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Cloning / Cloned Pets

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Anonymous

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according to tesco's anyway. (though probably not in tesco's...)

"A US company is offering to clone your pet for around £30,000. It claims it has been successful in cloning Bengal cats.

So far Genetic Savings & Clone has cloned two kittens - not pictured - called Tabouli and Baba Ganoush. They were born to separate surrogate mothers in June.

Its report has not been submitted for the traditional scientific review process and has not been scrutinised by cloning experts.

But the company is less interested in the scientific questions and medical promise of cloning and more interested in its business model - helping people make copies of their beloved pets.

"These two remarkable kittens should finally put to rest the issue of resemblance between clones and their genetic donors," chief executive officer Lou Hawthorne said in a statement.

"When performed by a skilled team using sufficiently advanced technology, clones resemble their donors to an uncanny degree - just as we predicted. It's a happy day for our clients."

Some experts have argued that cloning pets is a gamble, as non-genetic factors, such as conditions in the mother's womb, can affect coat colour and temperament.

The company has contracted to produce five more clones for clients by the end of the year.



Story filed: 17:08:22 Thursday 5 August 2004''
http://www.tesco.net/news/news_fullstory.asp?id=23959&channel=news
 
Pictures here

http://www.local6.com/news/3623918/detail.html
http://www.local6.com/slideshow/news/3624938/detail.html?qs=;s=1;p=news;dm=ss;w=320
Kittens Are World's First Cloned Pets

A California-based company has reportedly cloned the world's first pets, according to a Local 6 News report.

Tabouli and Baba Ganoush (pictured, left) were born in Austin, Texas, and are almost 8 weeks old, Local 6 News reported.

Lou Hawthorne, who is CEO of the Genetic Savings and Clone company in Sausalito, says scientists used more advanced technology to create the kittens.

"They're very healthy clones and they also look identical both to each other and to the donor -- which is an important breakthrough because some of the clones of the past did not have this high degree of health or resemblance."

The Bengal kittens are clones of a cat belonging to Hawthorne's son named Tahini.

Two different surrogates carried Tabouli and Baba Ganoush to term, according to the report. The surrogates have been working well together nursing and caring for the kittens, Hawthorne said.

"Healthy cats and kittens are being euthanized and killed and sheltered for not having homes so we'd like to see that problem taken care of before more animals, are you know, kind of extremely created," Director of San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Adoption Kiska Icard said.

Hawthorne's company plans to make more clones of people's cats this year.

Six of them will be sold to the public at ,000 each.
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The company name of Savings and clone reminds me of the movie It's a Wonderful Life!
 
An Iowa woman had her beloved cat cloned.
Iowa woman has deceased pet cat cloned

An Iowa woman said her kitten bears a strong resemblance to her old cat for a very good reason -- he's a clone.

The Cedar Rapids woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said she decided before the death of her cat, Mr. Tufts, that she wanted to have the feline cloned. ...

"I had never had such a wonderful creature. It was harder losing him than any other cat I've ever had" ...

Living tissue samples were collected ... and sent along to ViaGen Pets in Cedar Park, Texas.

ViaGen Pets specializes in genetic preservation and cloning for household pets. The firm has cloned dogs, cats and horses in the past and recently made headlines for cloning an endangered Przewalski's horse for San Diego Zoo.

ViaGen preserved the samples until after Mr. Tufts' death, when his owner requested the cloning go forward.

Melain Rodriguez, ViaGen client services manager, said specialists used one of the frozen cells to replace the nucleus of a female cat's egg. The embryo was then transferred to a surrogate mother cat in a method similar to in vitro fertilization.

Mr. Tufts' genetic twin, Mr. Tufts Jr., is now 9 months old. He came to live with his owner, who also adopted the surrogate mother cat, when he was 2 months old.

"The only physical difference, as far as I can see, is in health and body condition. The original T had been found on a forest trail and had a very bad respiratory illness," the owner said.

ViaGen said cloned pets maintain the same appearance, intelligence and temperament as the animals they are cloned from.

"When we produce the clone it's an identical twin. There is zero genetic modification occurring," Blake Russell, president of ViaGen Pets, told KXAN-TV.

The feline's owner said Mr. Tufts Jr. reminds her a lot of his namesake, although she has noticed some differences.

"Our new Mr. Tufts Jr. is much more athletic than our original, probably because he, and mom cat, too, had the best of care," she said.
Click to expand...

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/10/19/Iowa-woman-has-deceased-pet-cat-cloned/7341603137149/
 
I think this has the potential to be (genuinely) very sad. You have a beloved pet, but the clone will have his own little personality and obviously won't be the same as the original pet. I think there may be some people would want their exact original pet back and might be disappointed that didnt happen.
 
Kondoru said:
I doubt anyone that concieted would notice the difference
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Conceited? Not sure we know enough about that person to use that word.
 
You are right, thats being needlessly judgemental.

But such folk have...odd...ideas about animals.

All good practice for the De-extinction Revolution...
 
Good news for ferret fanciers.

The National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in Fort Collins, Colorado, isn’t Jurassic Park, but new developments there might sound familiar to fans of the sci-fi classic. This year, the center’s sole cloned ferret, a 14-month-old female named Elizabeth Ann, is expected to become the first clone to be bred for the sake of saving her species from extinction.

Three other species have been cloned for conservation: a Przewalski’s horse named Kurt, and two types of Southeast Asian cattle under threat, the gaur and the banteng. But Elizabeth Ann is the only clone set to take the next step and breed, an essential step in delivering her unique genes to the shrinking black-footed ferret gene pool.

However, even Elizabeth Ann isn’t 100% black-footed ferret. Somatic cell nuclear transfer—the technique used to create her—uses a domestic ferret as a surrogate mother, a process that leaves traces of domestic genes in the cloned offspring. To boost the black-footed ferret genes, scientists hope to one day breed Elizabeth Ann’s male offspring with a captive black-footed female, thereby ferreting out any domestic genes. This video shows how it can be done.

https://www.science.org/content/art...-s-first-cloned-ferret-could-save-her-species
 
See? Can be useful.

(But why must they refer to that lame film?)
 
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