Joe Rogan Experience #2301 - Ben Lamm

By assembling fragmented ancient DNA, aligning it with a close living relative, and editing key genes that control traits like hair, fat, size, and skull shape, Colossal can create living animals that are functionally equivalent to extinct species (e.g., dire wolf–like canids from gray wolf cells).

Colossal is cloning critically endangered red wolves from blood samples, engineering marsupials to resist cane toad toxins, building population genomic maps for bison, and open‑sourcing tools so zoos and governments can clone or genetically rescue species without invasive tissue sampling.

For mammoths, thylacines, and wolves, Colossal works with ecologists, indigenous groups, and governments to model how restored predators or megafauna would affect vegetation, prey species, disease dynamics, and landscape processes—aiming to replicate lost ecological roles rather than simply resurrect “cool animals.”

Lamm argues that speciation is a human construct with inconsistent definitions (genetic, reproductive, geographic, morphological), so insisting a gene‑edited mammoth or dire wolf “isn’t really one” is more philosophy than science—what matters ecologically is function, behavior, and phenotype.

In one example, U.S. officials proposed spending 5–6 years and ~$22M to study whether wolf cloning was possible—even after Colossal had already produced cloned red wolves and offered to provide more animals and tech for free—illustrating how regulation and politics can lag far behind capability.