With cloned steaks hitting supermarket shelves, cloning is gaining momentum as a major (ahem) cash cow. Scientists have been effectively cloning animals since the early 1960s, when a Chinese embryologist cloned an Asian carp. It’s just a matter of time until cloned humans start emerging from test tubes; meanwhile, we natural-borns are just starting to chow down on cloned meat (which the USDA does not require producers to label). Below is a rundown of 20 animals that scientists have successfully cloned:
1. Carp
(Featured above: A common carp, as-yet-uncloned)
An Asian carp was cloned successfully in 1963; ten years later, scientist Tong Dizhou also cloned a European crucian carp.
2. Dolly the Sheep
Dolly saw the light of day in 1996. She lived until the age of six. The first cloned mammal, Dolly is considered to be a great success. Later, several hundred other Dollies were cloned.
3. Cumulina the Mouse
Cloned in Hawa’ii in 2000, Cumulina was the first successful mouse clone. She lived until the ripe old age of two years and seven months, a victory for her researchers.
4. Noto and Kaga (Cows)
These cows were cloned in 1998 and duplicated several thousand times. Made in Japan, the cows pave the way for other clones engineered to produce better meat and milk.
5. Mira the Goat
Also cloned in 1998, Mira and her sisters came from a US lab as predecessors for livestock engineered to contain pharmaceutical products beneficial for humans.
6. A Family of Pigs: Millie, Alexis, Christa, Dotcom, and Carrel
Labs intend to modify pigs so that they can grow cells and organs that humans can use. Millie and her sisters (if you can call them that) were cloned in 2000 by a US-based company.
7. Ombretta the Mouflon
The successful cloning of this endangered animal (2000) exemplifies how cloning can rescue a species from the brink of extinction.
8. Tetra the Rhesus Monkey
The lab monkey world received its first clone in 2000. US-based Tetra is the first in a series of cloned monkeys that scientists could use as test subjects to learn more about diseases like diabetes.
9. Noah the Gaur
A gaur is an Asian wild ox whose numbers are dwindling. Cloned in 2001, Noah only lived for two days before dying of dysentery.
10. Rabbit
Cloned in 2001, a white rabbit like the one featured above–and its 30 clones–wasn’t given a cute name.
11. Copy Cat (CC)
This cat, cloned in 2001, was the starting gun for a pet-cloning process that may eventually become an industry.
12. Ralph the Rat
Cloned in 2002, Ralph eventually came out of the womb 15 separate times (his clones, that is). Though rats like Ralph may eventually be used in labs, cross your fingers that his ilk won’t find their way into New York sewers.
13. Idaho Gem
Mules are sterile–unless you clone them, as proven by Idaho Gem, the pride of a 2003 American research team.
14. Prometea the Horse
An Italian team produced Prometea in 2003. They hoped to produce more Italian stallions, but their attempts failed. Prometea birthed her own in 2008. Racehorses could come in the future.
15. Ditteaux the African Wildcat
Although African wildcats aren’t endangered, US scientists cloned one in 2003 as a sort of template for cloning other, more vulnerable animals.
16. Dewey the Deer
This white tail, cloned at Texas A&M University in 2003, is one of those clones lacking a solid premise. His ilk are some of the most abundant game in North America; still, scientists say clones could be used to research deer genes and produce better deer stock for hunters. As importantly, they managed to clone a deer before anyone else could do it.
17. Libby and Lilly, Ferrets
These ferrets, cloned in 2004, almost beg another “why the heck did you do that?” It turns out that ferrets are very useful for studying human respiratory diseases, and some types are endangered.
18. Buffalo
This cloned Murrah buffalo from India could eventually become a high-volume milk source.
19. Snuppy the Dog
South Korean scientists accomplished the notoriously challenging task of cloning a dog in 2005. Snuppy’s predecessors could be used to study human diseases.
20. Wolves: Snuwolf and Snuwolffy
Seoul National University (SNU) hit the canine cloning jackpot again with these two gray wolves as precursors for eventual conservation projects in 2005.
many of the animals don’t look exactly the same. Do cloned animals have the exact same DNA? Would that guarantee that they look exactly the same?
Repulsive.
There is nothing repulsive about it.
you people disgust me
Cloning sounds cool, but has no real value.
hmmm….boring.
Repulsive? Wow… how about “Ignorant” for you?
