Dire wolves are back, baby! Sort of. For the past few years I’ve been seeing article pop up about this company that’s trying to bring the woolly mammoth back to life. As elephants are my favorite animals, I also love the woolly mammoth by extension. I’ve also been fascinated by the concept of cloning and DNA splicing since I was a child. The first time I read The House of the Scorpion, I wondered why we couldn’t just clone people. Scientists at Texas A&M cloned a cat and then there’s Dolly the sheep, so why not people? There are specific answers to that but I won’t get into it right now because I don’t remember and I don’t feel like looking it up again but you can if you feel so inclined. I figure God doesn’t want us doing it so He put some safeguards in us on a molecular level. Or maybe there’s a scientist out there who figured out how to do it but was too afraid of what world governments would do with access to cloning technology so they decided to scrap the idea. Either way, it’s a fascinating subject that’s becoming more science and less science fiction as the years go on.
Jeston is a former student of Texas A&M, the author of the Jesse Granger: Bushranger series, and an avid wildlife conservation advocate.