Cloning is one of the most powerful tools available to us to avoid the extinction of animal species. Or at least it could be, if it had not slowed down or even blocked by a series of misunderstandings, wrong ideas and false myths that circulate around them. This is at least the thesis of a study published in the magazine Animals and conducted by a team of the No-profit Revive & Restore, which deals with “Apply biotechnology to the conservation of fauna”.
Healthy clones. The study is the first to take an overall look at the whole History of animal cloning. Which also includes two projects carried out by Revive & Restore: one relating to Przewalski horsethe other al ferret with black feettwo species One step away from extinction which were cloned in 2020, giving life to puppies in excellent health.
The latter detail is the most important: in addition to the two projects of Revivo & Restore, the study analyzes another 54, the vast majority of which have brought to light healthy clones, which in some cases have even exceeded the life expectancy of their wild “original”.
Problems and prejudices. According to the study, the problem of cloning is that so far it has been used only for individual cases, symbolic and important but still too limited numerically: The operation is considered too expensive and riskyto the point of keeping many potential investors away.
The work published on Animalson the other hand, paints an opposite picture: 90% of animals cloned in recent years have long survivedand the 95% of these was fertile. In short, the thesis of the team is that the distrust of cloning should be overcome, and to start working so that it can become an effective conservation tool.
