QAA Podcast - De-Extinction Nightmare Part 1: Nazi Cows (E368)

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

The long history of humans bending biology for civilization eventually raised an important question: if animals can be domesticated, then couldn’t they also be de-domesticated? Further: could selective breeding allow scientists to reverse-engineer a species back from extinction and contain identical DNA to its ancestors? The first people to attempt “de-extinction” were, naturally, mad zoologists supported by Nazis. Modern attempts to leverage molecular biology to revive long-lost species provide a classic example of history rhyming. In part one of this two-part episode, Jack explores the disturbing ideology behind the de-extinction efforts of the Heck brothers in 1930s Germany, as well as their attempts to create so-called “genetically pure” species. Next week, we’ll unpack the floundering species revival program from genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences and why billionaires and the Trump administration are so invested in gaining the ability to make extinction less permanent than commonly believed. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! Spectral Voyager Season 2 is releasing now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

If you're hearing this, well done. You've found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast episode 368, De-extinction Nightmare Part 1, Nazi cows. As always, we are your hosts, Julianfield, Liv Egar, Jack LaRoche, and Travis View. There is a remote fur farm in Novosibur, Russia, southwestern Siberia. It's not an easy location to get to.

The roads are often iced over, the negative 40 heat. The property is made up of buildings that look an awful lot like warehouses, with rows upon rows of wire cages, both inside and outside of those buildings. The scent of ammonia chokes the air, alongside pungent smells of raw meat and animal musk. Housed in these cages are around 2,000 foxes of various colors, along with various minks and rats. For the past 74 years, a very unusual experiment has been taking place here in Russia. See, these aren't just any foxes, minks, and Siberian gray rats, a wild rat that never before has been tamed. These are domesticated animals. The Russian fox experiment was started by Dimitri Beliayev around 1952, although Ludmila Trut was the

manager of it up until her death in 2024. The structure of it was deceptively simple. Temperament tests were administered every month until the fox reached sexual maturity. And then, only those who were tamest would be bred to one another. Tamedness was judged by the animal's willingness to approach the experimenter, tolerance for interaction, such as handling and petting, and whether or not the fox bit. The results were, and continue to be, surprising. See, Beliyef was looking to understand what is now referred to as domestication syndrome.

This is a complicated concept, but broadly speaking, it can be understood like this. Domestication is a physical process. A wolf or a boar is an animal with upright ears, a sharply angled face, and a lack of great diversity in coloration and markings. Dogs and pigs, the domesticated forms of these wild animals, often sport floppy ears, curled tails, rounder faces, and a vast a variety of coat markings. It's cool that domestication works how like a Disney Pixar animator would imagine it does. Exactly. We made them more human.

In my cognitive mythology class, that was actually the way that she was describing it too. She offered some pictures of that in the demonstration. So beyond just the visible, they also produce less adrenaline and more serotonin, which are two things I myself could sorely benefit from. These physical changes are often referred to. as neotony, which is also what you see in the Disney animation. And fascinatingly, we humans exemplify these changes too. You know, we've been domesticated. So did the Russian foxes minks and rats, and all in a remarkably short period of time. Within 20 generations, the foxes began to feature

shortened tails, floppy ears, and more dog-like behavior. Now the foxes will often roll over for belly rubs, wag their tails enthusiastically, and produce less musk. They've started conventions. They're getting in piles. They actually call them cuddle puddles, Julian. Sorry, sorry. The experiments are still ongoing, but they paint a compelling picture of the malleability of animals. Belief and Trut ran a concurrent experiment, though. What would happen if you bred the most aggressive animals to one another? If domestication was a process that changed the body, both inside and out, then couldn't de-domestication function as a similar fashion? They're like, we did a good one. Now let's do the evil experiment, too.

We can't just be doing good in the world. Yeah. In this experiment, the chemicals within the foxes, the minks, and the rats, changed, along with their behavior. I looked at one aggressive fox, recalled one of the workers, and she gazed straight into my eyes, but didn't move. Her fox eyes intently followed my every movement. I slowly brought my palm nearer to the front side of the cage, and she reacted immediately. She threw herself to the front side of the cage. Her front paws against wire mesh.

She had a really dreadful look. Her mouth was open wide, ears pressed tight to head, and blind fury burnt and protruding eyes. When I looked into her eyes, I felt fear. My heart pounded rapidly, and blood rushed toward my head. I believe she would have sunken her teeth into my face or neck if there were not wire mesh. So that's quite a day of work, isn't it? Yeah. They're going crazy.

It's not good, folks. We managed to do MK Ultra to the dogs and the cats and the wolves and the foxes. Yeah, with the next experiment, they're going to try to de-domesticate dogs. Let's make dogs evil again. Yeah, what could go wrong? Breeding for temperament could obviously go both ways. But how far do you think it could potentially go? Let's not find out.

That's my suggestion. Yeah, let's not do this. The Holy Grail of conservation is de-extinction. Generations of biologists have dreamed that the elimination of an animal species, whether committed by humans or otherwise, is reversible. But the history of de-extinction efforts reveal that it's less often motivated by a desire to restore Earth's fragile ego system, and instead rooted in a fascist fantasy about biological purity and tech supremacy.

In part one of this two-part episode, we're going to explore the horrifying ideology behind the de-extinction efforts of the Heck Brothers in 1930s Germany. Next week, in part two, will unpack how modern de-extinction, as performed by the billionaire-backed colossal biosciences, is mainly a PR spectacle, not serious science. Well, at least Taika Waititi and... My favorite fantasy author, George R. Martin. They're not involved, right? So that's good.