Cloned animals do not have exactly the same DNA, however the percentage of difference is so minute as to be nearly untraceable.
The animals will not look exactly the same, and over the course of their lives their DNA will drift. Point source mutations may occur each time that a strand of DNA replicates; this is affected by minute changes in the organism’s environment. Did background radiation knock at ATGC segment out of whack? Did malnutrition hinder the clean encoding of new RNA strands?
The changes are very very small, but nothing is an *exact* clone of it’s source code once it’s cells have replicated just a few times.
Not to mention that life experiances do alot more to shape an individual than their DNA
…really? how is this repulsive? when horse breeders breed thoroughbreds they do the same thing. This is the same concept except on a more exact level, it also has the potential to save endangered species. I don’t know about you, but having my children grow up in a world where the only animals that exist are barnyard animals and squirrels or whatever doesn’t seem like a very responsible thing to do to me. Also, misanthropy, it’s not exactly cloning, I think you still need to have part of the DNA from either the host mother or the sperm donor. I think that’s part of the reason why you can’t just go and clone a mammoth but instead have you keep breeding mammoth part-clones until you get to more than 15/16 mammoth or something.
Also that genetics only indicate a propensity towards a certain physical form. It is not necessarily a guarantee that the creature that has that DNA will look exactly the same as the original.
Genes are only part of the story; that’s why clones don’t necessarily look exactly like their parent. (A cat’s colouration, for example, is influenced by temperature variations it experiences in the womb).
As for the claim that cloning has “no real value,” you’re going to have to explain that. If it had no value to anyone, no one would be doing it. Many kinds of cloning are likely to prove useful — like, any time you have an animal with a useful genetic characteristic, and you want more like it, whether that be a prize dairy cow or a genetically engineered goat that produces pharmaceuticals in its milk.
See, for example:
http://www.businessethics.ca/blog/2008/01/ethics-fda-and-cloned-meat.html
The most insane fact about this is that the USDA does not require beef sellers to label their products as cloned! Wow!
it is repulsive if you are cloning animals just so that there are better ones of that species for hunters. i mean, making more animals just to kill? also if you’re cloning for better meat. THAT is repulsive. cloning just for selfish human wants. if you need more meat clone more humans and kill them instead.
how about instead of cloning the endangered species, lets stop killing them and their enviroment. humans. they always go for the easiest rout.
the ANIMALS will not look the same just the random process of how fur and hair grows will cause them to look different but markings and genetic makeup will be the same
Why is that insane? the meat is EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE OTHER MEAT, that’s why it’s cloning
when you clone animals, their life goes by much faster. For example – Dolly the sheep only lived for a few years. As every living creature gets older, the cells make copies of themselves – however, taking DNA, and using it to create another creature that’s the same would be detrimental in the long run. If you take a copy, and copy that copy, and continue doing this, you’ll get a blob that is unnoticeable. I’m not saying the creature will be a blob, but we might as well be inbreeding the creatures until they’re virtually the same. My religious beliefs, I know, won’t make a very good – let along stand – against this, but by a logical view, the only thing this could say is “look at us! we can recreate life!!” If someone could state, under logical terms, how this would be a good thing, without side effects within the creature, please tell me
“if you need more meat clone more humans and kill them instead”
are you f***ing stupid? humans have INTELLIGENCE. it is not wrong to hunt animals. GOD killed the first animal in genesis! no humans life is less important than an animals. an animal is food, cloned or not. what is wrong with eating meat? animals were placed by GOD for us to eat and rule. that’s all there is to it. killing an animal quickly is NEVER inhumane.
its stupid and unaccepting idiots like you that make life hard for the rest of us
Ahh religion, it always makes people so tolerant, understanding, and inclusive.
Prove that there IS a ‘God’, numbskull, and then tell me how your fantasy deity has any bearing on this topic in reality.
Dude, you’ve got to be kidding me.
Give me one piece of irrefutable evidence that God created the animals for our use, and maybe I won’t sic my dog on your high-and-mighty ass.
Sounds pretty awesome, as long as we limit it. Dozens of sci-fi stories revolve around the dangers of genetic engineering and cloning, but if it has limits (like not cloning humans and not over-using the same genetic material) from the start this could be a great thing for mankind.
Limited use of cloning is acceptable but this is out of limit
How successful are they? The human have to be successful in this as we need to develop a method to produce our food! :0)
misanthropy today : the clone doesn’t have to be put in it’s “mother” it can be raised in the womb of even an animal of a different species in some instances.
