Guy Spent Rs 26.5 Lakh Cloning His Dead Cat, The Clone Looks Completely... Different

A 22-year-old man named Huang Yu was heartbroken after his beloved cat died, he buried Garlic (the cat’s name) close to his home. But then, he recalled an article about dog cloning and thought of doing the same with Garlic.

With that in mind, Huang dug up his cat and put the cat in his fridge, preparing to clone him. He then reached out to commercial pet-cloning firm Sinogene in Beijing. With Rs 26.5 lakh and a 7-month wait, he received the first cloned cat in China.

In fact, China is not the only country where people have cloned pets. In 2019, Barbra Streisand declared that she has cloned two dogs, both of which she owns, and that people have cloned cats for years. Current major cloning countries include the US, South Korea, and Britain.

Sinogene Chief Executive Mi Jidong said that the firm decided to begin cloning pets back in 2015 after their survey showed that about 1,000 people wanted this. So far, Sinogene has cloned over 40 dogs, like Malteses, Pomeranians, and schnauzers, each costing about Rs 40 lakh, some for medical research, and some as pets.

Cloning dogs is more expensive than cloning cats as it’s much harder to harvest dogs’ eggs, Mi said. He added that over 100 people have their pets’ DNA samples stored in case they need to clone them.

In 2000, Chinese scientists cloned a female goat and they have since succeeded in making the first primate clones in the world, editing monkey’s embryos to insert genes associated with mental illness and autism, as well as producing superstrong dogs by changing their genes. In 2019, the country even created the first genetically edited babies in the world.

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