At one UK clinic, pet-lovers can clone their animals post-mortem for a hefty sum.
Gemini Genetics, which is nestled into an inconspicuous building at a farm in Shropshire, first opened its doors in 2019. Back then, the clinic specialised in artificial insemination for show horse breeding.
Now, it has cloned almost 1,000 animals and has been described as ‘Europe’s only one of its kind.’
At Gemini Genetics, mourning animal lovers can paybetween £38,000 and £59,000 to clone their pets using a process thatcan take up to a year to complete.
The cloning company takes DNA from a deceased pet to create a genetically identical copy in their lab. It must be taken within five days of the pet’s death.
The company has a cloned cocker-spaniel roaming the building called Gem, who started life as a mere piece of another dog’s ear tissue.
They too house a cloned horse in a paddock that is particularly prone to pulling ‘funny faces,’ the company shared on social media.
In the labs, DNA from the tissue sample is extracted, cultured, multiplied and stored in liquid nitrogen at a staggering -196C.
But because cloning is banned in the EU, samples are then transferred over to America before returning to the UK.
Gemini Genetics lab manager Lucy Morgan told The Mirror: ‘The first thing people tend to think of when they hear the word cloning is Dolly the sheep.
‘But the technology is now a million miles away from Dolly.
‘There’s a taboo around cloning as it’s still a relatively new science but in the same way our mobile phones have evolved in the past 20 years, the technology around cloning has too.’
Dolly the sheep was the first animal to be cloned from an adult cell and was thought of as a ‘remarkable scientific achievement’ in 1996.
Dolly had to be put to sleep seven years later after contracting a progressive lung disease.
Pet cloning has caught the eye of a number of celebrities in recent years too.
Barbara Streisand last year revealed that she cloned her late dog Samantha not once, but twice. Earlier this summer Simon Cowell too expressed an interest in the procedure.
Lab manager Lucy said: ‘Losing a pet is a real grief.
‘I think unless you’ve ever lost a pet, many may not understand why people want to clone them after their death.’
Kelly Anderson is one of Gemeni Genetics’ customers. She spent $25,000 to have her current cat, Belle, cloned from the DNA of her last pet, Chai.
She said: ‘A lot of people think I wanted to bring my cat back from the dead but really that was not the case at all – I just wanted to carry on a piece of my cat.
‘Although I’m not rich by any means – I’m a broke dog trainer – so I took out a loan.
‘I really wanted to be careful in the fact that I treated Belle as an individual and not as just a copy.’
Currently, Gemini Genetics only clones cats, dogs and horses.
The clinic, however, have begun housing DNA from a variety of zoo animals including elephants and rhinos.
Scientists around the world are now stockpiling DNA of species so that they can be brought back to life if a disastrous extinction occurs.
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