They're not making a banana into a dire wolf. 20 positive genetic mutations over a couple of thousand years that increase survival (a blink in time) seems like a hell of a lot to me, but then they are canines with those slippery genes, so they evolve and can be bred very quickly compared to most other organisms, which is probably why they chose them as the first megafauna.
Chimps are more closely related to humans than grey wolves to dire wolves. So, 20 changes and we can make a chimp into a human?
My bet is they chose them because wolves are cute. Big fluffy white dogs. And Game of Thrones. Too bad Rob and John had such vanilla names. Also, just a few genes to confer the desired phenotype. (It appears that dog size is primarily controlled by just 3.)
I looked up the Aurochs mentioned above, and there have been attempts to recreate the
phenotype. At the bottom of the wiki there is a great quote that encapsulates my view...
"Starting in 1996, Heck cattle were crossed with southern European cattle breeds such as
Sayaguesa Cattle,
Chianina and to a lesser extent
Spanish Fighting Bulls in the hope of creating a more aurochs-like animal. The resulting crossbreeds are called
Taurus cattle.
[124] Other breeding-back projects are the
Tauros Programme and the
Uruz Project.
[122] However, approaches aiming at breeding an aurochs-like
phenotype do not equate to an aurochs-like
genotype.[125]"
As to the question of "is it the same?" I would posit the following thought experiment. Could these chimeras breed with a hypothetical extant population of as yet undiscovered dire wolves to produce viable/fertile offspring? (This is the general question regarding speciation.)
Horses and zebras share similar levels of genetic homology as grey and dire wolves. (~98%).They can procreate but rarely produce fertile offspring.
