Although we don’t hear it widely every day, scientists are now able to successfully clone a living thing one after another. So much so that cloning has even turned into a service for some animal owners. How Does? Let’s take a look at this ‘service’ that many of us will be surprised at.
You must remember Dolly, the world’s first cloned mammal. Dolly the sheep, born in 1996 and later cloned, was a touchstone in the scientific world. Animal cloning has become the preferred method of pet owners today for various reasons, such as fear of losing their existing animals. A pet owner who experienced this process also told the BBC about his experiences and his reasoning.
The two clone dogs that were born were almost genetically identical to the dog they carried:
Former retired US police officer John Mendola, his beloved dog was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He said he decided to have it cloned when it landed. To have his dog cloned, Mendola turned to the first company to clone the cat and dog, and is now the only company that offers this service. This Texas-based company was Viagen.
Viagen took tissue samples from Mendola’s dog ‘Princess’ before the Princess died in 2017. A year later, he used this genetic material to produce two clones of puppies from a surrogate mother dog. The cubs were genetically identical to the princess. Mendola named these two dogs ‘Princess Ariel’ and ‘Princess Jasmine’. Everything about the two dogs, including their spots and hair, was pretty much the same as the Princess, Mendola told me. He even stated that even his demeanor was the same as the Princess.
Discussions about cloning:
Animal organizations have significant concerns about the cloning industry. Criticisms that raise these concerns include the suggestion that cloned animals are more susceptible to the disease, and that cloning success is not as high. So much so that a report published in 2018 revealed that the average success rate in cloning was only 20%.
While the cloning debate continues today, the demand for pet cloning is increasing day by day. So much so that Viagen announced that they are cloning more and more pets every year, and they have performed hundreds of clonings since 2015. While the company charges $50,000 to clone a dog, this fee drops to $30,000 for cats. For cloning a horse, 85 thousand dollars are demanded.
What do you think about cloning pets?
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