There has been much fuss and flapdoodle about a company called Colossal Biosciences that aims to use the wonders of modern genetic technology to call extinct species back from the other side of the rainbow bridge. Their latest scheme has been to ‘de-extinct’ an ice-age predator, the dire wolf, by inserting various genes copied from DNA retrieved from fossil dire wolves and inserting them into regular ordinary grey wolves. Critics say that the result isn’t so much a dire wolf but a duck with a hat on a designer dog. But those puppies do look adorable.
Others suspect that the enterprise isn’t so much driven by science as fantasy. It has not escaped our notice that one of the authors of a preprint announcing the. retrieval of dire wolf DNA is George R. R. Martin, the creator of the sprawling Game Of Thrones series of fantasy novels, which engendered a popular televisual adaptation, and in which fantasy animals called dire wolves play a small part. (For those who have never watched Game of Thrones, the plot is basically this — that people have sex a lot, and then die).
Nonetheless, Colossal plans to reanimate the dodo and the thylacine, and has made some progress with the woolly mammoth, though the results so far do seem — how would one put this? — petite.
To the many critics of Colossal, and there are many, I say — Pish! Tosh! and Fie! We wouldn’t be living in the world today if scientists didn’t go off on one occasionally and engage in projects that seemed to their less visionary contemporaries as dribblingly insane. They laughed at Galileo. Also, Tesla.
And then there’s that name: Colossal. It’s the kind of moniker that puts one in mind of fictional corporations such as ACME, or Stark Industries, often founded by ridiculously wealthy but genius-level megalomaniacs who live in James-Bond-style lairs beneath extinct volcanoes in Secret Locations.
Being as I really am a genius-level megalomaniac who lives in a James-Bond-style lair beneath an extinct volcano in a Secret Location (near Cromer) I can only view Colossal as a challenge. So, in the spirit of free-market capitalism, I have set up a rival. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Humungous Biosciences. Unlike many genius-level megalomaniacs who live in James-Bond-style lairs beneath extinct volcanoes in Secret Locations, however, I am not ridiculously wealthy. This means that the hand-pickled picked, top-flight scientists I’ve recruited for Humungous Biosciences have often had to resort to low-budget rather more creative solutions than those available to Colossal. But necessity is the mother of Frank Zappa, and they have achieved great things with squeegee bottles and miles of sticky-backed plastic the resources they have. Privation certainly hasn’t stopped them coming up with a raft of projects to bring back creatures from their unquiet graves, whether they want to be so reanimated or not. Some of their schemes are even possible using ordinary everyday household objects, so in the spirit of openness and citizen science, readers are encouraged to try out some of them at home (at their own risk). Here therefore is a selection from the latest call for funding prospectus.
Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius)
Take any ordinary everyday elephant — such as you might find around any home — and cover it in russet shag-pile carpet.
Woolly Rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis)
See ‘Woolly Mammoth’.
Giant Deer (Megaloceros giganteus)
Also known as the Irish Elk, this can be recreated by taking a red-deer stag and glueing very large branches to its head.
Glyptodont (Doedicurus sp.)
This gigantic relative of the armadillo can be recreated by covering a VW beetle with egg boxes.
Aurochs (Bos primigenius)
This legendarily ferocious progenitor of domestic cattle may be recreated by taking a large white bull; fattening it on testosterone, antibiotics, and supersized Happy Meals; and then shoving a scotch bonnet up its bottom.
Steller’s Sea Cow (Hydrodamalis gigas)
This project is still in the planning stages but prospective investors can get a good idea of what it would be like by watching me sea-bathing (from a safe distance), at least until the Sea Mammal Research Unit arrives.
Macrauchenia (Macrauchenia patachonica)
Macrauchenia was a litoptern, a group of extinct mammals only known from South America. Its claim to fame is that it was discovered by Charles Darwin. Macrauchenia looked like a large ungulate with a short trunk. It can be recreated by getting two short lengths of shower hose, glueing them together side-by-side, and attaching them to the forehead of any conveniently located llama. (Special orders only).
Giant Ground Sloth (Megatherium americanum)
There are no plans as yet to recreate this species. However, I’ve seen some of our scientists watching attentively and taking notes when I sit down to lunch.
Diprotodon (Diprotodon optatum)
This rhinoceros-sized cousin of the wombat can be recreated by feeding LSD to ordinary wombats. The wombats won’t actually be any bigger, but THEY’LL think they’re HUGE.
Aepyornis (Vorombe titan)
In a preliminary study, scientists have attempted to recreate the aepyornis, or elephant bird, by crossing an elephant with a bird. First results are not encouraging, producing elephants that can’t remember anything. They’re also lighter than air and tend to float away, endangering air traffic.
Giant Trilobite (Isotelus rex)
Efforts to recreate this 70-centimetre aquatic Ordovician monster are well advanced. The project involves glueing medieval plate armour to Roombas and letting them loose. The problem is that when placed in water they invariably explode. The Humungous Biosciences marketing department is thinking of rebranding this project as a recreation of the giant Carboniferous (and land-living) millipede Arthropleura.
Unicorns
Humungous Biosciences is also responding to the challenge, set by Colossal with the dire wolf, of creating animals that never existed in reality. The first project is the unicorn, which can easily be created by taking any pure white horse that has been reared and handled by virgins, and glueing an ice-cream cone to its forehead.
Ents
In ‘Project Treebeard’, scientists at Humungous Biosciences have been trying to create ents by splicing actin and myosin genes into banyan trees. The results have been encouraging, if disconcerting. The trees really do seem to move around, but only when nobody is looking.
FINALLY: there is a good reason for not making fun of projects at Colossus. If they are as keen on creating animals from the Game of Thrones franchise as they seem, there can really only be one aim: to create the gigantic fire-breathing flying dragons responsible for incinerating so many of the cast … and, presumably, the competition. That’s why we at Humungous Bioscences intend to get there first.
