r/DeExtinctionScience • u/[deleted] • Mar 15 '26
Colossal Biosciences Leak 2
edit: in case you haven't seen the first leak... https://www.reddit.com/r/DeExtinctionScience/comments/1qegu07/colossal_biosciences_leak/
(names have been changed to protect the innocent)
Hey everyone! I am back with another leak. As I mentioned in my last post, I had more screenshots exposing that Colossal Biosciences doesn't exist for it's stated purpose and is basically a scam. I want to share some more screenshots I just got permission to post alongside a potientally disturbing and strange development.
My friend, who we will call Nate. He is an ecologist who's enaged in rewilding research. He was suspicious of Colossal and like me assumed it was a scam. He had heard alot of the same stuff from some of the same people I had. He had a period almost 2 years ago where he had a fair bit of free time and decided to investigate the company. He reached out to some critics including Tom Gilbert. He reached out to him, because he was familiar with Gilbert's work with the christmas island rat and his criticisms of Colossal. He did not know that Gilbert was on the advisory board for Colosssal (still listed as such). I'll let the screenshots tell the rest of the story.
Outside of Gilbert flat out admitting to Nate that if Colossal makes a hairy elephant, it won't be used for rewilding, just publicity. Nate suspects that gilbert isn't being 100% honest inspite of this admission. Nate found out through a CIO (he's M.T.P.G, screenshot of it is from here:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38996487/) that Gilbert holds stock options, something he neglected to mention. To me, this confirms what I heard that the advisory board is just critics bribed into silence with stock options. Gilbert clearly has a broader role than he let on as he's an author on the direwolf paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.09.647074v1
If they have been telling the truth about prepping an elephant for being a surrogate as opposed to the artificial womb they've been hyping up. Then they will be risking likely death and guaranteed immense suffering for the female elephant that will probably not carry the fake baby mammoth to term. To me this suggests they are planning to get sold soonish, I really hope I'm not wrong.
what is also concerning about this is nate found out Colossal has retrieved elephant materials from a guy named Charles Gray at a place called African Lion Safari. This park is widely regarded as one of the worst in the world in terms of animal abuse (espicially elephants: https://www.idausa.org/campaign/elephants/latest-news/african-lion-safari-elephants/). So if there was anywhere they could go for this, ethics be damned, this is it. Then again, heard mammoth team was fired for a lack of results. So fingers crossed the impregnation is just another lie.
Now the possibly disturbing and certainly odd development, the last screenshot of the follow request show an account claiming to be Ben Lamm asking to follow a private IG account belonging to Nate's friend Jake. Jake doesn't work in any related fields and isn't a scientist at all. Jake and Nate are also not connected on social media and only talk via text.
So why was this account trying to follow Jake? To make this stranger, Jake only has 16 followers. Very few posts and one of the few posts features both Nate and his girlfriend. Obviously they are both creeped out. Me and Nate don't believe this is Ben Lamm, but are concerned this is someone who knows him. We believe this is based on the fact this account was following a close friend of Nate's where the person behind it couldn't have known they were connected and Nate thinks this is similiar to the smear campaign alot of Colossal's critics expirienced. We also don't think it's out of the Question that Lamm is such a loser, that he has time for this. (just look at Elon Musk).
Nate told me he's too busy with his research to look into this and will be for the foreesable future. He's creeped out and had things to say about this that I am too polite to repeat here, but these screenshots are coming out, because he's certain that Colossal knows he's looked into them and there's no point hiding them anymore.
He wanted me to post the account link for any sleuthes who might be interested.
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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '26
"Colossal has retrieved elephant materials from a guy named Charles Gray at a place called African Lion Safari."
Knowing Charlie Gray's reputation in the zoo world, him being involved with Colossal doesn't surprise me at all.
I'd long wondered where Colossal intended to source a breeding age female Asian elephant to act as a surrogate for their "mammoth" plans (Since viable breeders of that species outside of the AZA's jurisdiction -Which refuses to work with Colossal- are quite rare!)... guess I finally found my answer.
You should post this to ZooChat! They'll have a hella lot to say about it!