“Before he said his final good-bye, however, he had a curious request: he asked a veterinarian to make a small puncture in the stallion’s neck, put the resulting skin sample into a deep freeze, and store it in a Buenos Aires laboratory. He remembers, ‘I just thought maybe, someday, I could do something with the cells.’”
Could you, should you, would you clone your horse?
The above quote begins the curious article by Haley Cohen in a recent issue ofVanity Fair magazine. The stallion referenced was Aiken Cura, a prized mount of elite polo player Adolfo Cambioso. The favorite polo pony incurred a fatal accident in 2006 during a polo match. That event was the starting point for the article chronicling polo’s embrace of cloning technology. (I never learned that during my 15 minutes of “playing” polo!)
As I read the feature I mused whether I would do this for my horse or dogs!!!
Clone-worthy? Hmm. . .love them, but not sure. (Sorry for the gratuitous knee shot).
For a mere $80,000 to start or three for $200,000, you too can be the lucky owner of a world-class, albeit cloned, polo pony foal, thanks to a Texan and a tycoon (from Argentina) who have formed a business which has already cloned 200 horses. The highest price tag for one of the horses was $800,00.
If you’re like me and wondering if the clones have the same personality as the “original,” the article stated:
“When the adult horse is cloned, they believe, these ‘cellular memories’ are copied right along with the DNA. Mariano Aguerre, ranked among the top polo players in the world, has observed something along these lines with the clone of his champion gelding Califa. The original Califa has an intense fear of garden hoses; its clone is equally terrified of them.”
That didn’t clear up my question on personality, but it was interesting. And maybe a little creepy.
I don’t have a science background, so I had to read and re-read parts of the article to ensure I was “getting” it. At times I felt like I was reading a script for The X-Files (minus Fox Mulder’s snarky humor).
Things I Learned From the Cloning Article That Blew My Mind
- The cloning success rate is 12%.
- 70 countries have outlawed human cloning, yet the U.S. is not one of them!
- The famous Thoroughbred race horse Storm Cat has clones!
- Cloned foals are believed to have a shadow memory and become aware of their gender much earlier than non-cloned horses.
- The man who founded the cloning company had a connection to Imelda Marcos. Yes, the lady with all the shoes.
There’s so much more, but you really should read the article for yourself. I can’t articulate exactly why, but even if I had the megabucks required to clone, I don’t think I would. Why? It just doesn’t seem right.
Maybe one of you could convince me why it would be a good thing to clone a heart horse (or dog, cat, ferret, etc.). Or maybe you can give me the words to articulate the why of what I feel my heart already knows: cloning is best left to sci-fi entertainment.
Your Turn to Share: So, dear readers, let’s hear your views of horse cloning. Advantages, disadvantages. Would you do it?
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I'm Susan and this is my horse Knight. We have been a blogging team since 2015 and we're glad you're here. Tally ho!
When it comes to horses, I don’t think cloning should be available to everyone. I personally feel it should only be available to high quality animals which would pass good genes onto the next generation and even then it should be closely monitored so that we keep a larger gene pool. I think the only true reason to clone a horse, would be to clone a top class gelding so that it’s genes could get passed on. Valegro is a great example of this!
I think the ideas you mentioned about clones having memories from the original is something fabricated to encourage grief stricken owners to part with their money to recreate their beloved pet. It is possible that the clone will have a similar character, but these things are so heavily influenced by factors other than genetics, it is impossible to comment on personality and I fail to see from a scientific point of view how memories would be passed from the original to the clone.
I think it is important to mention that clones are very rarely an exact copy, as often the mitochondrial DNA doesn’t come from the original animal, but the female animal who acts as a surrogate mother to the clone. This difference in mitochondrial DNA can cause noticeable differences in things such as coat colour.
Although cloning horses is an interesting idea and could lead to lots of options, ethical issues aside, I think there are only a handful of situations where it would benefit the industry. Because of this, I think other breeding technologies should get more attention instead. You might be interested in reading a post I wrote a while ago called Designer Horses? (https://equipepper.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/designer-horses/)
I don’t think so. I think so much about a ‘heart’ horse or dog is situation, timing and environment/development. Maybe I’d think differently if I was a world class equestrian athlete, but I’m not. What makes an animal special to me is partially because their time with us is fleeting.