Misanthropy Today: No they do not have the exact same DNA, as a very small component of the recipient cell mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) remains, this is partly the reason of many of the problems still associated with producing viable cloned offspring. If the embryo does survive, it may have incorperated some of the oocyte mtDNA explaining why the clone looks a little different.
Crazy Forrest: I don’t think point mutations and genetic drift have much effect on an individual, thats more of a population issue.
Everyone: Cant you consider the possibilities for resuscitating endangered species here, for combating inbreeding effects in small populations, replacing AI with cloned males, and using genetic engineering to create meat-sources without the need to kill an animal. How is this not fantastic, and why aren’t animal ‘rights’ people more excited? This has got to be an amazing step forward for animal welfare (note difference between welfare and rights)
Oh and Rika,
You don’t clone clones, you allow them to breed normally which ‘resets’ their DNA ‘lifespan’. You can then clone the offspring without continuing the issue.
A Clones life doesn’t go any faster than a normal animal either, they just start off a little further ahead (this is not fully understood yet however)
What a bunch of futurephobic babies you people are. It’s “unnatural” (meaning it wasn’t with you when you were a kid), so it must be evil and immoral and insane.
To use the Bible as an aid in debate FOR cloning and in-hand stem-cell research… God is omnipotent and we are created in his image. All things that man has discovered are through and BY God, according to every major monotheistic religion. Thereby, thus and duly, all work of MAN is only done because God wills it. It is God’s WILL that the ability to clone animals exists. It is God’s WILL that MAN have this knowledge, else God would have precluded man from the understanding of this knowledge. NOTHING would be possible except by the will of God.
The only way things could be done exclusive of God’s power would be if God were NOT all powerful and omnipotent. That would mean there are other powers greater than God’s. Since this cannot be true in JudeoChristian religions, then God must WANT man to have and use this knowledge.
Thank you for your support!
That would be assuming the judeochristian religion is correct, and not just one of many many other religions in the world with no more proof behind them than the next.
I commend your blind faith and ability to believe in the face of all other evidence. Good for you.
Yay for somatic cell nuclear transfer!!!
Would a sheep clone a human if it was capable?
i think cloning is wrong and shuldent happen!~
#13. how can mules be sterile unless you clone them. if you mules were sterile, their species would’ve died out long before cloning came around.
Mules are hybrids. They are bred between a horse and a donkey but they cannot breed themselves.
“also if you’re cloning for better meat. THAT is repulsive. cloning just for selfish human wants. if you need more meat clone more humans and kill them instead.”
Seriously?
Maybe that serious lack of protein in your brain is causing some problems. Fact: Humans are an omnivorous species, we eat both plants and animals.
Secondly, “for selfish human wants” maybe you are not aware but food is a need, not a want. Unless your ready to kill every omnivorous and carnivorous species on the planet, quit putting humans on a pedestal that we need to go “green” foods while the rest of the omnivores and carnivores get to gorge themselves on whatever meat they like to eat.
Thirdly, maybe you don’t read a lot but the earth is quickly running out of enough food for the human species. Eventually cloning is going to be the only way we can be sustained.
Lastly, the advocation of cannibalism over eating cloned animals is disgusting. Not only is the thought disgusting, the intelligence behind such a statement is just as equally disgusting.
“You call eating meat ‘murder’. I say: mmmmm, murder tastes good!”
For those who think that reproductive cloning is okay, you need to think about the abnormalities and other health issues that come with cloning. Would you still clone a human baby knowing that he or she will not live a full and healthy life and have birth defects? The animals that are cloned suffer from many different things. Do scientist really feel the pain these animals go through whether it just for the 2 days the animal lives or 6 years? I doubt it. There is no good reason why reproductive cloning should be allowed!
I feel that cloning of animals is fine and dandy, it does no real direct harm to anyone….if/when they prove that using cloned animals for meat is causing problems of some sorts, then stop doing it, in the mean time, go for it. On a side note, cloning humans is a bit of a different beast. I feel this should be allowable….to a limited extent. I.E. cloning of tissues, and even full blown organs (other than the brain) should be allowable. Even up to and including a full blown body transplant in cases where a person is in danger of their life (a severe case of burns, accident, some other reason) I do also feel that the potential ability to clone arms, legs, hands, and feet very well could come in handy in the near…ish future to help people who otherwise would either have no ability to walk or do not have functionality of one or both of their arms…or in some cases, both. Cloning organs, too, could have purposes. For example, if someone had a bad kidney, they could just clone the good one right away instead of waiting for a transplant. Or in a more extreme example, if someone’s heart is starting to give out on them, they could clone it, and prevent (at least for some time) heart attacks, death, ect. I know not everyone will see it my way, but this is how I feel regarding these issues.
