This isn’t just a bad name. It’s a warning sign.

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I wasn’t even doomscrolling when I found out. I was on the couch with my wife Anna and the kids, half-watching cartoons, half-answering emails, when she looked up from her phone and said, “Hey, someone brought back a dire wolf and named it Khaleesi.”

I thought she was reading The Onion. She wasn’t.

And now I can’t stop thinking about it.

Yes, this technically falls under the “tech” umbrella — synthetic biology, gene editing, all that next-gen science stuff. But it also feels like we’ve officially entered Jurassic Park territory. And not in the fun, welcome-to-the-gift-shop way. More like: “Hold onto your butts.”

Dire Wolves Are Back. And So Is the Plot of Every 90s Sci-Fi Thriller.

Colossal Biosciences, the startup already working on reviving the woolly mammoth, just announced they’ve successfully bioengineered three living dire wolf hybrids. They aren’t 1:1 copies of the Ice Age originals, but they’ve got enough dire wolf DNA spliced in to count.

They’re being raised in a “private, 2,000-acre facility” somewhere in the northern U.S., because of course they are. That’s the first line in every sci-fi script where something goes very, very wrong.

Dire wolves were huge. Around 25% bigger than modern gray wolves, with crushing jaws, thick bones, and a top-tier predator profile. They weren’t cute fantasy pets — they were Ice Age killers.

But sure, bring them back. What could possibly go wrong? (Insert Jeff Goldblum eyebrow raise here.)

And Then They Named One Khaleesi

Two of the wolves are named Romulus and Remus — a nod to the legendary twin brothers raised by a wolf in Roman mythology. Totally fair. Classy even.

The third? Khaleesi.

If your pop culture brain just short-circuited, same. That’s Daenerys Targaryen’s honorific title in Game of Thrones — and she has nothing to do with wolves. She rides dragons. She lives in deserts. She is from House Targaryen, which, as the spinoff series screams at us, is the House of the Dragon.

The actual dire wolves in Game of Thrones belong to the Stark family. You know, the ones who live in the snow and literally find a litter of wolf pups in episode one? Ghost, Nymeria, Summer, Grey Wind, Shaggydog, Lady — those were real dire wolf names in-universe. Why not pick one of those?

Colossal says they talked to George R.R. Martin, Kit Harington, and Sophie Turner before naming the wolves. Which honestly makes it worse. It wasn’t random. It was a deliberate branding choice. A merchandising move in the making.

It’s like if InGen had brought back the velociraptor and called it Pikachu.

We’re Not Asking the Right Questions

This isn’t just about a bad name. It’s about what it represents: the fact that we’ve pulled a predator out of extinction, and the headline is basically, “Haha look, a Game of Thrones reference!”

What happened to the serious conversations? The ethics? The ecological impact? The why?

Why not start with species that serve an actual function in ecosystems today? Or ones on the brink of extinction that could benefit from genetic rescue?

Why dire wolves?

My gut says it’s because they’re cool. Big, dramatic, meme-ready animals that tech founders can say they brought back to life. The kind of creature that gets attention. Maybe even funding. Maybe even a streaming deal.

And the second we treat an apex predator like a collectible, we’re not in a lab anymore. We’re in the visitor center. Right before the power goes out. Right before someone says, “We spared no expense.”

Trevor Score: ∞/10 — Because This Feels Infinitely Like a Bad Idea

This isn’t a formal review — it’s just how I felt reading this story. A gut-check from someone who loves tech, but also loves not living in a reboot of every cautionary sci-fi movie ever made.

🧬 Science & Tech: 100/10

Let’s be honest — the tech is incredible. CRISPR editing, ancient DNA reconstruction, splicing Ice Age genetics into living canines? That’s Nobel Prize-level science fiction come to life. It’s wild. It’s genius. It’s pure awe. We’ve reached the point where “de-extinction” is not just possible, it’s actually happening. On paper, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

😱 Scare Factor: 100/10

And yet — I hate it. Not because the science isn’t sound — because it is. And that’s the terrifying part. We’re opening doors that might not close again. And the fact that we’re doing it while quoting Game of Thrones? That’s not just unserious — it’s reckless. How long before someone at Colossal says, “Okay but hear me out… triceratops”?

If these numbers don’t seem to make sense to you, same. I was never great at math. But then again, neither is cloning ancient predators for fun.

Final Verdict: Just Because We Can Doesn’t Mean We Should

They brought back a dire wolf. That’s real. That happened. And they named it after a fantasy dragon queen who has nothing to do with wolves. That happened too.

And that tells me everything I need to know about where we’re headed.

The science? Incredible. The intentions? Unclear. The tone? All wrong.

We’ve stepped into a future that used to belong to fiction — and we’re doing it with way too much confidence and not nearly enough caution.

And if history — or Spielberg — has taught us anything, it’s that nature finds a way.

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Big thanks to Anna for showing me this while the kids climbed all over us. She always spots the monsters before I do.