Yeah. All of your faves are definitely ignoring it. Some of our faves might be implicated as I can't remember who said that. You know, this has really reminded me of the, uh, the torment nexus tweet about how, you know, these tech people constantly, they say they love science fiction, that they misinterpret the lessons. Well, like one of the original sort of science fiction stories, you know, Frankenstein is about the unexpected results and horrors that result from reanimating life. So, uh, you know, this is another lesson that seems I have not taken to heart. Now, before we begin, I want to ask you guys, have you ever met a cow? Yes.

Yeah. I honestly don't think I have. What was your impression of it? My impression was a gentle, intelligent animal, and, you know, breathing rather heavy, tolerant of flies. They're generally very, very sweet animals, and lives experience of not meeting one is not particularly unusual. Most people will never meet a cow. They'll just experience them through hamburgers. But cows are extremely sweet.

They explore the world through their tongue, a bit like a dog explores the world through their nose. And in spite of their truly astonishing size, they are far bigger than you would ever expect them to be. They are very, very gentle animals. And that's something that I want you to keep in the back of your head throughout this episode. Can't wait to make a mad cow. 30 years before Beliath began breeding silver foxes, German brothers Lutz and Heinzhek, were thinking very hard about cattle,

specifically, orrochs. The word will be familiar to fans of Magic the Gathering, World of Warcraft, and the Song of Ice and Fire series, but few seem to realize the historical basis for the animal. Liv, do you know about oryx from those books? I've heard about some oryx. Honestly, I just believe that they were a fantasy creature. That's in my brain.

This might be showing my ignorance of biology. Having said that, you have met one. Yeah, they're often eating them in the Song of Ice and Fire books. Yes. Mmm, yum, yum. The descriptions of food in those books are very, very gratifying to read. He goes off on, he does not play about food. Just a side of oryx there.

Yeah. So, surprisingly, all domesticated cattle in the world descend from a single species of wild ox. Bo's Primigenius, or the Orochs. Orochs, the singular and the plural of the word, are the same now, were a wonder to behold. The following description, written by Julius Caesar of all people, is found in the histories of the Golic War. These are a little below the elephant in size and of the appearance, color, and shape of a bull. Their strength and speed are extraordinary. They spare neither man nor wild beasts which they have a spied.

These, the Germans, take, with much pains and pits, and kill them. men harden themselves with this exercise and practice themselves in this kind of hunting, and those who have slain the greatest number of them, having produced the horns in public, to serve as evidence, receive great praise. But not even when taken very young can they be rendered familiar to men and tamed. The size, shape, and appearance of their horns differ much from the horns of our oxen. These they anxiously seek after and bind at the tips with silver and use as cups at their most sumptuous entertainments.

Wow. So not exactly the kind cows that you would think of. Oryks only went extinct relatively recently in the 1600s. Before then, they carried an almost mythical status throughout the world. As the 1800s turned to the 1900s, and scientists began discussing such esoteric topics as the origin of the species, some interesting ideas began to enter the mainstream. European zoologists were beginning to experiment in the purposeful creation of hybrids. In the variation of animals and plants under domestication, Charles Darwin wrote,

Many species of Felidae have bred in various menageries, although imported from diverse climates and closely confined. Mr. Bartlett, the present superintendent of the zoological gardens, remarks that the lion appears to breed more frequently and to bring forth more young at a birth than any other species of the family. He adds that the tiger has rarely bred, but there are several well-authenticated instances of a female tiger breeding with the lion. Strange as the fact may appear, many animals under confinement unite with distinct species and produce hybrids quite as freely as, or even more freely, then, with their own species. This willingness to breed in captivity with other species is termed hypersexuality, and it was of great interest to zoologists and zookeepers.

Ligers and tigons were great to get people into zoos. But what if this hypersexuality could extend to other species? If this hypersexuality could be stimulated in other species, then perhaps zoos could also play a role in species conservation. The European bison, known as the Weissent, was going extinct in the wild, and the Heck brothers now were the head of the Berlin and Munich zoos, respectively. They had been following this discussion of hybrids with great interest, and thinking very hard about cattle.

Heinzheck believed the extinction of the Weissent was a natural thing, But nonetheless, created the first stud book of a non-domesticated species to try and help the species recover in captivity. A stud book is a way of keeping track of which animal is breeding with which so that you can increase genetic diversity. Lutz believed that it was something that could and should be mitigated through any means necessary. How much of the purity of the European bison would be lost if the Weissant was hybridized with the American. in bison. This question of species purity is one that looms large in the minds of conservationists today, and we'll be returning to that later. Lutz wrote in his memoir, I was always attracted to the idea of tracing past developments in our native animals, making

use of the records of our game preserves. In my youth, my imagination was caught by the famous description in the Nibulungalit of Siegfried's hunt in the forest of the vurge, and by the descriptions of old hunting usages. I was always interested in the game of past ages. The bear, the lynx, the wolf, the beaver, the wild horse, the ibex, and the elk are the representatives of an earlier and ampler animal world known to our forefathers. I was interested above all in the two huge wild oxen, which have become almost legendary, but are regarded as the most powerful representatives of the primeval German game, the European bison and the aurochs. These two species of wild cattle were once to be found almost everywhere in the German forests and meadows.

