The World's First Cloned Wolf Has Reportedly Been Born in China, And It's Adorable

The world's first cloned wolf was carried to term by a beagle, according to a Chinese pet-cloning company.

The cloned female wolf pup, named Maya, and her beagle mother were unveiled to the world in a brief video at a press conference held in Beijing.

According to Sinogene representatives, the video was released 100 days after Maya's birth.

Sinogene works with dead pets, such as cats, dogs, and horses, for private clients.

The company wants to use its expertise to clone threatened species.

Maya was cloned using the genetic material from a wolf that died in captivity in northeast China.

The original Maya, who was born in Canada before being shipped to China, died in early 2021.

We haven't cloned a human yet.

The general manager of Sinogene said at the press conference that the cloning of Maya was done after two years of hard work.

Sinogene researchers created 137 Arctic wolf embryos by combining skin cells from the original Maya with immature egg cells from dogs.

Eighty-five of the embryos were successfully transferred into beagles. According to Global Times, only one fully developed embryo from those transplants.

beagle surrogates were used because there weren't enough wolves in captivity for the experiment.

Maya is living with her mother at a Sinogene lab in Xuzhou, eastern China, but the wolf pup will eventually be sent to live with other wolves.

She will have to be introduced to the rest of the pack slowly because of her isolated upbringing, according to Global Times.

Sinogene said that a second wolf clone was due to be born in September. There have been no confirmed reports of the birth.

The company announced a new partnership with the Beijing Wildlife Park to clone more captive species in the future.

According to CBS News, Sinogene was involved with a project that produced six identical German shepherd clones, which were then put into Beijing's police force.

Cloning endangered animals

Despite reports from Global Times and other media outlets, the gray wolves that are called thearctic wolves are not an extinction threat. Climate change is likely to severely disrupt their food supply in the wild in coming decades, according to WWF.

Scientists have cloned animals before.

A cloned black-footed ferret was created in 2020.

The company cloned a Przewalski's horse and is now trying to revive the passenger pigeon using cloning technology.

Ben Novak is the lead scientist at Revive & Restore. It could be a lifesaver for species that go extinct.

Novak said that the main benefit of cloning is that it maintains the amount of genetic diversity.

This gives threatened species a chance to adapt to the selection pressures that are driving them towards extinction if the clones can reproduce with other non-cloned individuals.

When surrogate mothers from other species are used, cloning can be used in conjunction with existing captive breeding programs.

Instead of taking animals from the wild to create a back-up population in captivity, scientists can take genetic samples from wild animals and create clones in the lab using more readily available surrogates.

Novak said that genetic backups can be introduced into the wild to replenish populations.

"For mammals, it appears that two species must share a common ancestor less than 5 million years ago," Novak said. He said that this opens up the possibility of reviving extinct species.

Is it possible to clone an animal?

There are limits to cloning.

Not all animals can be cloned in a successful way. Only mammals, fish, amphibian, and a single insect have been cloned using SCNT.

He said that SCNT does not work for animals like platypuses and echidnas because the eggs do not properly develop.

Novak said that cloning has a very low success rate.

As with Maya the wolf pup, researchers often have to create hundreds of embryos and successfully implant them in multiple surrogates for just one animal to be born, which can be costly.

Private companies like Sinogene and Revive & Restore are likely to play a key role in the future of cloning. Most cloning research has been done by universities that don't have enough money.

The partnership of for-profit companies with conservatoires is key to turning cloning from a rarely-researched technique into a valuable tool.

The birth of Maya is good news for cloning advocates.

Novak said it was great to see more work being done. I hope the recent achievements in cloning show the world that it's a good tool for wildlife protection.

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The original article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.