Clones and Canines
One of China’s top police dogs will have a new colleague in its fight against crime: its own clone.
Chinese scientists recently cloned a puppy using the DNA of an award-winning sniffer dog, the South China Morning Post reported.
Kunxun, a two-month-old female puppy, was bred using the genes of the seven-year-old female Huahuangma, known in the city of Puer for cracking multiple cases for the police.
The young Kunming wolfdog is in good health and adjusting well to her new training regimen at the Kunming Police Dog Base in Yunnan province.
The little pooch has also displayed her originator’s skills by having a strong sense of smell and remaining brave in dark or unfamiliar spaces.
Scientists believe that cloning will be a better alternative in preserving genes of unique police dogs, and hope to create a larger number of specimens in the future.
“We hope in the next 10 years, once the technology becomes more sophisticated, to mass clone exceptional police dogs,” the base’s project analyst Wan Jiusheng said.
This is not the first case of a clone canine army, however.
Back in 2007, South Korea introduced cloned dogs for police and military use, and recently Chinese researchers cloned five genetically edited monkeys to test mental illness drugs.
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