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Thanks to Jayson for suggesting this week's topic, the new "dire wolf"! Also, possibly the same but maybe a different Jayson is the youngest member of the Cedar Springs Homeschool Science Olympiad Team, who are on their way to the Science Olympiad Nationals! They're almost to their funding goal if you can help out. Further reading: Dire wolves and woolly mammoths: Why scientists are worried about de-extinction The story of dire wolves goes beyond de-extinction These fluffy white wolves explain everything wrong with bringing back extinct animals Dire Wolves Split from Living Canids 5.7 Million Years Ago: Study This prehistoric monster is the largest dog that ever lived and was able to crush bone with its deadly teeth – but was wiped out by cats "Dire wolf" puppies: An artist's interpretation of the dire wolf (red coats) and grey wolves (grey coats) [taken from fourth link above]: The "mammoth fur" mice: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. This week we have a suggestion from Jayson, who wants to learn about the so-called “new” dire wolf. Before we get started, a big shout-out to another Jayson, or maybe the same one I’m honestly not sure, who is the youngest member of the Cedar Springs Homeschool Science Olympiad Team. They’ve advanced to the nationals! There’s a link in the show notes if you want to donate a little to help them with their travel expenses. This is a local team to me so I’m especially proud of them, and not to brag, but I’ve actually met Jayson and his sister and they’re both smart, awesome kids. Now, let’s find out about this new dire wolf that was announced last month. In early April 2025, a biotech company called Colossal Biosciences made the extraordinary claim that they had produced three dire wolf puppies. Since dire wolves went extinct around 13,000 years ago, this is a really big deal. Before we get into the details of Colossal’s claim, let’s refresh our memory about the dire wolf. We talked about it in episode 207, so I’ve taken a lot of my information from that episode. According to a 2021 study published in Nature, 5.7 million years ago, the shared ancestor of dire wolves and many other canids lived in Eurasia. Sea levels were low enough that the Bering land bridge, also called Beringia, connected the very eastern part of Asia to the very western part of North America. One population of this canid migrated into North America while the rest of the population stayed in Asia. The two populations evolved separately until the North American population developed into what we now call dire wolves. Meanwhile, the Eurasian population developed into many of the modern species we know today, and some of those eventually migrated into North America too. By the time the gray wolf and coyote populated North America, a little over one million years ago, the dire wolf was so distantly related to it that even when their territories overlapped, the species avoided each other and didn’t interbreed. We’ve talked about canids in many previous episodes, including how readily they interbreed with each other, so for the dire wolf to remain genetically isolated, it was obviously not closely related at all to other canids at that point. The dire wolf looked a lot like a grey wolf, but researchers now think that was due more to convergent evolution than to its relationship with wolves. Both lived in the same habitats: plains, grasslands, and forests. The dire wolf was slightly taller on average than the modern grey wolf, which can grow a little over three feet tall at the shoulder, or 97 cm, but it was much heavier and more solidly built. It wouldn’t have been able to run nearly as fast, but it could attack and kill larger animals. The dire wolf went extinct around 13,000 years ago, but Colossal now claims that they’re no longer extinct. There are now exactly three dire wolves in the world, two males and a female,