5 Most Cloned Animals

I­f you didn't know any better, you might think that Star, Snuppy, CC and ANDi were just a few unfortunately named animals. You'd only be half right. These creative monikers actually belong to a pig, a dog, a cat and a monkey that were among the first clones of their species.

Animal 1: Cloned Pets

In 2005, scientists in South Korea announced they had produced the first dog clone -- an Afghan hound named Snuppy. Several years earlier, in late 2001, the world's first cloned kitten, CC (short for Copycat), entered the world. Since then, at least 40 dogs and an unknown number of cats have been replicated [source: Keim].
In July 2008, BioArts International auctioned off four dog cloning spots to the highest bidders. The program, aptly titled "Best Friends Again," also offered up one, all-expenses-paid spot for a lucky winner in its Golden Clone Giveaway contest. That spot has since been won by a heroic Sept. 11 rescue dog, dubbed the world's most "clone-worthy" dog [source: BioArts International].

Hund­reds of people ­pay upward of $1,000 a year to preserve tissue from their cat or dog for future cloning [source: Shiels]. Despite the high demand for commercially cloned pets, BioArts states on its Web site that its Best Friends Again program is a limited service that may or may not be continued.
Surely someone will step up to the plate, which is why pets merit a spot on this list. With thousands of potential customers having expressed interest in duplicating their beloved pets, it's only a matter of time before the technology advances enough to support a commercial venture.
Indeed, the Seoul-based company RNL Bio recently opened its doors for business and after the birth of five cloned puppies in August 2008, announced itself as the "first successful commercial canine cloning service." The team has already cloned more than 20 dogs and has plans to clone about 300 per year [source: CNN]. So if you have $150,000 to spare and a beloved pug to duplicate, you may want to take a trip to South Korea.

Animal 2: Cloned Goats and Sheep (It's a Tie)

For most people, it's probably more exciting to imagine clones of Fido running around the house than livestock clones bumbling around the farm. But to scientists and breeders, cloned goats and sheep are simply captivating and hold a lot of promise.
Sheep, for instance, can be genetically engineered to produce drugs that are useful in treating human diseases. One example is Polly, a cloned lamb designed to produce milk containing a protein that's deficient in hemophiliacs. Theoretically, sheep like Polly could be mass-produced to churn out medicinal drugs [source: Pecorino].

Ode to Dolly Dolly captured our hearts and minds with her monumental birth in 1996. It could be said that this endearing sheep kicked off the mass interest in cloning. Dolly lived out her years at the Roslin Institute in Scotland and was the mother of six lambs born the old-fashioned way. Sadly, Dolly was euthanized on Valentine's Day 2003 due to crippling arthritis and lung cancer. She was only 6 years old.

­Fuzzy sheep are yet another benefit of cloning. Breeders have manually tinkered with their herds for years to get extra-woolly critters, and cloning enables them to easily perpetuate the genetics of those individuals that provide them with the most wool, thus creating a more bountiful product.
Likewise, some goats are cloned to produce herds that yield higher quality milk and meat products. Goat cloning got an additional boost by being one of the three species OK'd by the FDA in January 2008 for human consumption. There's no question breeders will take advantage of that decision to maximize the desirable traits of their Billys.

Animal 3: Cloned Pigs

If all pigs were as good at spelling as Wilbur, you might be a li­ttle more stoked about this particular selection. But while pigs can't spell -- it was Charlotte's doing, after all -- they do make some pretty mean bacon. If meat isn't your thing, cloned pigs are also sought after because of the suitability of their organs for human transplantation.
Transferring cells, tissues or organs from one species to another is known as xenotransplantation and is viewed as a potential solution to the shortage of organs and cells for lifesaving transplants. By tweaking the genetic makeup of pigs, a biopharmaceutical company named PPL Therapeutics has fine-tuned the animals' DNA so some of their organs and cells can be used successfully in people. These genetically altered pigs can be cloned to mass-generate things like insulin-producing cells for the treatment of type 1 diabetes and organs like hearts and kidneys [source: PPL Therapeutics, Inc.].
According to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which recently conducted a study on the safety of products obtained from cloned animals and their offspring for consumption, there are already at least 500 cloned pigs in existence worldwide [source: EFSA]. And like goats, porcine foodstuffs also got the green light from the FDA, so it's likely that the number of pigs being cloned will increase. As advancements continue to be made with the treatment of human disease and xenotransplantation, pigs should continue to stake out a pretty prominent spot on the list of most cloned animals.