Dealing with the death of a pet can sometimes be harder than dealing with the passing of a friend or relative, because that pet is such a big part of your home and everyday life, but grieve and move on we must.
But what if you could use cloning technology to create an exact clone of your pet at the cost of $150,000 - could you bring yourself to spend that much money on a dog? And is that clone really going to be the same as the original?
When Nina and Edgar Otto's beloved Labrador Lancelot passed away back in 2009 they found they couldn't live with the loss- so they paid the $150k and had Lancelot cloned from samples of his DNA.
BioArts, a firm in San Francisco, is responsible for this amazing story and they worked in conjunction with a South Korean team at the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation. The new dog was named Lancelot Encore (because of course it was) and the animal was created by injecting DNA into the eggs of a surrogate pup.
Since then their dog Lancelot Encore has sired a litter of puppies and dog cloning has become virtually mainstream, with companies like Viagen Pets offering their dog cloning services for a mere $50k. But the question still remains- can the clone ever really compare to the original?
-Via Goodfullness