20 years ago, the world was stunned by the creation of Dolly the sheep. Scientists have since tried their hand at copying other animals, from mice and racing mules to dogs and a fighting bull.
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Animal clones: Dolly, Mini-Winnie and Co.
20 years ago, the world was stunned by the creation of Dolly the sheep. Scientists have since tried their hand at copying other animals, from mice and racing mules to kittens and fighting bulls.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Channel 4
Dolly - the one who started it all
This woolly miracle started out in a test tube and was born on July 5, 1996, to three mothers - one provided the egg, the second the DNA and the third was the surrogate. Dolly was the world's first mammal cloned from an adult cell. The sheep that made history lived to be six, when she was put down after developing a lung disease. Dolly is on display at Edinburgh's National Museum of Scotland.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/PA Curtis
Half horse, half donkey
Idaho Gem is the very first cloned mule. Born in 2003 in - you guessed it - a town in Idaho, he is an identical genetic copy of his champion racing mule brother. Idaho Gem lived up to expectations and became a successful racing mule. Tougher and more productive than horses, mules are a - usually sterile - cross between a female horse and a male donkey.
Image: Getty Images/University of Idaho/P. Schofield
CC cat
The world's first cloned pet was a cat. The Texas scientists who created the clone in 2001 called the furball CC, for carbon copy. Commercial pet cloning hasn't taken off, however, much to the dismay of devoted pet owners.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Five sisters
Noel, Angel, Star, Joy and Mary were born on Christmas Day 2001 at PPL Therapeutics - which is the company that helped make Dolly the sheep: The five healthy female piglet clones, PPL said, had the genetic capability to allow their organs to be transferred to the human body without being rejected.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Desert beauty
Injaz ("Achievement") is the first cloned female dromedary, that is one-hump, camel. The gangly Arabian camel was born in 2009 at the Camel Reproduction Center in Dubai. Used for transport, riding and racing, camels still play an important role today in the Persian Gulf society.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Camel Reproduction Centre
Join the fray
Spanish scientists cloned a fighting bull they named Got. In this 2010 photo, the little fellow, cloned from the tough fighting bull Vasito, doesn't look ferocious yet at all. Got's mom was a serene black and white milk cow surrogate.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Bragimo
Monkey biology
Unlike Dolly, who was created using a procedure called nuclear transfer, little Tetra the rhesus macaque was created through a technique called embryo splitting. In 2000, scientists in Oregon presented the little primate they had successfully cloned for the first time. Above, Tetra, which means four in Greek, is four months old.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Fido forever?
A team of researchers in South Korea managed to clone the first canine in 2005: the Afghan hound Snuppy. In 2014, a biotech company based in Seoul cloned another dog, this one from a 12-year-old dachshund that belongs to a caterer in London who won the procedure in a competition. The result: Mini-Winnie. Experts, however, warn of cloning pets, arguing the animals won't necessarily be the same.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Channel 4
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Cloning is and has always been a highly controversial procedure that raises a slew of ethical issues, including animal welfare. Last year, the European Parliament voted to ban the cloning of all farm animals and the sale of cloned livestock, their offspring, and products derived from them. The suggestions go far beyond a directive proposed by the European Commission in 2013 that targeted a ban on cloning only five species.
Since Dolly's birth 20 years ago in Scotland, technologies to influence DNA have greatly developed, says Joachim Boldt of the University of Freiburg. Genetic technology today "offers new options that far surpass the possibilities of simple cloning," he says, adding that genetic sequencing is faster and cheaper these days. Scientists speculate about the chance to not only cure diseases, but to "improve the human immune system to such a degree that it can no longer be overcome by viruses or bacteria." But the new technologies increasingly raise ethical questions, too, Boldt says. "To shape our entire genetic identity - is that what we want?"