The orrochs has disappeared, and only a few representatives of the European bison still remains. carefully preserved in zoological gardens and game parks. The two species are quite distinct. The orrochs is as different from the bison as the row from the stag or the goat from the sheep. Orocks have the dubious honor of being the first documented case of extinction in human history, the last female to have died in 1627. The dodo, who commonly gets referred to as the first documented case of extinction in human history, called its last grunting coup in 1667, some 40 years later,

Given how divisive discussion around extinction became in later years, it might be surprising to learn that not only did humans realize the orox was going extinct, but they did everything they could to save it at the time. By the 15th century, the vast herds of orox had all been confined to a single royal forest in central Poland. The decrease in population came down to habitat loss, grazing competition for modern cattle, disease, and hunting. In the 15th century, only a few of those pressures could be adequately mitigated. It reminds me a lot of the story of bison in the American West. I'm told that there used to be just massive herds of it that just roamed all over, but now they're much, much smaller. There used to be about seven different species of bison in the U.S. as well,

and now we're down to two, I believe. The royal hunters were tasked with caring for the remaining o'rocks population within the forest of Yakterov rather than hunting them. Year by year, the gameskeepers diligently recorded the declining numbers. During the winter, the hunters left hay for the Orocks at predetermined feeding stations to help them through those lean months. Hunters became conservationists, although strict edicts for species purity remained. Any dangerous bulls, or those seen mating with domesticated cows, were shot.

Horns and hides handed over to the farmer whose livelihood had been threatened. While this might seem counterintuitive, each bull operated a harem of roughly 13 cows. Any that began mating with domesticated cows would have likely continued doing it to try and start their own harem, and any hybrid offspring would not have been viable. It's surprising how well understood the situation was at the time. Farmers grazed their horses and cattle where formerly the oryx had grazed. Year after year, the numbers diminished, and they all seemed to know that it was the end. The horn of the last Orox Bull can be seen at the armory of Stockholm to this day, ornamented beautifully in gold.

I've included a picture of it here. It's all wrapped up and has like, yeah, gold at the horn at the tip. Yeah, it's very beautiful, but also very sad and tragic once you know the story behind it. One day they will do this with my penis when I die. Unlike Julian's penis, it is also absolutely massive. Yeah, get it. I set myself up for that one. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. It was a good setup. So Lutz and Heinzheck embarked upon a multi-year study of the oryx through the annals of history. They studied prehistoric cave paintings, medieval writings, and artwork. The oryx is well represented in artwork throughout history, but particularly within the prehistoric times. In the Lasco caves alone, they are depicted over 52 times. And I've included here some of the images. So this is the great black cow in Alaska Caves.

It's incredible. They've really managed to make it look like leather almost. I mean, it is incredible. It's like these prehistoric paintings are always incredible, but it's an action painting. The front legs of the animal in front of them, as it's, you know, galloping. And if you lit it with fire as it was lit in the caves during that time,

the way the flame flickers makes the bull appear, well, the cow in this case appear to be running. Wow. It's really brilliant. Werner Herzog's Cave of Dreams does an excellent job of showcasing that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Incredible movie. So beneath this, you can see a piece of medieval artwork depicting an orox hunt and a drawing of an orox from life, as well as a drawing of a taxidermade orrox.

I believe they would be called units in today's language. Absolute units. Yeah. So what I wanted to highlight here by showcasing this is how different. The orrochs look from one depiction to the next. There are similarities in form, but there's also a good deal of differences between them. Well, yeah, I see that in the sort of the modern history versions, it seems like all of the orcs are sort of standing still.

They don't have that sort of galloping sort of action sort of illustration. There's also differences with the du laps around the neck, whether or not there is a main depicted on the beast. and other sort of things, even if you just do an image search for them, listeners can find some of these differences for themselves. The Heck Brothers gave a lot of credence to the description given in the history of four-footed beasts by Conrad Gessner, which dedicated about 20 pages towards recording the accurate attributes of the cow and the bull.

The trouble is, as illustrated by the pictures that I posted here, there is only so far you can go when the actual creature can no longer be observed. There were at least four different subspecies of orox, and each of them had slightly different traits and appearance. Also, the sexual dimorphism exhibited in aurox was so great that for a while, the bulls and the cows were believed to be different species. This is due to not only the sexual dimorphism, the difference in size, but also they were two different colors, the bulls being black, and the cows being brown, and the cows, as well as the bulls, had enormous horns. Ultimately, what the Heck Brothers were after was primarily an aesthetic end rather than true species recreation, with a dash of temperament modification, similar to the hyperaggression

later characterized by a Beldeaf's less-reported fox experiment. Through hindsight, it is not difficult to understand how well the primarily aesthetic goals of the heck cattle coincided with Nazi beliefs. Vulkish philosophy, as characterized in the writings of Austrian zoologist Conrad Lorenz, ascribed a kind of domestication syndrome to city dwellers versus the purity of the rural populations. While domestication syndrome may curl fox's tails and make their ears flop, city dwelling atrophies the muscles that rural living develops and encourages hypersexuality and fertility in a degenerate way that leads to novel coloration of furtimore.

the skin. While Lorenza's image has been cleaned up rather thoroughly in modern day, and his writing has much influenced the field of cognitive ethology, it is worth keeping in mind that this is the same man who, in 1966, in his book on aggression, wrote the following. Sydney Margolin in Denver, Colorado, made very exact psychoanalytical and psychosocialogical studies on prairie Indians, particularly the Utes, and showed that these people suffer greatly from an excess of aggression drive, which, under the ordered conditions of present-day North American Indian reservations they are unable to discharge. It is Margolin's opinion that during the comparatively few centuries when Prairie Indians led a wildlife consisting almost entirely of war and raids, there must have been an extreme selection pressure at work, breeding extreme aggressiveness.

