Colossal Biosciences said it cloned red wolves. Is it for real?
Colossal Biosciences announced it has cloned four red wolves, one of the most endangered species on the planet, but scientists who work directly with the animals say they were blindsided by the news. The announcement raises serious questions about transparency, scientific credibi...
Colossal Biosciences, the Dallas-based de-extinction startup, dropped a bombshell alongside its splashy dire wolf announcement: it had quietly cloned four red wolves without telling the scientists and conservationists who have spent careers trying to save them. MIT Technology Review sent a reporter into the fog-covered marshlands of eastern Texas in January 2026 to investigate, and what emerged is a story that is equal parts fascinating and troubling. The red wolf research community, which is small and tightly connected, had no idea this was coming.
Why This Matters
The red wolf, Canis rufus, is the most endangered wolf species on Earth, and any genuine breakthrough in its conservation would be enormous news. But Colossal's announcement landed without peer-reviewed publication, without coordination with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums captive breeding program, and without transparency about where these four cloned animals are even being kept. When a company announces cloned animals of a critically endangered species and the ecologist who trapped the source animals for DNA says he did not know clones were on the table, that is not a conservation partnership. That is a PR strategy.
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The Full Story
The red wolf has one of the darkest conservation histories of any North American species. European settlers waged what federal researchers once described as a 200-year war against wolves, and the wolf lost decisively. By 1980, Canis rufus was declared extinct in the wild, surviving only in a managed captive breeding program. The story should have ended there.
But it did not. Starting in 2018, scientists confirmed that some coyote populations along the Gulf Coast of eastern Texas were carrying relict red wolf genes. These animals, taller and longer-legged than standard coyotes with faint cinnamon coats, became known in conservation circles as ghost wolves. They are living proof that red wolf genetics never fully vanished, just went underground.
Tanner Broussard, a master's student at McNeese State University, grew up watching coyotes on his parents' ranch in southwest Louisiana. When he learned those animals might carry red wolf ancestry, it redirected his entire academic path. After a seven-year break from college, he returned in 2023, and by the time he started his master's program he was already supplying field data to conservation researchers. In January 2026, MIT Technology Review's reporter accompanied Broussard on pre-dawn trapping runs across levee-top roads east of Houston, searching for ghost wolves in terrain that still holds the genetic memory of a species the government once declared gone.
Then Colossal arrived. The company made global headlines in early 2025 when it claimed to have produced two dire wolf cubs, named Romulus and Remus, described by Time Magazine's Jeffrey Kluger as 6-month-old animals nearly 4 feet long and weighing approximately 80 pounds. Critics immediately questioned whether genetically modified gray wolves with some tweaked traits could genuinely be called dire wolves, given that the original species went extinct more than 12,000 years ago. But folded into that same announcement was the claim that Colossal had cloned four red wolves, and that news hit the conservation community like a sucker punch.
Joey Hinton, an ecologist and one of Broussard's academic advisors, had personally trapped the wild canids whose DNA Colossal used to create those clones. He did not know clones were being produced. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which runs the official red wolf captive breeding program, had no advance notice either. Some of Hinton's former research partners had been collaborating with Colossal, but the cloning work was apparently kept off the table in those conversations. The location of the four cloned red wolves remains undisclosed. The scientific methodology has not been published in any peer-reviewed journal that the conservation community can scrutinize.
That opacity is the central problem. Conservation science depends on collaboration, data sharing, and independent verification. A company that announces cloned animals of a critically endangered species while keeping the animals secret and the methods unpublished is not operating by those standards.
Key Details
- Colossal Biosciences announced 4 cloned red wolves alongside its dire wolf announcement in early 2025.
- The red wolf was declared extinct in the wild in 1980.
- Ghost wolves with confirmed red wolf genetics were identified along the Gulf Coast in 2018.
- Tanner Broussard is a master's student at McNeese State University studying these populations as of 2023.
- Colossal's dire wolf cubs Romulus and Remus weighed approximately 80 pounds at 6 months old, per Time Magazine's April 7, 2025 report by Jeffrey Kluger.
- Ecologist Joey Hinton trapped the source canids whose DNA was used for the red wolf clones but was not told cloning was planned.
- The Association of Zoos and Aquariums captive breeding program leadership had no knowledge of the cloning project before the announcement.
- The location of the 4 cloned red wolves has not been disclosed publicly.
What's Next
The scientific community will likely push hard for Colossal to publish its red wolf cloning methodology in a peer-reviewed journal before the end of 2026, and the company's credibility depends heavily on whether it can deliver that transparency. Researchers like Broussard and Hinton will continue documenting ghost wolf populations in eastern Texas, work that matters regardless of what Colossal does, because those wild genetics represent a conservation resource that no lab can replicate. Watch for whether the Association of Zoos and Aquariums formally engages or publicly distances itself from Colossal's program, as that institutional response will signal whether any real collaboration is possible.
How This Compares
Colossal's red wolf announcement fits a pattern the company has established: pair a scientifically contested flagship project with a more grounded conservation claim to broaden its credibility. The dire wolf project, covered extensively by AI Agents Daily news and mainstream outlets alike, was always going to draw skepticism because the species has been extinct for over 12,000 years and the genetic distance from modern canids is enormous. Calling a genetically modified gray wolf a dire wolf is a branding decision as much as a scientific one.
The red wolf clone announcement is different and in some ways more concerning, because red wolves are a recently extinct wild species with active federal conservation programs and a living scientific community. Compare this to Colossal's thylacine project, where Australian researchers have been cautiously collaborative and the timeline is openly discussed. The red wolf situation looks nothing like that. It looks like a company mining an existing conservation crisis for announcement value without building the scientific relationships that would make the work meaningful.
What Colossal is doing is not without precedent in biotech. Companies routinely announce results before peer review, especially when chasing investor attention and media cycles. But de-extinction claims involving endangered species carry a particular responsibility because they can distort funding priorities, public perception, and policy decisions that affect real conservation programs running on tight budgets.
FAQ
Q: What is a red wolf clone and why does it matter? A: A clone is a genetic copy of an existing animal, created in a lab using DNA from a source specimen. If Colossal's red wolf clones are verified, they would represent the first cloned individuals of Canis rufus, the most endangered wolf species in the world. Whether those clones can contribute to wild population recovery is a separate and much harder question that scientists have not yet answered.
Q: Did scientists already know Colossal was cloning red wolves? A: No. Ecologist Joey Hinton, who trapped the canids Colossal used for DNA, says he did not know clones were being produced. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which runs the official red wolf captive breeding program, also had no advance notice. The announcement came as a surprise to much of the red wolf research community.
Q: Are ghost wolves the same as red wolves? A: Ghost wolves are wild coyote-like animals along the Gulf Coast of eastern Texas that carry remnant red wolf genetics, confirmed by scientists in 2018. They are not purebred red wolves, but they represent a living genetic reservoir that survived the species' official extinction declaration in 1980. Researchers like Tanner Broussard at McNeese State University are still actively studying and trapping these animals.
Colossal Biosciences has built a media machine capable of dominating the news cycle, but the scientific substance behind its red wolf claims will ultimately be judged by the research community it bypassed on the way to the announcement. The ghost wolves of eastern Texas will still be out there in the fog, trotting across levee roads at dawn, whether or not any company's press release can match their staying power. Subscribe to the AI Agents Daily weekly newsletter for daily updates on AI agents, tools, and automation.
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