Biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences said this week that they successfully brought back dire wolves, an animal that went extinct roughly 10,000 years ago — and the hosts of “The View” are not loving this idea.
According to ABC News, the company extracted dire wolf DNA from existing fossils, and then combined it with a close relative. Colossal’s chief scientist Beth Shapiro told the outlet, “We’ve taken a gray wolf genome, a gray wolf cell, which is already genetically 99.5% identical to dire wolves because they’re very closely related. And we’ve edited those cells at multiple places in its DNA sequence to contain the dire wolf version of the DNA.”
The company reportedly has hopes of resurrecting the woolly mammoth and the dodo bird as well, prompting “The View” moderator Whoopi Goldberg to simply ask: “Why?!” (She’s into the company’s idea to bring back the Tasmanian tiger, though).
“Now, are you on board with this? Or did the movie ‘Jurassic Park’ tell you what was happening and you wondered why the hell are we doing this?!” she asked her co-hosts on Tuesday’s episode of “The View.”
“I don’t like it,” Sunny Hostin quickly responded. “It’s giving Jurassic Park, for me, and it’s like, that didn’t end well. The dinosaurs came back and ate the people, so I don’t like it.”
When Hostin noted that dire wolves “can tear off your face,” Whoopi quipped back that “so can we.” But at that, host Alyssa Farah Griffin chimed in with the physical qualities of the animals, which can grow to be quite large.
“All three live in a 2000-acre nature preserve at an undisclosed location,” she noted. “So they’re not even telling us where the dire wolves are!”
“Yeah, maybe because they’re dangerous and they can take your face off!” Hostin repeated.
Meanwhile, host Sara Haines took issue with the fact that the purported resurrection came from a private company, seemingly “just to show they can.”
“If it were for education, or research or there was a purpose to doing it…” she started. But at that, host Ana Navarro cut her off, arguing that Elon Musk and Donald Trump have ensured that would be impossible.
“Who’s going t0 fund it? They’ve cut all of research and education!” she yelled.
“The View” airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.