That this produced changes in the hereditary pattern in such a short time is quite possible. Domestic animals can be changed just as quickly by purposeful selection. Margalin's assumption is supported by the fact that Ute Indians now growing up under completely different educational influences suffer in exactly the same way as the older members of their tribe who grew up under the educational system of their own culture. Moreover, the pathological symptoms under discussion, quote, are seen only in those prairie Indians whose tribes were subjected to the selection process described. Ute Indians suffer more frequently from neurosis than any other human group, and again and again, Margalin found that the cause of the trouble was undischarged aggression. Many of these Indians feel and describe themselves as ill.

And when asked what is the matter with them, they can only say, I am a Ute. Wow. Just incredibly fucked up writing. Also, is Lorenz saying that having like prairies, indigenous lifestyles is bad in the way that, like, being in a city is? Yes. You would think that those would be the opposite poles. I wonder where the stress came from, too. Yeah, no, of course.

But it seems odd that he's like, no, German rural lifestyle, Returitist tradition is good. Like the city is making you more like an indigenous person. It's a very weird, I mean, not that any of these people ever make any sense, but it seems like an especially odd way of doing race science. Yeah, total fucking freaks. It's good for the Germans to be living rurally, but it's not good for any other population,

especially an indigenous one. Yeah. Yeah, those fuckers need to be civilized, man. So wild animals, Lorenz postulated in his article, domestication-induced disorders of species-typical behavior were always more beautiful than their domestic counterparts. This beauty of the wild came from what Lorenz deemed, quote, biological unity and was an inborn survival strategy.

Domestication, with its mutations, was a process of decay. Bringing back orochs would be restoring the modern cattle to their original, beautiful, unified form. This concept of biological unity extended beyond just the organism itself. It was incomplete unless it was accompanied by the habitat to which the creature originally developed. The creature belonged to the ecosystem, just as the ecosystem required the creature in order to be complete. The Heck brothers could bring back the oryx, but if they did, the creature could never be confined to a zoo. The oryx would require its natural habitat in order to reach its full potential.

Otherwise, domestication would corrupt them again, just as it did the city-dwelling humans. By 1937, the Heck Brothers, along with their research partner, Herman Goring, had found the perfect home for their oryx. The only trouble was that it was not under German rule. The Bialoetsa forest was one of the last old-growth forests in Europe. Located at the border of Poland and Soviet-controlled Belarus, it had a long history as the prized hunting grounds for both Polish kings and Russian Tsars. It would only be appropriate for it to next serve the Reichs Huntmaster. So I have included this photo, but there's a photo published to accompany the 1937 International Hunting Exposition in Berlin that paints a stark picture. Lutzheck stands on the far left, Herman Goring, fittingly on the far right.

Behind them is a stuffed Weissant, and before them a map of Bialaweza Forest, dotted with small figurines making up a who's who of old world animals. that goring so eagerly anticipated hunting. Elk, roe deer, wolves, bears, wizent, etc. In front of the gathered people is the horn of an orrochs. But whether it was the horn of the recreated animal in the form of the heck cattle, or an actual orrox horn is unknown. Two years after this photo was taken,

Poland would be invaded. I like the idea that Stalin is looking at this photo and he's like, it would probably be fine. I don't think that they're... I guess maybe it's in the West. certain part that, like the Malchaw Rubin Trap pact. So I guess they got it in 39. But I like the idea that it stayed in the Soviet, right? And so on it was like, surely that's, they just, they want to come over to our territory and hunt and then come back to theirs. Yeah, the Nazis are like, well, we just

didn't like the rules of the hunting. There were some poaching laws that were a little too restrictive. Ironically, given the focus on the purity of species and landscape that preoccupied the Nazi mind, one of the first things that the Heck brothers said about doing once Bialaweza came under German control in 39, was round up the Weissent that were still extant and ship them right back to Berlin. Once in Berlin, Lutzheck began cross-breeding them with Canadian bison, in order to strengthen the species and increase their fertility. Without modifications, you see, their birth rates would never be enough to populate both Bialoetza, as well as Goring's personal game reserve north of Berlin. Never mind the fact that the Weissent would no longer be the

pure stock that Goring and the Heck Brothers had previously been so outspoken about preserving. Pay no mind either to the pogroms that took place over the approximately 142,000 hectares that made up by Alweta Forest. The mass executions of Polish, Roma, and Soviets over the years, was simply part of quote-unquote forest management, according to people like Heck and Goring. So, too, are the few marked graves that you can still find there if you walk through the lush primordial wilderness, and the countless unmarked ones this haunted forest keeps to itself. At this point, Polish zoologists had been experimenting with hybridization of their own, to recreate the tarpan, then believed to be Europe's wild horse.

Horse girls everywhere will be familiar with the conic horse, or maybe not. The conic horse is not exactly a viable horse to just jump on and ride. They're mouse gray and only reach a height of about 13 hands or so, roughly the size of a small pony and only appropriate to be ridden by tiny children. In true short king fashion, they are incredibly strong and stocky in build. They're also semi-feral. Many horse enthusiasts will report that the conic itself is a direct descendant or in other ways crossbred with the tarpan, a living fossil of sorts.

This is not the case. In fact, the tarpan itself might not have existed in the way that was commonly believed at the time as this 2021 study shows. In our extensive literature search, we did not find scientific evidence, neither in historical sources nor in the reported phenotype or genetic traits, for wild horses to have survived until recent historic times, i.e. until the 16th to 18th century. We also found no scientific evidence that the tarpan had ever been wild, not simply a feral horse. Additionally, there seems to be no consensus on which of the ancient horse populations

roaming in different parts of Eurasia should be regarded as tarpan, leading to the simple conclusion that we apparently do not know what sort of horse the various alleged tarpan populations were. Finally, the conic has never been shown to have genetic proximity to this alleged tarpan. So yeah, the tarpan might not be real and the conic is not related to it even if it was. Genetic evidence shows the conicke to be a fully domesticated breed of horse that was functionally semi-feral. Suffice to say, Polish zoologists were developing the conic horse. to release it into the forests to help rewild it.

