Many people mourn the losses of their beloved pets, saddened to think that they won’t get to enjoy their company anymore. However, a new trend is emerging among Instagram influencers who aren’t ready to say goodbye: cloning.
The Company Behind the Pet Clones
Courtney Udvar Hazy is a photographer who started an Instagram account for Willow, her wolf dog mix. Although Willow is no longer the subject, the account @WanderwithWillow has more than 100,000 followers. The photographer now posts pictures of Phoenix, her new pet. The two-year-old dog-wolf hybrid is Willow’s clone.
Willow was killed when she was hit by an automobile in 2018. Udvar-Hazy made the decision to clone her beloved pet, contacting ViaGen Pets: the same company that famously cloned Barbra Streisand’s dog. The Texas-based company clones animals for up to $35,000.
ViaGen Pets uses the original animal’s cells to create an embryo which is then transferred to a surrogate mother. Udvar Hazy got Phoenix as well as five identical puppies she gave to her friends.
Clone Is ‘Not A Reincarnation’
ViaGen Pets offers cloning services for dogs, cats, and horses. However, this doesn’t mean you’ll be getting an exact replica of your original animal. While the clone may have the same DNA profile and personality as the original, it will be unique in its temperament and personality.
“It is not a reincarnation,” Melain Rodriguez, ViaGen’s Client Service Manager, Submitted Newsweek. “It is the essence of that original animal and I think that’s what our clients are looking to get out of cloning. I don’t think the majority of them are looking to replace that animal, they’re looking to get a part of that animal back.”
While this sounds like something you would see in a sci-fi movie or novel, the process is actually quite common. Snuppy, which was the first-ever cloned pet dog, was created in 2005. Researchers were able, using stem cells taken from Snuppy to create four more dogs in 2017 by cloning him.
Clones are popular in pet Instagrams
Udvar-Hazy isn’t the only influencer who has turned to cloning. The account @ipartywithbrucewayne, which has 55,000 Instagram followers, uploads Photos of four cloned ChihuahuasBruce’s original companions. Meanwhile, smaller petfluencer accounts like @clash_of_the_clones, @the_peanut_clones, [email protected]The clone advertises openly that the featured animal was a clone.
Tinkerbelle, a top Instagram pet with more than 500,000 followers on Instagram, posted in 2019 that the animal’s DNA was being stored for cloning purposes. This post was tagged as a paid partnership by ViaGen Pets.
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