Its not quite as simple as the previous post makes out. You can’t just clone a whole body without a head etc. In that case you would be cloning an individual and then chopping off their head. Not exactly ethical. You also can’t clone an adult body or organ, it will be a newborn equivilant.
Good spirit though
Honestly, you are an idiot. There are a thousand reasons it is useful, and if you had any experience in the primary industries you’d know that.
Educated…
For the record, my post was made to use the best tools AGAINST those who would use judeochristian religios ethos as a reason to abhor cloning. I never said I believed it.
Just because I am familiar with the book, “Harry Potter” doesn’t mean I believe in Hogwart’s School… get my point? I can however, quote a few lines if required (of the bible and/or Harry Potter).
IMHO the bible is a relevant document in that it gives people who would otherwise be wayward assholes with no rule of law, a set of guidelines to live by. There are those who abuse that, yes, but all in all, the effect of the bible is mostly harmless. (yes, i said that on purpose)
Now, what NEEDS to happen, is someone should CLONE Jesus. That would be AWESOME. Imagine a REAL Buddy Christ!!!
The ability to clone endangered species is prodigious! I agree with the post above that it is unfortunate we have to result to this in order to save endangered wildlife, that leaving the environ alone where these species reside is obviously the best choice. However, under the current circumstances I hope scientists have the ability to clone every endangered species before they are completely wiped out.
The reason animals are endangered is the ignorant people with reptilian brains, stuck in a time warp and slow on the evolution scale who get pleasure from hunting for trophy which is not a sport, but murder. The people who are destroying the earth and taking away habitats are killing off our animals. The people destroying the water killing the fish with plastic toxic waste etc. The only thing that should be cloned are intelligent people because ignorant people keep breeding producing low consciousness off spring who care more about shopping than compassion for people or animals. And the only reason for cloning is that these so called scientists, many who need their brains examined to see why they can induce pain and suffering on animals, is they get billions of your tax dollars to make up experiments. Check out the National Institute of Health and see the insanity over there with animal experiments. Leave the animals alone, stop destroying the environment and instead of men hunting let them go on extreme fighting tv and really be a man where there is an equal and fair fight. And animals are not here for us to torture them, and the meat industry does. If animals are cloned it will just be more animals to kill, hunt and torture for the people who are barbaric. Canned Hunts, Internet hunting, Bear Baiting, etc etc. The thirst for this is sociopathic.Even though it has a bad reputation to some, you can see videos of the insidious meat industry and other horrendous acts of violence to animals on the Peta website. There are humane ways of doing things when necessary. Cloning is a bad idea for the time being.
“Repulsive? Wow… how about “Ignorant” for you?
Cloned animals do not have exactly the same DNA, however the percentage of difference is so minute as to be nearly untraceable.
The animals will not look exactly the same, and over the course of their lives their DNA will drift. Point source mutations may occur each time that a strand of DNA replicates; this is affected by minute changes in the organism’s environment. Did background radiation knock at ATGC segment out of whack? Did malnutrition hinder the clean encoding of new RNA strands?
The changes are very very small, but nothing is an *exact* clone of it’s source code once it’s cells have replicated just a few times.”
———————————————————–
Way to form an uneducated comment… there is 0 evidence to say whether or not cloning has a small or greater effect on the DNA of the cloned specimen. The mere fact that a slight change in DNA can produce a completely different, look, or intelligence is enough to say playing god might not be such a brilliant idea. Instead of being irresponsible with our consumption and re-growth, solve that problem, become responsible, and stop looking for ways to make a glutinous mess out of humanity.
this is people playing god!
I don’t really see how cloning animals is good for a species, threatened or not. One of the main goals of any breeding programme is to encourage genetic diversity to avoid inbreeding and disease. It’s like bananas – you get a whole bunch of basically identical organisms, and one virus can wipe them all out. Why would we do this to our livestock? Or an endangered species?