The Heck brothers took one look at the horse and wanted it for themselves. The conic horses returned with them to Berlin to be developed into what is now known as the Heck Horse, what they believe to be a more accurate recreation of the tarpan. The Heck Horse stands 13 hands at the highest and sports a grillo or dun coat. They have a dorsal stripe, an atavistic striping around their lower body as well, and a heavier head than the conic horse had. They also have a very even temperament and hooves so strong that they rarely require shoeing. They were bred by mixing Gottland, Connick, and Icelandic horse breeds, along with the Prisawalski horse

in an attempt to bring back even more primitive traits. Notably, both they and the Connick horse lack the upright mane that many believe the tarpan had. In truth, though, very little is well understood about the tarpan's natural appearance. There is only one photo known to depict a tarpan. I've included it here. Does this look like a primitive horse? No, it looks like a, yeah, a short but strong horse. It's a little shorter than the handler. Yeah, it looks cute.

Yeah. It's a pony. So the photos from 1884, and it does depict a small stocky horse. It's now believed that this tarpan was a hybrid, rather than a pure stock, which is not particularly helpful for figuring out what the tarpan actually looked like. The only known illustration of a tarpan that was taken from life depicts a tarpan. the foal and is included here. I think this one looks a little more fucked up.

Yeah, yeah. A little more horse from hell. It's got a little, yeah, scarier head. Yeah, I think that I've like had sleep paralysis and seen this thing at the foot of my bed. Yeah, it's a horse that's evil. I like that description. So because this is a drawing of a foal and because it does indeed look like a horse that's evil, it's of limited help for figuring out what a pure-blooded tarpan might have looked

like. And to further complicate things, fossil evidence of them is scarce. The bones that are found that are said to be tarpan are often just interbred horses with tarpan. You know, this has led to the interesting hypotheses of certain wild horses being tarpan or descended from them. So think of all of this as a kind of horse phrenology, especially since one of the most striking attributes of the tarpan was their heavy heads. The hex capture of the forest and the conic horses that inhabited it, effectively ended Poland's attempt to resurrect the tarpan through backbreeding. So Polish biologist Tados Vettulani described it in no uncertain terms. This management, which during World War I, was marked by overfowling of trees and over-exploitation of wildlife,

bison, elk, and deer in particular, during World War II brought further and even more gruesome and elaborate exploitation, not only of our natural resources and material goods, but also of our blood, in the most literal sense and religious heritage. The Heck Brothers, however, did release some of their own horses into the forest, where they survived the end of World War II and hid so effectively that they still live there today with a relatively stable semi-feral population. They are not being hunted, as they would have been had Goring had his way. Because I did hear vaguely that Goring was a conservationist, but I guess it's to the end of like he wants to be able to kill them, like he's in an African savannah. That is correct. Yeah, but like, yeah, even their supposedly wild animals have to exhibit the proper racial purity. Yeah.

As far as I can tell, there are now two wild populations of heck horses extant today, one in Bialawez of forest and the other in Latvia. According to the latest understanding of tarpans and Europe's wild horses in general, the heck horses are not a particularly close specimen as far as approximating what the tarpan might have looked like, assuming the tarpan even existed. The Connix horse were a bit closer. Primitive wild horses are a bit of a minefield to study, and I encourage all horse nerds to reach out to Julian with their complaints about errors I might have made. Yes, please. All horse girls must reach out. Thank you. In researching this, I came across another breed of horse

that has claimed to be an extant population of tarpans in Portugal of all places. The Soraya horse might have been a wild horse that lived in the Iberian Peninsula. It may or may not be a living tarpan, but at the very least, many believe that it carries within it many, quote-unquote, tarpanic characteristics that people are seeking to preserve through careful breeding. These are often the same people who believe that the conic has many tarpanic characteristics that have been well preserved. The Soraya is less preserved, being more controversial, less studied, and with a bit of a temperament.

It's often described by horse girls as being more suited to driving than riding. Research into the seria genome is not entirely clear. Some claim that studies have shown it to be an entirely differentiated breed than other wild horses in Portugal. Others have claimed that it is just a particularly primitive-looking domesticated horse. Either way, the Soraya is now an entirely domesticated breed that some are trying to use to rewild a variety of habitats. Portugal has yet to get its Soraya back into the wild, but Austria is now home to at least one reserve where the horses run free. This is just so crazy how many sickos there are in Europe, like trying to do weird genetic

engineering projects on horses. I think we all need to knock it off. Yeah, so the logic is just like, well, even if it's not genetically like the tarpan, it's just it's got a couple characteristics. And we like those, we like that the, the, when we measure the skull of the horse, it is similar. The genes, it's lessened, but like, if the horse's skull is the similar size, then we can rewild it anywhere in Europe, but it'll make it everything based in trad.

And now to examine how it nibbles carrots and determine other things from that. Well, remember, the tarpan supposedly had a very heavy head, so there is a lot of skull measuring happening in Austria, of all places. It's a bad start. Yeah, no, it's just, I don't like any of the countries mentioned here. I don't like where this is going. Lutz and Heinzhek developed different lineages of heck cattle. There were disagreements between them about which breeds of cattle were best suited to the experiment, as well as some in regards to overall appearance.

