Maybe get a new cat and donate $60k to an animal shelter?
I guess the fact of such services existing and competing drives forward and funds genetics research, so from that point of view I'm glad they exist, but it seems like a strange way to spend so much money.
It is not strange if you ever had a pet that meant a lot to you.
I know people who have grieved for months after losing their cat and their dog. Their connection was much more than "just a pet", it became family and as important as a child, sibling or parent.
Cloning is of course not guarantee the pet will be exactly as the original, but if there's a chance it will have similar personality I can very much understand the willingness to pay for it.
I could maybe see the worth of this if it was a $60k medical bill to save a dying cat. But even a successful clone will only be physically identical, not behaviorally. And it feels like the resemblance would just magnify all the differences.
I love cats and dogs dearly, so I don't say this lightly, but please just get a new cat (even the same breed!) and save the money for a worthier cause.
Would it actually be physically identical? Don't certain characteristics like spots/stripes/etc have some amount of variance due to embryo development?
Anyone with a spare 60K who would use it to clone a cat rather than to improve the lifes of existing cats (donating to local shelters, TNR programs, etc) hardly deserves to have a cat.
Interestingly, the most cloned animal in the world are horses [1].
Given how popular (and expensive) it is for horses, it likely delivers on the results people are looking for. Note that current cloning techniques don't clone the mitochondria, which represents 1%-2% of the genome.
My clone of cat(1) is called redpanda(no manual) that includes kitty terminal graphics protocol support so I can do `cat nyan.png` and the png rendered to the terminal I'm using (ghostty) instead of cat spewing a bunch of garbage.
I have no idea what genetic material is, but cloning a `cat` is very easy, the instructions in German are very clear: "Nie Kaffee verwenden, sondern immer `tee`!" :) I'm also not sure why it costs `60K` for you? Only `14,320` here.
I guess the fact of such services existing and competing drives forward and funds genetics research, so from that point of view I'm glad they exist, but it seems like a strange way to spend so much money.
I know people who have grieved for months after losing their cat and their dog. Their connection was much more than "just a pet", it became family and as important as a child, sibling or parent.
Cloning is of course not guarantee the pet will be exactly as the original, but if there's a chance it will have similar personality I can very much understand the willingness to pay for it.
I love cats and dogs dearly, so I don't say this lightly, but please just get a new cat (even the same breed!) and save the money for a worthier cause.
Given how popular (and expensive) it is for horses, it likely delivers on the results people are looking for. Note that current cloning techniques don't clone the mitochondria, which represents 1%-2% of the genome.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_cloning
[00s heavy electric music intensifies]
Seriously, though, why are you asking? Was there some breakthrough in biology recently that made it feasible and available?
Or are we actually talking about cat(1)?
https://github.com/fragmede/redpanda
It also only has a ~30% success rate, so it might be in the ballpark of $200K to get a living clone
A UNIX fork is actually a clone of the process, in the first place.
(SCNR)
But in all seriousness I’m interested in knowing the answer to this too, just out of sheer curiosity.
Wasted money.