Kris Stewart loved her cat Bear. A lot. So much so that when he died in 2022, she raced to store his DNA.
“He was a very intelligent cat and mother earth wasn’t finished with his genes,” she said.
In March, 2024, she welcomed two Bear clones to her home in Kelowna, B.C.: Bear Bear and Honey Bear. His feline magic was hers once again.
“It still astounds me that this is possible,” Ms. Stewart said. “Every time I look at my cats, which is a lot, I just think, you guys do not realize how special you are.”
Ms. Stewart's original cat, Bear, died in 2022, but storing his DNA allowed her to create Bear Bear and Honey Bear.Lucas Oleniuk/The Globe and Mail
Biotechnology has come a long way since the 1996 birth of Dolly the sheep, the first clone of a mammal. As costs have come down and outcomes have improved, pet cloning has gone from science fiction to slightly more mainstream. Celebrities including Barbra Streisand, Paris Hilton and, most recently, Tom Brady, have all made copies of four-legged family members.
Viagen Pets and Equine, the Texas-based company that Ms. Stewart used, has cloned approximately 1,000 dogs and 2,000 horses, according to Matt James, the chief animal officer at Colossal Biosciences, which acquired Viagen last year (and which Mr. Brady is an investor in).
Ms. Stewart used Texas-based Viagen Pets and Equine to clone her cats.Lucas Oleniuk/The Globe and Mail
It costs US$50,000 to clone a dog or cat. A horse will run you US$85,000. Many Canadians have used the service, which has a current wait-list of seven months, he said.
Each clone is genetically the same as a previously loved pet, but owners should not expect Fluffy 2.0 to have all the same quirks and idiosyncrasies.
“You can’t bring back the exact animal that you lost,” Mr. James said, “but you can kind of fill that void with something as close as science will get you.”
It’s not only cats and dogs. Colossal Biosciences is working to “de-extinct” the woolly mammoth, and the company’s non-profit foundation has raised US$100-million to use cloning technology to help fight the biodiversity crisis.
Clones are genetically the same as a previously loved pet, but will not have the same quirks and idiosyncrasies.Lucas Oleniuk/The Globe and Mail
Cloning any animal is essentially creating an identical twin, explained Brian Hare, founder of the Duke Canine Cognition Center at Duke University and co-author of Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog.
While appearances will be the same, “they’re going to be very different from each other in many ways,” he said. Much of a dog’s temperament, for example, is shaped by its upbringing and environment.
Ms. Stewart was prepared for that reality, as the original Bear was already four years old when she got him. “I mean, you do have to account for your environment, right? Because this is all nature versus nurture,” she said.
And even though she’s raised both of the new cats, personality-wise they couldn’t be more different than each other.
Honey Bear has Bear’s “sassy” personality, she said, while “Bear Bear is just absolutely chill and a total gentleman. Honey Bear doesn’t like to be held any more than about 30 seconds.”
It costs US$50,000 to clone a dog or cat, and the wait-list at Viagen Pets and Equine is currently seven months.Lucas Oleniuk/The Globe and Mail
The process of cloning an animal is fairly straightforward.
A veterinarian takes a small piece of its skin, which is sometimes augmented with blood samples and a cheek swab. That genetic material is put into a petri dish, where the cells begin to divide. Meanwhile, an egg is collected from a donor animal of the same species. Once the new cells are ready, the egg’s nucleus is removed and replaced with the cloned DNA.
“The egg becomes an embryo that is then transferred into a surrogate,” Mr. James said. “That surrogate will give birth to your cloned animal 60 to 65 days later.”
Colossal Biosciences has a high success rate, with about 80 per cent of the cells it cultures becoming a “living, breathing puppy or cat,” he added.
For Mr. James, the proud owner of an adopted dog, the option to clone a pet isn’t as outrageous as it may seem. “People make decisions between adopting and going to purchase a purebred dog all the time. This is really no different.”
The desire to clone a pet shows just how incredible the bond can be between humans and animals, said Charmaine Brett, chief executive officer and president of the Ontario SPCA and Humane Society.
It reveals “how deep that is in individuals, and that makes people want to do things like cloning,” she said. But is also “should really encourage people to adopt at the same time.”
Though Ms. Stewart raised both of her new cats, she says their personalities couldn't be more different.Lucas Oleniuk/The Globe and Mail
Ethically speaking, Mr. Hare doesn’t see a problem with creating a clone.
While some animal lovers are happy to rescue a cat or dog from a shelter, he can appreciate wanting to recreate the joy of having a beloved pet.
Plus, he understands peoples’ fascination with cloning.
“Everybody loves a good Jurassic Park story,” he said.