This resulted in a split between the Berlin heck cattle and the Munich heck cattle. The Berlin heck cattle were all destroyed during the war. The bombing of the Berlin Zoo wiped out the populations there, and the 40 or so that had previously been released did not survive long term in the wild. All modern heck cattle are descendants of Heinzhecks Munich stock. While the experiments were ongoing, Lutz and Heinz-Hek claimed that their lineages looked virtually identical, which was proof that the backbreeding was working, and that choosing for primitive traits resulted in identical-looking oryx-like cattle. This was bullshit.

Lutz's Berlin cattle were modeled heavily after Spanish fighting bulls. Heinz's Munich cattle were heavier with smaller horns than their Berlin counterparts. They looked nothing alike. Yeah, and my horse is much better, and you will see if you look at my horse that it's actually the purest of breeds and it's taller and the ear longer and the skull better. Heck cattle today remain a fairly popular breed due to their hardiness, their size, and their disease resistance. As far as Orocks go, the heck cattle has fallen short of the goal of recreating the lost species. They are not particularly wild or aggressive.

They lack the horn size that is needed, as well as the speed, leg length, prominent hump, etc. that oryx seemed to have had. You will never be the Aryan horse of my dreams. This has not stopped others from continuing to chase the dream of recreating the oryx. I see, I like the idea that it's like the Nazis were not good enough at making the cattle evil. Like, we will pick up the project. We will make them more aggressive and angry. Yeah, and we will train these aurochs to take out certain ethnic races,

and we will make sure that they are extremely aggressive with some and extremely soft and kind with German men of a certain size and color. It's also funny that they're like trying to recreate these animals based upon like nothing. Yeah, they're trying to like, they're like, listen, we're going to carve a horse until it looks like an orach.

It's speculative. Like, you know, there's no really good images of Norak's, not detailed. And this is like before even like molecular biology. So they couldn't, they couldn't, you know, recreate the, like, the DNA with any material, even if they had Orock DNA. It's all of fantasy. It's like, you know, it's like this is a super cow. And the super cow, I assume that what the oric was would look like this. And it's just in their imagination.

It is absolutely insane to think that you can just keep choosing primitive traits and magically this whole creature will just emerge. There are at least four separate projects today seeking to bring back oryx. The Torus project, which began in 1997, the Toros project, which began in 1997, the Toros project, which began in 2009, the Arund Project in 2013, and the Ours Project, 2013. You have to be so mad if you're the Taurus Project in 2009. Like, come on, just a single letter. Like, fuck off. They often will capitalize the O in the 2009 one to, like, distinguish themselves. Ah, yes, Tor, Tor OS.

I'm familiar with this. You can get on the dark web with it. It's the horse girl operating system. The first three projects are, all trying to bring back the Orooks through the process of back breeding, which is what the Heck brothers were trying to do with the heck cattle. The Oruz project was attempting to sequence the Orooks genome and use cloning to bring back the species. Although as of 2026, I can find zero updates on the project status or even evidence that the true nature foundation is still

in existence. Yeah, we're sure that wasn't like Jeffrey Epstein running that or something. Like for the snow updates. There is no evidence of the Orox project with the Long Now Foundation either, which originally was hosting a lot of the information of the project. So maybe it was Epstein. Yeah, maybe money laundering operation. They're like, what should we say the official reason for this is? It's like, I don't, I love Nazis. So let's listen.

Let's be honest. We love Nazis. Okay? Yeah. Sounds like a cool thing to do. Bring this back through genome editing. Orox and Tarpan are. just two of the extinct species that people are now dedicated to bringing back to life.

And it is truly astonishing how close to the original rhetoric discussions around de-extinction and rewilding remain. Lutz Heck originally seemed to believe that through the process of choosing for specific physical traits, the orrochs could be resurrected from the fragmented bits of its genome that existed in modern cattle. If only the right combination of genes could be obtained, an ancient aurochs would be birthed from the modern cow. We know now that this was never going to happen.

What is being argued by de-extinction enthusiasts is that that doesn't matter. It's just, what's being argued by a de-extinction-an enthusiast is like, come on. Come on, like, it's close enough. Wouldn't it be cool? It's going to be pretty good. Listen, I just want to have a conversation with an AI aurox. Like, that's all I ask. What is more important in the eyes of the de-extinction and rewilding movements is that the

important traits are brought back. whether through backbreeding, gene editing, or cloning with CRISPR. If what you have created fills the same ecological nature as the original creature, does it really matter whether or not it is a perfect genetic reproduction of the original? So remember the earlier dilemma about the Wicent and the Canadian bison? This is essentially what's being discussed here. It sounds like, I think, maybe for the modern D-extinction enthusiasts that they've shifted the discourse, I think as you pointed out, it's basically the same thing.

Functionally, it's just we're not. not pretending that like you're bringing back it fully, but it's just functionally the same project. One of the best modern examples of this in practice is the Peregrine Falcon. The use of modern pesticides, particularly DDT, was disastrous to Peregrine Falcon populations. DDT caused a weakness within the shells of the bird's eggs, catastrophic enough that when the bird sat on them to incubate them, the eggs would be crushed. Raptor numbers plummeted from the 1950s to the 1970s due to although certain far-right figures within conservation communities will argue that DDT was never to blame, and in reality the problem was egg collection and hunting of the falcons.

