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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,
by mkl 8mo ago
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.
- TheChaplain 8mo agoIt 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.
- mkl 8mo agoI get missing a pet dearly. I don't get how the clone fixes anything. Replacing them with a clone that has no memories seems like declaring the memories and history mean nothing, and that to me is a strange betrayal of the lost relationship. Grief is hard, but going back is impossible.
- arthurcolle 8mo agoThe cloned cat may still have the opportunity to interact with the original, so it could just be taken in as a "child" kitten of the cloned cat. The project is mostly to prove viability as I've seen focus on dogs and horses. There is a great documentary on a scientist who is cloning Saudi Arabian horses.
- mkl 8mo agoAh, I see. Well it's viable as people are doing it, but as well as being expensive it leads to multiple other cats needing homes: https://www.catster.com/weekly-mews/the-dark-side-of-cat-cloning/ https://www.catster.com/weekly-mews/the-dark-side-of-cat-clo... Seems best avoided.
- arthurcolle 8mo agoThat's fair. I'm not an evil cloner. I was just curious, one could say, more or less.
- ChintanGhate 8mo agoDay, Dusk & Dawn cats. The idea seems something out of Issac Asimov's foundation.
- stanski 8mo agoGrieving for a pet is totally a thing. Comparing its importance to that of a child might be taking it a little far. Nothing would compare to losing a child.
- arthurcolle 8mo agoI agree with you. I can imagine that people without children that have pets might feel like it's similar, but there's definitely quite a few several hundreds of thousand of years of evolution driving very distinct reactions. Losing a child must, by force of nature, be much more difficult to handle than even a 20+ year relationship with one's dearest horse or Galapagos turtle or tiger cub or something. It is interesting to think about, in any case.
- swiftcoder 8mo agoWe also don't allow cloning children, no matter how much you miss them. It's an ethical quagmire, and doesn't really address the problem (dealing with grief is hard, transplanting that grief onto a surrogate creates more problems)
- dsr_ 8mo agoIf anyone in the Boston area is interested in adopting a cat, I can heartily recommend: https://www.straypetsinneed.org/ https://www.straypetsinneed.org/ and https://guardianangelscatrescue.org/ https://guardianangelscatrescue.org/ from which we recently adopted Grace Hopper and Enrico Fermi, now beloved family members.
- arthurcolle 8mo agoThank you for the links, I appreciate this. :)
- NedF 8mo ago[dead]