asking because I heard a story about it on the radio when getting lunch and I thought it was the dumbest shit I've heard all day. people are paying $50k to clone their dead dogs?? bro they are like $50 at the pound just get a stray....
the researcher being interviewed relayed a story about how this woman got her pet horse cloned but, upon the clone's birth, she was like "uhh I expected you to keep it until it was at least a few years old?? i don't want a BABY clone" ngjrgthjrdgfh
Paris Hilton cloned her chihuahua into two dogs??
no one knows where they get the 'breeding' dogs?? apparently they 'rent' the dogs from breeders across the country?? and also 'rent' the egg donor dogs?? seems pretty fucked up!!!
anyways here if you're interested: https://www.viagenpets.com/
this is the specific NPR podcast I was listening to on the radio (it's the most recent 'Should You Clone Your Dog'): https://www.npr.org/podcasts/478859728/think
the researcher's article in the New Yorker which is also a good read: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/01/would-you-clone-your-dog
It’s possible to see dog cloning as merely an extension of what is already a bizarre and highly unnatural process. In Fort Worth, Texas, I met a clone of a dog called Eudoris. The clone’s owner, Jeff, who didn’t want his last name used, was on the phone as I approached, but Eudoris 2—or E2, as he’s known—turned to look at me. His body was shaped like a German shepherd’s, but he lacked the swayed back of the kennel-club German-shepherd lines, whose hind legs buckle in a way that people liken to frog legs. E2’s face was more vulpine, too. I made a sound of greeting to him, and he folded his ears back. Within half a minute, he had turned his rump toward me beseechingly, the universal dog body language for requesting a scratch above the tail.
The original Eudoris was a mix of a Belgian Malinois and a Dutch shepherd, and had been bred by Joshua Morton, a trainer of tactical working dogs, who felt that Eudoris was the ideal specimen. He had ViaGen clone him, and not just once. Thirty-five clones have been made from Eudoris so far. Jeff got E2 as a protection dog for his wife, who travels frequently to compete in rodeos. E2 was their second Eudoris clone. The first, E4, drowned in an irrigation ditch four months after they got him. Jeff and Morton felt that E4 was so special that they sent some of his tissue to ViaGen. Since then, Morton has used E4’s cells to clone yet another line of dogs, which he dubs the Red Squadron Myrmidons, called M1, M2, and so on. “The DNA of M1 is the same as the DNA of E1 through E-whatever,” Jeff said. “And the same as Eudoris Actual, the biological Eudoris.” Hearing his name, E2 began wagging his tail.
bro cloned his dog 35 TIMES??????????? 'drowned in an irrigation ditch four months after they got him' is doing a lot of leg work in that last paragraph.
anyways, discuss - would you clone your dog/outdoor cat after it gets mauled by a coyote or tire/horse/ferret???? why? is this not real 'All that is holy is profaned' hours???
In abstract I don't really think it's more or less ethical than any breeding (which is its own bundle of concerns) and yet...
This proves that these pet owners don't really love their pets. They love the idea they've built in their head of their pets, the actual animal themselves is a vehicle to express a purely ideological form of """love""" that has nothing to do with character or personality.
This proves that these pet owners don't really love their pets. They love the idea they've built in their head of their pets, the actual animal herself is just a vehicle to express a purely ideological form of """love""" that has nothing to do with character or personality.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing listening to the story while driving & even the researcher being interviewed and the host were saying about as much - that a lot of these people who clone their pets are looking for the EXACT same dog/cat/etc that they've built up in their head and thus, when asked 'is the clone the exact same personality wise??' they'll be like "yep!" even though its not likely the case. The horse example brought up by the researcher was really about that, the owner of the horse was clearly in love with the adult horse she'd had for years - not the foal, so when it was born she was apparently like "uhh I was expecting you to keep it for a few years..."
You're right that it really isn't less ethical than commercialized breeding
funny enough I really like my dog's phenotype, but he's got some behavioral issues from before we adopted him. it'd be nice to have a fresh start lol.