But needless to say, the peregrine falcon was speed-running extinction. So when people think of a peregrine, they likely have a specific image in their mind. But in fact, there are around 19 different subspecies of the falcon, each notable for subtle differences in coloration, little bits of behavior and location throughout. the world. In the northeast of the United States, there was a subspecies that was notable for darker markings around the face. The tear marks that the peregrine falcon is known for were particularly dark in the subspecies. That species was nearly gone entirely during the 1970s, when the breeding program to save the species began in earnest. DDT was eventually banned. Falconers stepped in with

their expertise to save the peregrine from extinction. Falconers had been breeding these hawks for hundreds of years, and were able to crossbreed this subspecies of peregrine falcon with peregrins from around the world, some of them even as far as Australia. So thanks to this, the peregrine can still be seen here in the northeast, but the bird is not the same subspecies. That subspecies and the cliffside nest, they called home for thousands upon thousands of years, are gone forever. Full stop.

Nobody but a bird nerd likely fully recognizes what's been lost. The Florida Panther has a similar story. story. This is a subspecies of mountain lion that is endemic only to southwestern Florida. This species is unique due to a little bit of difference in head shape and a dark red coat. The coat is so dark red and rich in color that I genuinely did a double take when I had the luck to actually see one in a zoo. They're a species in complete free fall. They are such a small population that's been inbred for so long that for a while nearly every panther was born with a kinked tail, and more worryingly, nearly every male was born with an undescended testicle.

Yeah, let's not kinktail shame. The infertility rates among the subspecies were dire. In order to rescue them, the difficult decision was made to import mountain lines from eastern Texas to help with the genetic diversity. So after the introduction of these Texan cougars, the cats quickly demonstrated a renewed vitality. Some people describe them as the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Panthers, said Dave Honorato of the USFWS, hunting groups are saying they are more aggressive, but it's nonsense. The data shows they are more apt to run away now than before, and they are stronger, more vigorous, and can do that.

There is a small segment of people in Florida, explained Onorato, that still believes Panthers are dangerous predators and should not be protected. We've had these cases of Panthers found with bullets in them that are unsolved, he said, and some people feel now they are really Texas Cougars anyway, so they shouldn't be here. Okay, the whole like Arnold Schwarzenegger of Panthers is so ridiculous because like what? So they're like bloated with muscle on steroids and they don't speak Panther very well? They're also going to be running for governor soon. Yeah, I would I mean, shit.

Let's get Panthers up in government. I mean, let's get Panthers in a lot of rooms with some of these guys too. The decision to import the Texas Cougars was difficult because it threw into question what made a float Florida Panther. By adding genetic material outside of the small endemic group, the red coat has begun to fade. At what point is the Florida Panther just a mountain lion? People aren't really sure. For now, no more than 20% of the Panthers in Florida are allowed to be from Texan stock. The reason they didn't want to have it be more than that, McBride explained, is there might be something unusual or unique in the Florida Panther genome to protect. It may have been differentiated

or adapted to that environment, and 20% would allow those adapted variations to remain. So far, no one has analyzed exactly what percentage of the animals in South Florida are made up of Texas stock or Florida stock. One study showed that the animals showed little change, if any, in their unique skull shape after the restoration. How much original DNA would an animal be required to have to be called a Florida panther, even if it already hunts, breeds, and sleeps in the cypress stands of South Florida? This is a lot like that painting, that Christian painting, where like the face had been like fucked up and they just drew it crudely over it.

I mean, we just simply cannot recreate with all of our, you know, genetic shenanigans. What is lost by using something like DDT or the variety of other ways that we are destroying these habitats. Yeah. There is maybe some form of irony. And I might not understand the situation well enough about like there seems to be a focus on purity here, but in the opposite direction. of like the heck brothers where it's like for the sake of not we need to we need to not try to do the de-extinction process the sake of protecting the the purity of these nearly extinct animals though I guess there is a different discussion about how useful introducing different genetic

stock into these like almost extinct species are because if it is useful then it's like well that is probably more important than like well this this one species has a red coat and we and that's like very beautiful it's like you know if it protects the ecosystem in a way that it would otherwise, then the reference to purity, genetic purity, it might not be useful. Yeah, it seems like we can't shake the stupidity of our approaches, like, no matter what it is, whether it's a focus on color or like, you know, the genes or the shape. It's always just like this crude attempt that human beings are engaging in and fixing something. Like, we made a mess in the kitchen. It's time to clean it up.

And all of it's ignoring the fact that one of the biggest reasons that the species is in such free fall is the fact that humans are hunting it. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's like, well, we can't stop doing that. Yeah, we can't stop hunting them when we can't stop destroying their habitat. Just make more of them. We gotta make more of them, but not from Texas. I don't want none.

I don't want to see nothing from Texas. So these modern stories of genetic rescue are different to what the Heck brothers were trying to accomplish, but there are stark similarities. The Heck brothers were motivated by a desire to restore Germany back to its natural glory. Starry-eyed Lutz had visions of Ziegfried in his head, and even envisioned himself as the new hero with spear in hand slaying a mighty orox. Is that a big enough motivation to bring a new species into the world? Bro, it's just like bring it back so I can kill it again.

It's so stupid. Conversely, is the desire to create a cute breed of dog really all that different? Or are we just hurtling into a future where Frank Herbert's chair dogs will be a reality? Yes. God, forgot about the fucking chair dogs. How can you forget about the chair dog? Could you possibly forget about the chair dogs? What the hell? I think that's in book five.

It introduces the concept of a chair dog, which, like, is a live animal whose purpose is being furniture. And, like, it's so comfortable because it's a live animal whose job it is to be comfortable when you sit in them. Okay. Well, you guys enjoy your books, okay? It's one of many different types of living furniture. Yeah. I really, I just want to know what Sacht would say about this, you know? I just, we've really come a long way and you should just enjoy yourselves.