I would not do a clone. In the barrel racing industry, I have followed a similar story about Charmayne James and her beloved “Scamper”. Scamper has been cloned (and is still alive). His clone is fine from what I can tell but just doesn’t have the same personality or even looks, sure he has talented but hasn’t even amounted to a fraction of the horse Scamper is. I also agree with EquiPepper, cloning shouldn’t be made available to everyone. Right now the high cost will prevent most normal people from doing it but I think we should cherish our once in a lifetime dogs, horses and animals and open our hearts to loving and giving new chances to other animals.
Also another thing worth mentioning is some animals, much like people become the way they are because of upbringing or the way they are raised. Not all clones are going to have the same environments to grow up in this could impact their character/personality.
I don’t think that cloning should be restricted in any way — it basically already is by its price tag. So what if you clone your beloved back-yard-bred, three-legged-lame, sway-backed mare and then keep her for the rest of her life? The money you spent on that supported an industry and the jobs therein — it supported researchers, a surrogate mare, and likely some research on horse disease as well (as all stem cell research seems to go back to disease at some point). Of course yes, that money could be better used to support a horse rescue and thousands of horses could have been saved with those 200k! But people will still buy hunters (or racehorses or dressage horses, or, or, or) for upwards of those numbers regardless of the availability of cloning, so that argument barely holds water.
In terms of cellular memories I totally agree with the above — it’s utter garbage. There are epigenetic effects that MAY possibly be able to be passed down through cloning, but a horse being afraid of garden hoses being a “cellular memory” from the original horse? Poppycock. What horse ISN’T a little afraid of garden hoses the first time they meet them?
So, the big question is, would I clone my horse? If money were no object and I could guarantee him a long, happy life somewhere even if he didn’t turn into the horse of my dreams: YES. In a HOT SECOND I would clone Murray. There are SO SO SO many curious things about this horse that I want to know about him — is his girthiness genetic? The fact that all his siblings have the same problem seems to suggest so. Could he be more reasonable and tractable if raised a different way? Would that club foot still exist? Must he ALWAYS hang his knees over the fences? There’s absolutely no sentiment in this decision — there’s absolutely no way a clone would be the same as the Murray I have now, heart horse or not (wavers from day to day, you know). This is pure science. I would LOVE to see what is a relic of his genes and what is not.
Now of course, the only way to get a TRUE read on this would be to put the MurrayClone in the same mare that carried Murray (his biological mother, as all thoroughbreds must be live-cover foals). Maternal effects are utterly ENORMOUS and cannot be underestimated — emotional stress on a female during her pregnancy can deliver quantities of cortisol and other hormones to the fetus, the effects of which are still unclear. I would want to control both of their environments though — where she foaled out, where MurrayClone grew up, who handled him, how he was started, etc. I’m SO FASCINATED to see the results of the inevitable experiments in cloning in the future.
I kept DNA from my first heart horse Richie. I actually do believe to his soundness at advanced age that he would have been a great horse to clone (his teeth is what got him in the end, he outlived his teeth). After the set of rads that showed me Carlos’ navs I knew he would never be a good candidate for cloning and in the end I decided not get rid of Richie’s DNA too. Just because they would be genetically the same horse doesn’t mean he would be the same horse, or the same horse to me.
That is fascinating! So about that DNA, where is it? In a lab somewhere? Your fridge? It’s very intriguing. I appreciate your input!
I always feel sorry for clones when I read about them. Storm Cat’s clone is not quite Storm Cat, but he’s not quite his own horse, either. Also there is so much that goes into a horse to change him – I know in cattle breeding, 80% of a cow’s traits are due to the environment, and only 20% is due to the actual genotype – that one could never truly recreate a horse even if you made a genetically identical copy.
My sister lost her horse Rivr when she was only eight years old. And there will never be another Rivr, but now there is a Flare.