CNN
Ziggy is a dog genetically identical to Marley, a Labrador Retriever who died 5 years ago. The family called on a company specializing in cloning.
In California, the owners of a deceased dog made the decision to have it cloned , as reported by CNN .
Alicia and David Tschirhart live in Escondido with their children and their dog Ziggy , a Labrador Retriever . The latter has the same genome as Marley , their previous animal which succumbed to cancer 5 years ago. “ They have the same personality, play the same way and prefer the same toys, ” says Alicia , whose life was saved by the late quadruped.
Indeed, while she was 4 months pregnant and taking part in a family hike , she had spotted a large stick on the ground that she thought she was picking up to use as a support for walking. But what she hadn’t seen was a poisonous rattlesnake that stood right next to the object and stood ready to attack it. Marley had noticed it and had managed to chase it away . Without her intervention, who knows what would have happened to her owner and the child she was carrying …
Years after saying goodbye to him, the couple turned to ViaGen Pets , a company specializing in the cloning of pets for the sum of 50,000 dollars (approximately 45,000 euros). This is how Ziggy , a dog genetically identical to Marley , was born.
Dog cloning is practiced in several countries. In 2018, the famous Barbara Streisand revealed that 2 of her dogs were clones . In South Korea, an airport is using sniffer dogs cloned from an animal with extremely good scent. Let us also cite the example of the 5 clones produced from Trakr , a German Shepherd who had discovered the last survivor of the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York .
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The process is the subject of much criticism and is considered unethical by more than one specialist.
(CNN screenshot)
