I was reading the news one morning when I came across this unusual headline: ‘Fergie’s plot to clone the Queen’s corgis.’ Just a fortnight later, I saw another article, titled ‘Tom Brady walks his cloned dog.’ Now, I know that animal cloning is not out of the realm of possibilities (we all remember those science lessons on Dolly the sheep), but it’s not something that I thought was available to the masses.
But it is. Well, if you can afford it.
The first dog clone to ever come to fruition was an Afghan Hound named Snuppy in 2005. Created by Seoul National University after 123 surrogates, Snuppy lived a long and healthy life until his death aged ten. Since then, pet cloning has been catapulted from a field of academic research to a service offered by private firms for hefty sums, with companies such as ViaGen in the U.S. and Sooam Biotech in South Korea having flourished over the past decade.
A Booming Industry
After the passing of her dog Sammie in 2017, actress Barbara Streisand had cells from her pet collected to create two clones, which she named Scarlett and Violet. One year later, Simon Cowell announced that he planned to have his three Yorkshire terriers cloned ‘sooner rather than later’ because he ’cannot bear the thought of them not being around.’ And in 2023, Paris Hilton unveiled her two new pooches, Diamond and Baby, which are genetically identical to her missing Chihuahua.
But it’s not just the rich and famous who are leading this trend. More and more ordinary people are now also leaping at the opportunity to get their pets cloned. Take Kelly Anderson, for example. When she first heard the news that a pet cloning facility was opening half an hour away from her apartment in Austin, Texas, she thought little of it. It wasn’t until after her cat Chai died in 2017 that she decided to make use of ViaGen’s services, coughing up $25,000 (£19,000). After four years of waiting, Chai’s clone finally arrived and was named Belle. Today, Anderson busily documents her two pets’ similarities and differences for her 230K followers under the pseudonym Clone Kitty.
Vanessa Johnson’s journey was very similar. Her rescue dog Oliver was a major part of her life for 17 years, but eventually developed cancer. Following her Shih Tzu’s passing in 2024, the Amazon executive from Los Angeles began searching for tips on how to deal with grief. That’s when she stumbled across conversations online about pet cloning. When she contacted ViaGen, Johnson says she felt ‘a ray of hope,’ despite the $50,000 (£40,000) price tag and less than a ten per cent chance of success. One year later, she got to meet her new puppy, Ollie, whom she regularly showcases on social media. Johnson’s story was picked up by The New York Post in December and has since made headlines across the world. However, examples like these do raise some important questions about the ethics of pet cloning and the extent to which humans will go to cheat death.
An Ethical Dilemma
Domesticated animals have existed for millennia. The Ancient Egyptians revered cats, often keeping them as pets and mummifying them after their passing. Meanwhile, dogs have earned a reputation for being men’s best friends, with evidence of canines being buried similarly to their human masters dating back 15,800 years. To this day, pets continue to hold a significant place in our hearts. The fact that a third of UK neighbourhoods now have more dogs than kids proves this.
Increasingly, couples who are unable to have, or who simply do not want, children are opting to raise ‘fur babies’ instead. The term dinkwad (short for dual income, no kids, with a dog) is now a firm part of mainstream culture. There are almost 17K posts under #dinkwad on TikTok, with a growing number of sinkwads on the platform too. In our increasingly sentimental and stressed-out culture, canines and felines are viewed less like ordinary pets and more like beloved family members. So when they inevitably pass away, their death affects us more profoundly, and grief can sometimes linger. Johnson, who is childless and single, says that because Oliver was by her side 24 hours a day, ‘losing him felt as hard as when I lost my grandparents. He meant so much to me.’ Cloning him felt like she ‘could have a piece of him come back.’ And that’s what really bothers me about animal cloning: the fact that some animal lovers may confuse it with the idea of bringing their pet ‘back’ from the dead.
Despite being a genetic match to the original creature, clones are their own distinct individual. A 2025 study found that whilst animals that share the same genes will have certain biological predispositions and display similar evolutionary behaviours, a clone’s personality is almost entirely down to nurture, not nature. But how will someone who is grieving the loss of their beloved pet understand the difference? Most likely, they won’t be in the right frame of mind to absorb this information — all they want is their pet back. And their desperation often means that they are willing to sacrifice anything to achieve this, especially their finances. Anderson had to take out a loan in order to have her cat cloned, which took five years to pay off. Additionally, when Luiz Hoinkins recently wrote about his experience of having Lucas, his Boston terrier, cloned, his desperation was palpable:
‘The fact that it would cost $50,000 was irrelevant. I swiped my credit card without even thinking about it … Even if it had cost a million dollars, I would have somehow found the money.’
With only a five-day window after their pet’s passing to decide whether or not to pursue cloning, owners are likely to make rash, emotionally charged decisions amidst the throes of grief. This much Johnson admits:
‘Everybody told me to wait, but I just couldn’t listen. My head wasn’t clear,’ she told The New York Post. ‘Some days, I wish I had just let myself go through the grieving process and not be so scared of it.’
Concerns over the emotional manipulation of pet lovers aside, cloning does seem to reflect an unrealistic desire to have control over life and death itself. In an attempt to replicate an animal, we play god without sparing a thought for the surrogates who must carry the clones, or the thousands of rescue animals who could benefit from an owner’s love. Ultimately, cloning our pets is simply putting off the inevitable fact that we must part with them eventually. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we must learn to appreciate that our relationships with our pets are finite and irreplaceable. That’s what makes them so precious.
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