It’s in the news today, that Rebecca Smith a British woman, won a competition to have her pet cloned and she now has Minnie Winnie a clone of her 12 year old dachshund Winnie.
This set me thinking about the cloning of animals and doing a PoC search I found this article Michael wrote a while back, it must have slipped under the radar as it has no comments.
I must have missed it at the time as it’s a very well written article and I’ve found it very interesting. Would you clone your cat? I wouldn’t, for many reasons, the main one being that we have no right to interfere with Nature this way, it’s going too far!
Imagine cloning the very first cat we had in our lives, what about when the clone grew old, would we/could we clone the clone? Each and every cat we have/have had in our home has been/is special and unique and much loved.
I don’t see how a cloned cat can grow to be exactly the same as the cat he/she is cloned from, because they will grow up under different circumstances.
My first extra special soulmate cat was Bert, I was in my twenties, he died when I was in my forties and a very different person to who I was when he came along and different again to who I am in my sixties, because with age we get experience and learn from our mistakes.
If we had cloned our first cat that would have been an already living breathing cat denied a home. For every cat cloned that’s one less home for another cat needing a home.
If cloning became popular and affordable there would be even less homes, more cats than ever would die unwanted.
I imagine cloning has been modified since Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal, aged very quickly. I shudder to think of the experiments going on in laboratories and the number of cloned animals born in the process, only to die or to be killed as imperfect.
Only rich people will be able to afford to have a pet cloned right now, just as only well off people can afford to buy pedigree pets. Will having a cloned pet become the fashion for so called ‘celebrities’ and a status symbol of their wealth?
Thousands of animals are being killed in Shelters for lack of homes, all breeding of new breeds and cloning of animals should be stopped until that situation is resolved. But that will never happen because in this sad world the human race are never content, they want more, more, more and the animal kingdom are the ones suffering.
As much as I loved all the cats we have had and as much as I love Walter and Jozef I know and accept that one day we will lose them. Life and death of humans and animals are the natural order of this world to keep the numbers balanced.
I’d love Walt and Jo to be here with us forever, but they are irreplaceable, a Walter clone wouldn’t ‘be’ Walter, a Jozef clone wouldn’t ‘be’ Jozef. Each and every cat to me is unique and I think we have no right to clone any animal, they can’t consent to it.
I wouldn’t want another me in this world and like humans, cats are to me individuals, each the one and only, born as Nature intended.
Heaven knows that I would be thrilled to have my so loved deceased cats back with me.
But, they deserve to have their own place in my heart. There can never be replacements, regardless of the fact that they may have a look-a-like. There could never be a re-creation of them that could fill that space in my heart.
Great topic Ruth,
I wouldn’t clone our cats for three reasons.
The first and most important, is while the cloned cats may look exactly like the original cats, since they have not been “born” in the same environment they would not have the same personalities even though many of them are based in genetics.
I too would worry about the health of the cloned cats, since they too would inherit the same “health” genes as the original cats and this is not a good thing at all.
The third reason would be that having two cats that look exactly the same physically, it would be extremely hard to not compare them to the original cats, and the cloned kitties would be at risk of perhaps not receiving the identical love I shared with the original cats.
I don’t think cloning is a good idea at all- much for the same reasons that Michael gave. But of course there is that little part of me that wonders… what would it be like?
I think that is only human curiosity. I would never do it- even if it were affordable.
This is an excellent topic of conversation for those of us in the cat world. I may be a bit old-fashioned and therefore my views may not be in tune with modern life but my instinct is to dislike cloning of companion animals or indeed any animals.
There is something sinister about it and there is something uncomfortable about it. Also, the simple matter is that the most important part of a cat or a dog is the character and as far as I am aware you can’t clone the cat’s character or personality. Personalities develop through experience based upon the inherited characteristics of the individual. So it is a bit of both and therefore you cannot clone it and replicate the exact character of the original cat or dog.
For that reason alone, cloning is a failure in my opinion because a person will love a companion cat or dog primarily because of their character and personality. With a cloned cat you will end up with a cat that looks very similar or identical to the deceased cat but it still will be a different cat.
In addition, as I remember it, certain physical characteristics cannot be cloned and therefore you may also end up with a different cat in respect of appearance never mind personality.
Then there are the issues that Ruth mentions, one of which is that there are already too many cats in the world that are unwanted so why create more because even though a cloned cat is wanted that does prevent an unwanted cat being adopted.
There are other aspects of this with which I disagree one of which is, how healthy are cloned cats? Are there unforeseen health consequences that have been ironed out? Where will it lead to? Is the whole thing too impersonal and too scientific? Does it lack the emotional connection that one makes with a new rescue cat that you have saved from euthanasia? There are many more questions which are as yet unanswered. I don’t like cloning.
Agreed.
Again, it’s interfering with nature, depriving an already existing pet a home, and the clone is a totally different animal.
All I can reason from the whole thing is that it may be pursued by people, in desperation, in an effort to have their “same” beloved pet that may be old, ill, or have passed. That’s a sad scenerio for me to think about.
So I understand that a cloned animal is a replica of the original animal but surely an animal is like a person made up not only of the physical body and temperament but also the sum of it’s life experiences, surely for the cloned dog to turn out the same as Winnie she would have to be raised in exactly the same way, same environment same everything and if cloning is merely to have a lookalike animal why bother, there are plenty of beautiful cats and dogs looking for homes. And finally poor Minnie Winnie, destined to be no more than a second attempt at the same dog, not an individual but a carbon copy, a freak in fact, doomed to be gawped at for life. No, even if cloning was cheap as chips I wouldn’t want to do it, it’s a bit creepy really, a bit like Frankenstein’s monster, to me.
I agree. Cloning is about getting the same “looking” pet, not the same pet. The cloned animal is a whole different ‘person’. ;). The right cat will always find you, and the richness if new relationships is best for all concerned. As you say, you are not the same person you were twenty years, or even six months ago.