A few weeks ago, a piece of news shook the scientific world: a Texan start-up, Colossal Biosciences, announced it had been secretly working since 2024 to bring back the bluebuck, a blue antelope that disappeared over two centuries ago. CNN covered it. Time Magazine covered it. The Telegraph covered it.
And here at Bluebuck, we started receiving messages from friends and family sending us articles with the highly original comment: "Is that you?" Well, yes — in a way, it is. Allow us to explain.
Who was (is?) the bluebuck?
The bluebuck (or Hippotragus leucophaeus for the Latin enthusiasts) was a medium-sized blue antelope that lived in the coastal grasslands of southern South Africa. An elegant animal, standing around 1.20 m at the shoulder and 3 m from nose to rump, with long black horns curving backwards to nearly 60 cm — and above all, a remarkably pale blue-grey coat.
At full speed, it's said to have looked like a streak of blue sky cutting through the savanna at 80 km/h. That colour likely came from a subtle mix of black and yellow hairs. Nature had taste.
It was a selective grazer that lived in small herds of 5 to 30 individuals. Four or five mounted specimens have survived to the present day, preserved in museums in Vienna, Stockholm, Paris, Leiden, and possibly London following the recent authentication of a pair of horns at the Natural History Museum.
How did the bluebuck disappear?
The story is, sadly, depressingly unremarkable.
Bluebuck populations had already begun to decline around 3,000 years ago due to climate change and the gradual transformation of grasslands. A first major blow came around 400 AD with the introduction of livestock into the region — sheep in particular — which depleted its preferred grazing land and weakened the species long before Europeans arrived.
But the final blow was delivered by colonisation, with devastating efficiency: in just 150 years, between 1650 and 1800, intensive hunting for its hide and the conversion of its habitat into farmland finished off the last individuals.
The last known bluebuck was killed in 1799, in the Swellendam region. Worth noting: the species was first scientifically described in 1766. It therefore survived exactly 33 years after its own official discovery. A record of ingratitude from humanity that we hope never to see broken.
And now, the bluebuck's comeback
This is where Colossal Biosciences enters the picture — with serious funding, celebrity investors (Peter Jackson, Paris Hilton, Tom Brady and Tiger Woods, because apparently genetic palaeontology is the new golf) and an ambition that's not entirely unlike a certain Spielberg film.
The company has already presented the world with wolf pups resembling the dire wolf, extinct for 10,000 years, and is simultaneously working on the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger. No small agenda.
For the bluebuck, the process goes like this: DNA extraction from a specimen at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, sequenced 40 times to ensure genetic accuracy, followed by identification of the variants responsible for the blue-grey coat, white patches and long horns. The roan antelope, the closest living relative, serves as both a cellular model and a surrogate mother. The genetic difference between the two species accounts for 3% of the genome — 18 million variants, narrowed down after filtering to around 20,000 truly relevant to the phenotype. In short: after 278 days of gestation, the surrogate roan female would give birth to a reconstructed bluebuck fawn.
"In 1777, we exploited a creature and drove it to extinction. It is now our responsibility to correct that mistake."
— Dr. Darya Tourzane, reproductive biology specialist at Colossal
What makes the project more interesting than its spectacular dimension alone: the techniques developed for the bluebuck are intended to be reused for antelope species that are still alive but endangered, such as the addax, the hirola and the dama gazelle.
Of the 90 antelope species recorded worldwide:
- 29 are currently threatened with extinction
- 55 are experiencing declining populations.
Critics point out, not unreasonably, that the money invested would also do a great deal of good for those endangered species that haven't disappeared yet. It's a legitimate debate and one worth having.
Our connection to all of this
When the Bluebuck brand was founded, the name was no accident. The buck — the horned animal, the male in its simplest form — imposed itself on us. A buck paired with the colour blue: a natural colour, the colour of the sea and the sky. And Bluebuck is also a vanished African antelope — blue, rare, a victim of human activity and intensive agriculture. There was something in that which we never felt the need to spell out at the time, because we don't like making speeches, but it was always there: doing things properly, with materials that respect what's left of the planet, without adding to the damage.
The return of the bluebuck is a story of repair. Ours — at our modest scale as a maker of GOTS-certified organic cotton underwear, manufactured in Portugal using renewable energy — is also, in its small way, a commitment to not adding more problems to the list.
We don't claim to be saving antelopes. But we think someone who's trying deserves to be talked about.
And let's be honest: we're a little proud that our name is, right now, in the pages of CNN.