Cloned Sniffer Dogs Begin Training

H0D_G writes "The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that the world's first cloned sniffer dogs have begun their training in South Korea. The dogs, cloned from a successful golden retriever sniffer dog, were the result of a $320,000 AUD project."

Comments

And they know this how?

[techpawn]

Project manager Lim Jae-Yong said that training the clones of a skilled sniffer dog is easier than training ordinary canines
"The project was successful. This is the first time that cloned dogs have been used as sniffer dogs," he said.

Shouldn't that read that they BELIEVE training a cloned dog to be a sniffer will be easier. These are their first ones, how do they know if it's easier or if each dog is different just with the same genes (like twins)

Re:And they know this how?

[techpawn]

But, how do they KNOW this? It says it's their first batch of puppies to try this on...

That's like saying you can clone Wayne Gretzky and know you'll get a great hockey player. You don't, you just know you have someone with the same DNA. If that's the case, then it's a case of nature vs. nurture and even then you're not assured that all your clone will be the exact same as "the Great One"

Re:And they know this how?

[techpawn]

I'll chalk it up to one of three things:

1. 1) They don't know and they misspoke
2. 2) It's mistranslated into English
3. 3) They've tried training dogs of other types (i.e. Attack Dogs NOT Sniffers)

Personally, I'm leaning to 1 or 2... Still erks me...

The only problem

[CastrTroy]

The only problem I see with using cloned animals for a task like this, is that they will only ever be so good. Assuming the genetic make-up and training is the same for all these dogs, and that they have a proficiency of X, then you will never get a dog that is better than X (by some margin). If you use selective breeding to try and produce better and better dogs with each generation, you could end up with a better product in the end.

Re:The only problem

[porcupine8]

You're still going to have that problem with clones. Small differences in prenatal conditions, one puppy getting more milk than another, random mutations - there will be some cloned dogs who aren't as good at it as the original, possibly quite bad at it. What will they do with those dogs?

Fun fact: Identical twins raised apart tend to be extremely, even eerily similar - as adults they often have the same careers, the same hobbies, dress similarly, etc. You'd think this was an argument for everything being highly genetically determined. However, identical twins raised together are NOT as similar as those raised apart - because they've grown up needing to assert their own identity separate from their twin. The differences in identical twins raised together shows how much environment has an impact.

Why?

[Conspicuous Coward]

Why would you do this? I don't understand.

Maybe my information is out of date, but last I checked cloning of mammals is still a massively expensive process with a stupidly high failure rate (95%+ of embryos fail to develop into live young). Even when the cloned embryos develop to adulthood there are usually significant defects. What effect these defects might have on the animal in later life, or what problems might arise if these clones breed with normal dogs are both still largely unknown.

So why do this? It seems a ridiculously expensive, unreliable and dangerous way to try and go about breeding better dogs for a pretty trivial purpose. This technology is being mass marketed before it's even close to being ready for prime time.

Re:Why?

[AmonEzhno]

The issue, as I understand it from a friend who trains dogs for the TSA, the issue with training current sniffer dogs is that only about 1 in a few hundred of the potential dogs fits the profile they need. They look for dogs with obsessive personalities and dogs that have a very strong attachment to a specific item(toy). They use this toy they are fascinated with and use certain methods of conditioning to tie the scents of whatever the dog is trained to sniff out to the toy. So the hope with the cloned dogs I would suspect is that they think the personality traits of these dogs might be a genetic predisposition. So in other words if it works out, even 95% fail rate is better than the 99+% chance that they have to find a dog through normal screening methods.

Sit, Ubu, sit...

[djones101]

Good dog!

Breed name correction

[andphi]

The BBC reported them as cloned Labrador Retrievers, rather than cloned Golden Retrievers.