This proves that these pet owners don't really love their pets. They love the idea they've built in their head of their pets, the actual animal themselves is a vehicle to express a purely ideological form of """love""" that has nothing to do with character or personality.
I don't think that's necessarily true for every pet owner who would do this. It can easily be a coping mechanism. They lost a loved one but that loved one "lives on" in the clone, while still understanding the clone isn't actually that loved one but a new being to love.
But at that price, your idea is definitely likely.
I love my dog and hate that he'll die, but to me the only real ethical way to have a pet is to rescue one. My local humane society has waived its $200~ adoption fee because too many dogs need homes. If I cloned my dog, the clone wouldn't have his personality and I'd be reminded that he's dead every time I see him. It'd be like paying thousands of dollars to be haunted by his ghost. That wouldn't be fair to the clone or the dog I could have rescued instead.
I love my dog so much and as he gets older I fear the inevitable. I would love to clone him and love him forever, but ultimately that's not my dog. That's another dog that is genetically similar, but his personality and behavior will be different. So I would say cloning a pet is probably born out of care, but ultimately misguided, and has a lot of ethical baggage attached to it.
can a Ghola gain its pre-ghola memories? What is the secret of the axolotl tanks??
It's easy, you just have to make your ghola-dog be put in an extremely stressful situation where they're being forced to kill you, and then the stress will release all the pre-ghola memories. It's very easy to make a ghola-dog understand this.
Well either that or your ghola dog needs to have really kinky sex. Look, I don't make the rules
I really loved my dogs, and was really sad when they died. May be a bit bourgois of me, but I got small stuffed animals made in their likeness. I think it helped me move on. A full clone certainly feels wrong. As much as I hate death, something about its looming presence seems important.
May be a bit bourgois of me, but I got small stuffed animals made in their likeness
That isn't, it's sweet!!
pet sematary ass m-fs. no chance I would clone. massive waste of resources when there's a jillion pets waiting for a home and a pal.
all my cats have been, "good god, somebody help me and take this cat because I have too many cats" and they have all been champions.
coolest dog I ever was pals with was a three legged former mama who had been hit by a car after escaping from a puppy mill. too clever by half, larger vocabulary than most teenagers, and swear to God, she would play pranks and then make a mock laughing sound with a twinkle in her eyes. like some shit out of a cartoon, she was.
It’s a waste of resources, if we ever reach post scarcity it might be ok. But it’s a form of wasteful decadence until then.
I would get a parrot that will outlive me and then clone myself
2x pimpy 3x bape
holy shit lol i forgot about dough boy
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The 2x and 3x things indicate intentional inbreeding, don't they?
I don't know exactly how it all works but essentially yes, they use the cloning tech too to get multiple copies of the dog. It's very weird, one of the most depraved businesses around IMO since these dogs suffer all their lives.
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I think if you have to put an inbreeding coefficient on a family tree for a dog you should get the wall lol
Yeah, making Charles Houndsburg II is completely unredeemable
is this some kind of experiment to create a dog that cannot standup under it's own power?
If it had no complex moral consequences then yes I'd clone my two cats currently taking a dirt nap in the backyard. Hell, I'd take them even in grotesque monkey's-paw form. Poor little babies 😭
But also, I think it would be closer to "getting a new cat that's exactly like my dead cats" instead of "getting my dead cats back", right? I mean, I'd probably be cool with that, moral quandaries aside.
It's impossible to copy my cat because her personality stems from a lot of life events and that wouldn't be cloned, and she's a calico so any clone wouldn't even look like her. Instead of blowing all those resources on a weird sentimental fantasy I'd rather take in a rescue or stray that already exists and give them a happy life.
It's impossible to copy my cat because her personality stems from a lot of life events and that wouldn't be cloned
Yeah, I just now finished a comment about how one of my cats was like that.
Instead of blowing all those resources on a weird sentimental fantasy I'd rather take in a rescue or stray that already exists and give them a happy life.
Agreed, although I can't really take care of myself so I'm sure as hell not ready for a cat. "My" cats were really the family cats.