WOW! so many people come on here saying “oh cool! cloning! fun!” when they don’t even know a thing about cloning. in my opinion, cloning is wrong…only God can make life and we weren’t meant to create other living things. besides, it takes usually over 100 failures to make at least one successful cell, that usually ends up dying anyways. this science is way to expensive to be using so much money on! therapeutic cloning is another joke. there have been no records at all of a healed disease from harvesting eggs from women’s ovaries for stem cells, and it’s killing life! for every embryo that’s used, a human life is destroyed! this has been going for years and it’s murder! how would you like it if instead of having a great chance at life, your fate was decided for you to use on some silly science that scientists are “hoping” or “expecting” will get some where one day? it’s all a load of baloney.
@dani:
“only God can make life and we weren’t meant to create other living things. besides, it takes usually over 100 failures to make at least one successful cell, that usually ends up dying anyways.”
Procreation, dear. We can make other living “creatures”. It can take some people over 100 failures (due to infertility, spontaneous abortions, etc) to have a child — which is going to die anyway, due to mortality.
I’d like to know where you get your figures for cloning. Indeed, “there have been no records at all of a healed disease from harvesting eggs from women’s ovaries for stem cells”. Initially, there was also no records at all of people being healed from receiving medication, vaccines, etc. All new scientific methods need to be broken in, to be refined until they reach a point where they can be used by the general public for their intended goal.
“for every embryo that’s used, a human life is destroyed”
I direct you to this page. More specifically, this paragraph:
“Miscarriage statistics can be dramatic. Miscarriage reportedly occurs in 20 percent of all pregnancies. However, according to some sources, this may be an inaccurate number. Many women, before realizing a life has begun forming within them, may miscarry without knowing it-assuming their miscarriage is merely a heavier period. Therefore, the miscarriage rate may be closer to 40 or 50 percent. Of the number of women who miscarry, 20 percent will suffer recurring miscarriages. “
There you go. For every embryo that’s carried to term, there’s potentially a whole other embryo that’s being “kill[ed]“. It happens. At least with the cloned embryos’ “deaths” (I don’t consider them alive yet, but that’s a separate issue), there’s potential for another life to be saved.
i like the monkey (:
& the ferrets
& the wolves
& the pussy cats
& the piggys
& the roger rabbit
& thats all
PEACE OUT GIRL SCOUT!
What about all those people who are in need of a organ. This day in age we have more people that are in need of an organ then their are organ donors. The cloned animals could be cross-breed with human genes and their organs would be available for cross-species organ transplants. “Close to three thousand people die each year waiting for an organ.” -Wrote the Minnesota Daily. (The cloning debate by Debbie Stanley.) Also cloning doesn’t have to be within animals. We already have something called a cell line. A cell line is the creating of individual cells; this technique is already being used for diabetes, hemophilia, and cystic fibrosis. Imagine all the possible medical breakthroughs that could come from animal cloning.
Also Dani, your quote (Which who knows were you got from.)can only be implied to those people who believe in god cause what does
“only God can make life and we weren’t meant to create other living things. besides, it takes usually over 100 failures to make at least one successful cell, that usually ends up dying anyways.”
mean if you don’t believe in god.
this is so wrong to use animals for our medical needs…when animals have their own medical needs to deal with…
I, personally, commend everyone who has spoken out about the religious/ethical view-point of all this cloning. I do NOT at all believe that we should clone humans. I agree, partly, with one of the earlier posts, about how we should clone human cells and/or organs, but we shouldn’t go as far as to clone limbs. Maybe, just maybe, we could clone smaller parts, like fingers, eyes, or ears, and even hearts or lungs(etc.), but not large things like arms or legs. And with cloning animals, we could clone animals for better or more food, or preserving a species, or even pets (like
#11 “CopyCat”). We shouldn’t humans or even close pets, we should accept death as a natural thing. I am one for using the Bible as a good sturdy rock to fall back on or to use as proof, I believe it as real, and for those of you getting all over people for it, did you know that there is more evidence proving that Jesus Christ was born and lived during that same time period than there is of Julius Caesar and Pompeii? The same thing with the parting of the Red Sea. How could people who consider themselves “intellectuals” not believing in some kind of deity? That is true ignorance; ignorance of someone(or thing) greater, smarter, more creative than humans? Good job Dani, and any other Christians(I presume that was the god you were referring to dani) who aren’t afraid to stand up for what’s right. God bless you.