Paying $100,000 to Clone Your Dog Wont Give You Your Dog

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By Melissa DahlShare TweetShareShareEmailCommentPrint

Photo: Russell Glenister/Corbis

The idea of cloning your pet sounds like a laughable, extravagant waste of money, because it is. But it
starts to seem a little less laughable when your own beloved pet starts getting older. If I had a few
hundred thousand dollars to spare, I know I wouldve half-seriously considered it for my dear little
cat, who died last year. One couple that does, apparently, happen to have a few hundred thousand
dollars to spare is Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, who have reportedly cloned their beloved
Jack Russell terrier, Shannon, and now have two identical Jack Russells, named Deena andEvita.
There have always been those people who have demonstrated signs of what you could call pet
repetitive syndrome, adopting the exact same pet over and over again. Queen Elizabeth II has
owned at least 30 corgis throughout her reign, for example, and Mariah Carey in 2014 got into
a custody battlewith ex-husband Nick Cannon over their eight Jack Russell terriers. Its a little weird,
yes. But it also makes a certain amount of sense. Dog breeds can have wildly different temperaments,
and some come with some very specific care requirements. If youve only ever owned Jack Russells
and decide to switch to a bulldog, for instance, youd better be ready to clean between its skin folds
every day to prevent rashes and infections. Speaking (very) generally, people like familiarity and
dislike the unexpected. Adopting a new pet is enough of a change; people like to know what theyre
getting into.
But beyond the practicalities, there is the perfectly impractical matter of the heart. When your pet
dies, you just want your pet back, or at least as close a replica as you can get. And so its really no
surprise that of the approximately 600 dogs cloned by Sooam Biotech Research Foundation the lab
in Seoul, South Korea, that is currently the only place on the planet in the business of cloning pet dogs
for owners most were cloned for grieving pet owners, NPR reported last fall.
The science has advanced at an interesting time in pet ownership, as people are increasingly viewing
their pets as members of the family: In 2013, 75 percent of dog owners surveyed by the American
Veterinary Medical Association said that they thought of their dog as part of the family; compare that
to 2006, when just about half of dog owners surveyed said the same. We call them our fur-babies, and
we mean it, as Virginia Hughes reported for National Geographic after her own 17-month-old was
struck by a car and killed. Hughes quoted psychologist John Archer, who writes:
Pet owners treat pets like children, for example, playing with them, talking to them in motherese or
baby-talk, continually referring to my baby, and holding and cuddling them as one would a baby
Similar (but less systematic) evidence that pets act as child substitutes can be found from

anthropological and historical accounts of other cultures: this includes breast-feeding of young
animals by humans.
But even cloning wont give you your pet back, not exactly. There dont yet appear to be any studies on
the behavior of cloned pets, but research on cloned cows and pigs has so far shown marked
differences in behavior and even looks in cloned animals. The technology of cloning has been sold to
the public as a way of creating a group of identical animals and, as such, there are companies that
have been set up around this concept, especially for pet cloning, Jorge Piedrahita, a molecular
biomedical sciences professor at N.C. State who led the pig study, said in a statement. Think of it like
identical twins: The DNA is exactly the same, but there are still differences in personality and, if you
know how to look for it, appearance.
Even if Diller and von Furstenburg raise their new dogs in the exact same environment in the exact
same way that they raised Shannon, the new dogs will still behave like what they are: entirely different
dogs from Shannon. The promise of pet cloning is that your cloned pet is going to behave and look
like the one you already have and that will not be the case, Piedrahita said. Weve cloned animals
that were raised in the same environment and they still didnt act the same.
Even still, sometimes the things you know with your head cant compete with the comparatively dumb
hopes of your heart. That NPR report referenced earlier included the story of Dr. Phillip Dupont and
his wife, Paula, who run a veterinary clinic in Louisiana. The Duponts paid Sooam $100,000 to clone
their dog Melvin, a pet they loved and trusted so deeply they even let the dog babysit their grandson
in the backyard all by himself. The Duponts got three puppies out of the deal, though one of those
puppies died. The other two are named Ken and Henry, and the couple is so happy with them theyre
considering using Melvins DNA again what better dog to give their grandson than one created
with the DNA of his former babysitter?
It makes sense; it also makes no sense at all. But one thing is for sure: There must be better ways to
spend $100,000 if youre an animal lover.