But also, I think it would be closer to "getting a new cat that's exactly like my dead cats" instead of "getting my dead cats back", right? I mean, I'd probably be cool with that, moral quandaries aside.
The little bit of research I've done (which is mostly just listening to the piece and reading the article) has basically drawn the conclusion that no one knows if a cloned animal is exactly like its original, personality wise. You'd certainly get a cat that looks very similar/close to your original cat, but personality is a lot more about nurture than nature I'd imagine....Now I'm imagining that dude cloning his 36th dog and the dog just fucking hating him for no reason LOL.
You'd certainly get a cat that looks very similar/close to your original cat, but personality is a lot more about nurture than nature I'd imagine.
So one of my cats was adopted from a family who loved him but someone developed an allergy to his fur. I think a clone of him would be more likely to develop into the cat I knew him as because his history before we had him was pretty close to how we got him.
The other cat had a bit of a tough time before we got her.
Animal abuse
I believe that she was found abandoned as a kitty. Either way, she was an extremely skittish cat when my aunt adopted her.
Now my aunt tried her best to care for her cat, but my aunt had trouble keeping a clean house, and sometimes she got sent to a mental hospital for a couple weeks so the litterbox wasn't cleaned for a few weeks. She really has trouble caring of herself. We got her when my aunt had got kicked out of her apartment and moved into a long-term mental hospital. Apparently everyone forgot she had a fucking cat. Poor little thing; we literally had to pluck her claws out of the shit-caked carpet.
She literally hid from us the first year or so we had her. And my cats did not like each other; each were socialized without other cats, so the first cat was doing us no favors in welcoming the new one. She did eventually come out of her shell, towards the end of her life even with new people, but she was always really skittish.
All of this is a long winded way to say that a clone of this cat probably wouldn't resemble the cat I knew because the cat I knew was literally traumatized before we adopted her. And it's also an excuse to remember better times.
has basically drawn the conclusion that no one knows if a cloned animal is exactly like its original, personality wise
Nah, it's definitely not the same as the original. Epigenetics is a whole field. They'll have the same genetic predispositions, but their development (both within the womb and after birth) makes them different, potentially very different if they have a completely different upbringing.
bro they are like $50 at the pound just get a stray....
This is the start and the end of it as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure that there's some niche cases where cloning a dog would be worthwhile, but cloning your dog isn't going to bring the same dog back. The end result will be pretty much the same as adopting an existing dog of the same breed, but adoption doesn't waste masses of time, money, and resources.
Cloning technology is cool but pet ownership is controversial. All the animals (and even plants) that humans domesticated or tamed, it has mostly been a bad deal for them. The few species that have benefited from us are either carnivorous, invasive, or ecologically damaging in some way. There is no consensus among animal rights activists, animal liberationists, and vegans as what we should do with pets and other domesticated animals. Some popular theories include simply ending their breeding so they will die off naturally, culling them all because from a utilitarian perspective that would result in less harm overall since keeping every single domesticated animal alive without a profit to be gained would be incredibly hard and damaging to the environment, there’s some people that think we should try to integrate the animals we already domesticated into society because we owe that to them for messing with their evolution (think street cats that cities pay to keep healthy).
Now on the issue of cloning, animal experimentation is highly unethical due to the lack of consent, it was necessary in the past in the same way it was necessary for ancient humans to eat meat as hunter gatherers. But cloning is necessary for bringing back extinct animals, ending diseases, and moving beyond the binary the spectrum. Brining back a dog because you really like that dog is narcissistic, it’s not even the same dog, even if we could put the memories back in then you run into the teleporter problem because it’s not a direct continuation of that individual, just a copy. And all of this leads to another question, do people or animals even deserve to be immortal. The answer is no, everyone and everything should die. Even if we could insure consciousness doesn’t get interrupted during cloning, or we could make bodies that are invulnerable. Other than like bringing back extinct species that we need for their evolutionary niche in the ecosystem, we should not try to stop death,