You know, I don't want to yuck your yum. Well, you can tell who's a good guy by how they react to chair dogs. The people who don't like them are good. Yeah, I think so. So while biological unity is patently bullshit, Keystone species are anything but. If you remove a predator from an environment, there is a delicate balance that has been toppled,

and many of us are witnessing this across the world. Where I live, the eradication of mountain lions and wolves, has created an overabundance of deer that has resulted in prion disease, lime tick, and vehicular strikes that result in a quantifiable human deaths that otherwise wouldn't be occurring. Places like Tasmania and Christmas Island have been grappling with disarray from the loss of the thylacine and the Christmas Island rats. Are these enough of a reason to bring such species back? The thylacine, in particular, if using its closest living relative, would require using the endangered Tasmanian devil or the quill as a surrogate, which carries its own risks, to say nothing of what cloning a

keystone species like a woolly mammoth would require. There are plenty of people who believe that the genetic juice is worth the squeeze, and that not taking the risk is tantamount to wiping out the remainder of threatened species. Next week, we'll be exploring what these people believe, what projects they are undertaking, and just how deeply embedded they are with the current administration. It's like killer last little bit there where it's the kind of answers the first two questions in terms of theme. Yeah, if there's one thing that I trust, it's that the Trump administration is going to be on the right side of history in some way. Folks, we're bringing back the oric and I'm going to kill them, folks. I'm going to be the first one to shoot an orc. They're seeing it was a very big cow,

very beautiful. Do you think the chair aurochs is something that he would go for because I think it would be? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't. Honestly, his sons probably have killed Orocks on like some like Jurassic Park-like island that we don't even know about. Yeah. Wow. Incredible. Can't wait for part two to find out how like our tech overlords and the Trump administration takes this to the next level.

Following in the footsteps, of course, of Goring. Oh, yeah. He's a great research assistant to have, you know? Yeah. It is very like first his tragedy than his farce. It's like, I'm sure Gorg could at least like kill an animal himself with a gun. Like, I think Trump would, like, outsource that. He's not capable.

Liv, you're going to love this fact. Part of the reason that he was so close with Lutz Heck was that by being close to the zookeeper, he could have pet lions. So he would have these lion cubs. And when they got too big to handle, he would just give them to Lutes and then Lutz would replace them with another cub. Oh, God. I like the idea that he's doing that, like, without noticing. Like, he thinks it's the same lion.

That's just like a kid forever. That's the forever puppies, just like the whitest kids you know. It's like how they had to use like a million pigs to film Babe. It's just great. Keep this demented Nazi, like happy. You got to swap out the lion cubs. What else are you going to do with your time? That's so true, except for listening to the QAA podcast,

which we thank you for listening to another episode of. You should also go check out cursedmedia.net where you're going to find Spectral Voyager season two time slip radio. It's been incredible. We're about to lower Jake into a time cave. a lot going on, you know? And what's important is that Jake never make it out alive. So if you can contribute and sign up, we can keep Jake in the time game for a long time. And we can braid a new Jake, even better than before.

Yeah, you don't even know what's coming out. It might be like an Orox version of Jake, like the primordial Jake might emerge. The Er Jake. Yeah. Otherwise, you can go to QAAPodcast.com. And obviously, please sub for five bucks a month to get a second episode for every main one, that would be great, that's Patreon.com slash QAA.

Listener, until next week, may the O'Hoc, bless you and keep you. We have auto-queathed content based on your preferences. Now we just think of cows as being something that greases in the field, it's black and white, it's got a name called Daisy, either gives us milk or beef,

and what we forget is just how important these animals were in a wilder environment You know, one of the reasons why there are very many cattle, very many wild bulls and horses depicted in the caves is, of course, because these two species were very, very common. They were super abundant. And even now, kind of, wild nature, still attuned to their presence. So, for example, very simply, you know, if you've cattle grazing in the nature reserve and those cattle are not, you know, full of drugs like ivermectins, then basically just the dung that these animals produce, they can produce their own weight in a year. provides a huge food resource for a whole variety of different insects, you know, birds, you know, and other species.

So that's why we originally brought them in. Wow. So, away from the Dung Talk, they became a bit of a problem for you, and they do display these aggressive behavioural traits, don't they? Well, they do. I mean, one of the reasons why the two Germans were so supported by high-ranking members of the Third Reich.

is the people like Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goring were very keen hunters and they knew of the old legends regarding this animal and the old hunting stories and they told how fierce it was how the people had killed them with the big hunters and when they killed them with lances then they would go out to the force and chop off their horns

and keep the horns as drinking vessels so they really were quite a formidable animal and they wanted to create something that was a formidious. animal. So what they did was they selected things like Spanish fighting cattle to go into the mixture and yep they created something that's formidable but just a bit too formidable for us unfortunately. And have you had to get rid of them all? No we've kept six you know we worked our way through them we've got six here two bulls and four cows which are perfectly calm perfectly manageable and essentially we selected the ones from this this big group of cattle

which are best suited for domestication because we run about a six 100-acre farm here. We have a variety of other animals and we have a lot of people coming at different times and we just cannot live with something that basically acts like a fighting group all the time. What kind of things were these aggressive animals doing then? Well I mean with the original group when you had them in fields you simply couldn't walk through the fields. Some of the individuals were very, very aggressive and no matter where they were, they would just come across and try and kill you, which was just no fun after at all after a while. No. No fun at all even at the beginning. Never mind after. Well, you had a beast on the excitement, I suppose, at the beginning.

But in the end, it became a bit tedious.