025/04/09/eleanor-reacts-to-the-dire-wolves/
