In a first, Chinese firm creates its first cloned kitten

With animal cloning growing fast and after already cloning monkeys, dogs and sheep, scientists have now also cloned a previously dead kitten.

Chinese firm Sinogene recently cloned a dead pet cat named Garlic, making it reborn and marking it as the company’s first ever successfully replicated cat.

The company informed that cloning the cat cost some 250,000 yuan (US$35,000), however, cloning of dogs that usually cost 380,000 yuan (US$53,000), and the company has cloned over 40 pet dogs, wrote ABC News.

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However, Sinogene’s CEO Mi Jidong told AFP that regardless of the expensive price, some clients were not even high earners. “In fact, a large proportion of customers are young people who have only graduated in the last few years. Whatever the origin of pets, owners will see them as part of the family. Pet cloning meets the emotional needs of young generations.”

Garlic has passed away seven months before its cloning. Its owner Huang Yu felt overjoyed on seeing his dead cat being incarnated. He mentioned that the ‘similarity between the two cats is more than 90%’, while hoping that the pet’s personality too is just as similar as its appearance.

Jidong believes that China has a growing pet market and thus, the market for pet cloning is also set to grow in future.

Moreover, Chinese scientists have high hopes for their next cloning challenge and are already working on the theory of cloning pandas next. An expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chen Dayuan, has been researching giant panda cloning for 20 years. He believes that there could even be possibility for cats to give birth to cloned baby pandas too.