Question in topic, has a independant lab ever confirmed one of these cloned pets is the real deal?
How likely is it to be an elaborate hoax? Very conviniently the companies tell you not to expect similar coloring or temperment like the donor animal. Also some of the claims are questionable, the “Booger” litter of five pups was claimed to be cloned from a sample of ear tissue the non-professional owner took and held on to.
Why would you trust a lab over, say, an alsatian?
You can always trust a lab. They’re golden!
How would the lab differentiate between an artificial clone and a natural one? (For all the hype in scifi movies about a clone being an identical version of you a clone is simply a twin, whether artificial or natural).
I think that the OP isn’t referring to cloning of embryos, but rather to commercial pet-cloning services: you send in a tissue sample of your beloved Rover (an adult), pay a fee, and the lab makes a new puppy with Rover’s DNA. The OP is asking whether it’s ever been verified that these puppies are, in fact, clones of Rover and not just similar-looking.
Well, if it was your business, which would be more profitable? Leap forward to the bleeding edge of genetic technology, with a huge ramp-up before it’s consistent, so lots of botched tries? Or run down to the pet store and find a Lab with light-colored cheeks, just like Good Ol’ Rex?
Not a pet per se, but showjumper Gem Twist has been successfully cloned (more than once IIRC), there are several other cloned competition horses and in future they’ll be allowed to compete at the Olympics
Its been established that these services are for real. Being that they charge around $20,000 to clone your dog or cat I would think a quick DNA test after the fact would have been thought of & done by now.
What gets me though, is how utterly pointless these services have proven to be. You get a clone which:
[list=A]
[li]Almost always bears absolutely no physical resemblance to your original pet what-so-ever[/li][li]Bears no personality similarities to them what-so-ever either![/li][/list]
Every story I’m read or watched about people who do this are usually upper-middle class women who just remain in complete denial about A & B! Kinda pathetic sometimes. Nobody likes losing a beloved pet, but this process absolutely does not replace them in any way.
At least its not as bad as those sickos who get their deceased pets freeze-dried! Those people should be in a loony bin! 
I completely agree with these facts.
They bear no resemblance? How is this possible, if they’re genetically identical?
By humping the living hell out of the real one?
IIRC, many aspects of fur coloration are determined during fetal development, not necessarily by the genes. Basically, different cells have different genes turned “on” or “off” at some point during gestation, and those areas develop into follicles with different pigmentation. An example of this is tortoiseshell cats, whose patterns of black & orange are determined essentially randomly at some point during fetal growth. If you took a cell from such a cat, introduced its DNA into another cat embryo, and brought it to term, it wouldn’t have the same coat.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that other aspects such as overall size, relative proportions of body parts, etc. are also strongly affected by conditions in the womb.
Hmm is this unlike humans, or are twins more different than I think?
Like ** Corcaigh** said, although not really pets there have been several examples of cloned horses that are ridiculously documented. There’s been much debate in the AQHA world about letting them compete or serve as stallions. Although the push exists in the thoroughbred world too, it’s very limited considering the already stringent live cover requirements.
But, for cat cloning, it’s my understanding that even truly documented cloned cats don’t really look alike as coat patterns and, I think, even color can differ.
The uterine environment of the maternal host is important in the invocation of certain epigenetic causative agents that, in turn, directly affect the phenotypic expression of the base DNA sequences.
Twins (or any other multiple births) share the same environment and are, thusly, sometimes eerily similar in their phenotypes. Clones, on the other hand, do not share the same uterine environment and therefore are quite likely to lack the same kind of shared traits as do twins.
It is an interesting fact that hasn’t been explored by modern SF as far as I can tell.
There may be a novel in the telling thereof.
Has there ever been a case of identical twin human beings which ended up developing from a very early stage inside two different women’s wombs?
Did they ever solve the problem of clones aging faster than than the donor? It was a big problem with Dolly. Aging damages genes, albeit only the introns until near age-related death.
A cloned pet that is effectively the same age as the original doesn’t seem like it would be very useful. I could see it working with horses, since you’d make the clone well before death, and the main issue with horses aging out are injuries, not time. But a large number of pets die of old age.
Not really. That’s been overblown in the press. She had shorter than usual telomeres, but she died of a common viral disease, and there was no indication of premature aging within her body post-mortem.
Wikipedia article
As a PhD student in biology who has written a paper on oxidative damage and aging, I’m having trouble parsing this sentence. Aging doesn’t “damage genes”. Damage to DNA, and other molecules, is caused by exposure to certain chemical agents, and this damage can accumulate over time. This is thought to contribute to the aging process. I have no idea why you think it only affects introns. That’s just completely wrong. I guess you could argue that damage to exons is more likely to lead to cancer, but there’s no mechanism at all that limits oxidative or chemical damage to certain parts of the genome.
You may be getting this mixed up with the telomere shortening problem, but again, in my opinion, that’s been overblown in the popular media. It’s a part of aging, but it’s hardly the most important part.
Reminds me of this joke.
Regarding cloning of dogs, remember Bernann McKinney? Who’d’ve thought that a story about cloning pets could be strange?
Sure - a pet bull.
http://current.com/shows/this-american-life/92921526_cloning-a-best-friend-this-american-life.htm
It’s a strange story with a bit of a surprise ending. It’s worth a watch.