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Field of clones: How horse replicas came to dominate polo
- walrus01 4mo agoFor a brief moment I thought this would be about something like robotic polo ponies, and considered the idea that four-legged high agility, high endurance robots had advanced significantly without me noticing.
- valiant-comma 4mo agoMe too, I guess I don’t think of “replica” and “clone” as synonymous in the context of animals.
- m463 4mo agoSeems like a carefully chosen term, maybe clone being too controversial. I think replicant would be a fun term though. :)
- beau_g 4mo agoThough we are not yet competitive in the Argentinian Polo clone wars, we are making significant progress - https://www.satyress.com/ https://www.satyress.com/
- walrus01 4mo agoThis has to be some kind of kink thing. Not judging, just how it looks from first appearances.
- vitalyan1234 4mo agoyeah, I can't really tell whether that whole thing was serious or satirizing something.
- K0balt 4mo agoMaybe it’s satyr.
- trumpdong 4mo agoSatyr Nadella?
- trumpdong 4mo agoAh yes. The reverse centaur position for AI/human intercourse.
- idle_zealot 4mo agoA concerning amount of that product page is spent explaining how it has to slow down to pass through doorways, its inability to turn around in hallways, and its weak points you can use to disable one with a knife or gunshot. I feel like I'm reading a tutorial for how to defeat a tricky enemy in a video game.
- aussieguy1234 4mo agoThat'd be alot more ethical than the current horse racing industry if it were the case. Humans riding racing robots id watch, but not horse racing.
- fzil 4mo agoAnd i thought it was about those polo shirts and replicas of the horse logo on the “fake” t-shirts.
- connorboyle 4mo agoAnother Argentina/cloning-connected story is that President Javier Milei cloned his dog Conan at least four times: https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-04-26/the-mystery-of-mileis-cloned-dogs-argentina-wonders-if-there-are-four-or-five.html https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-04-26/the-myst... The stories make me wonder if Argentina is a cloning hotspot, though I may be reading too much into two stories.
- allthetime 4mo agoThat is where many of the nazi war doctors who escaped prosecution ended up…
- wahern 4mo agoSeems Brazil lost its early lead after cloning Hitler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_(film)
- zzzoom 4mo agoNot as many as the ones that the US snatched in operation paperclip
- mmustapic 4mo agoExactly, the dog was cloned in the US
- aaron695 4mo ago[dead]
- jofzar 4mo agoSurprised that the legal drama part of this wasn't discussed, it's how I first heard about this https://youtu.be/VARJnzhVryc https://youtu.be/VARJnzhVryc
- apt-apt-apt-apt 4mo agoHumans can likely be cloned too. Imagine 10,000 Albert Einsteins and John von Neumanns working together with modern AI on medical, scientific, and societal issues. Though there could be an Evil Einstein due to upbringing or something.
- thefounder 4mo agoI am not sure if the Einsteins you clone would do what you want. Maybe they will want to be influencers on short video platforms.
- jfyi 4mo ago[dead]
- el_io 4mo ago[dead]
- didibus 4mo agoDon't twin studies mostly show this wouldn't be the case?
- whateveracct 4mo ago[flagged]
- b112 4mo ago[flagged]
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- SauntSolaire 4mo agoSeems to be working pretty well in the case of these horses.
- downrightmike 4mo ago
- didibus 4mo agoThe thing is, what if there's an even better horse out there? Once you get on the cloning bandwagon, don't you also lock yourself out of looking/evolving an even better horse?
- ethanj8011 4mo agoYes, but developing a better horse has a low likelihood of success and a relatively long time horizon. There are some arms race dynamics here in that as long as no one else is trying to develop a better horse, you probably are better off just not trying to either.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- defrost 4mo ago> what if there's an even better horse out there Doesn't matter, such things threaten the horse investor lock in economics. Many years past, an early bit of software from my student days was a side project making an easy to use database system for a horse stud farm, high status stallions being put to mares with the feed, vet visits, results, etc. all logged. Horse racing is pretty much all about pedigree - without the lineage horses are considered valueless by the industry - super fast back country waler crosses might be acceptable for a four mile charge across open ground onto machine gun nests .. but w/out that pedigree <shrug> no Lord or up and coming billionaire is going to syndicate that horse for racing. I imagine Polo to be much the same, in the rich set. Probably more open and accepting out on the steppes knocking about the heads of the vanquished.
- dnautics 4mo ago> but w/out that pedigree <shrug> no Lord or up and coming billionaire is going to syndicate sounds like an opportunity. as horse racing has a monetary reward associated with success one imagines a moneyball sort of play that you can compound by betting on your horse which the oddsmakers are going to handicap because it "doesn't have the pedigree" (at least the first few go arounds)
- foobar1962 4mo agoPerhaps Polo will end up like competitive sailing with one-design classes based on the clone of horse. "Measurement" would be a blood test for drugs and dna.
- acestus5 4mo agocloned horses are good at competitive sailing also?!?
- the_real_cher 4mo agoSurprisingly yes!
- K0balt 4mo agoAh horse “iron’man” race where the horse had to be swam (or sailed) sailed 25 km would indeed be epic and also great for the resurgence of sailng as practical transport. Probably cruel for the horses though.
- doodlebugging 4mo agoThis is easy enough to solve if you use a cloned horse that has had some CRISPR genetics done so that it now has fish gills and can breathe as normally underwater as it can on land. You probably drown a few horses before you find one that swims well but, as we all know, once you identify that one horse that can manage that feat you have a monopoly on the game.
- andai 4mo ago>“It was the same,” he recalls. “Same movements, same head.... I couldn’t believe it.” My grandpa said the same thing, first time he saw me.
- alexpotato 4mo agoWas watching a documentary about chicken breeders [0] and they mention that genetics leads to grandchildren being VERY similar to the grandparents. 0 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4819510/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4819510/
- Garlef 4mo ago> At the slightest touch of the reins, he felt a familiarity that shook him... Ah... Some good, old, pre-AI journalism slop. Oh the countless times a universities press release has been turned into four pages describing the smell of coffee some scientist inhales on their way through campus...
- dindunuf 4mo ago[dead]
- deadbabe 4mo agoGiven the way the world is now, I will not be surprised if full human cloning and replica people is a thing at some point in my lifetime, just like horses.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- nxy 4mo ago[dead]
- pfdietz 4mo agoThis reminds me of a poem in Analog Yearbook 2 (1978) by Jeff Rovin, with the title "The Horse That Jack Built". Science fiction becomes science fact every day.
- thot_experiment 4mo agoI hope they're aware of this: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00945-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00945-7 You can't clone forever.
- SauntSolaire 4mo agoIt's mentioned in the parent article.
- imtringued 4mo agoIsn't the flaw with this method that they are using non-reproductive cells? Who knows how many cell divisions those have gone through. If you can make clones from early embyro cells, you've sidestepped the problem.
- vitally3643 4mo agoSince we've reached this point, it seems like the next logical step would be to standardize the genomes allowed just like racing standardizes the vehicles (to a point, I know). It seems so much less interesting for the competition to devolve to "who can afford the best horse genome" instead of the actual skill and ability of the player. Since we're already cloning the horses, just force everyone to use the same horse and compete on skill instead of money. This is one of the many reasons I find modern "pro" sports so dreadfully uninteresting. The competition has next to nothing to do with how good the player is, and everything to do with how far their fabulously wealthy sponsor can push the rules without "technically" cheating.
- SauntSolaire 4mo agoThe next actual step according to the article is genetically engineering the horse clones. They've already crispr'd five as proof of concept.
- LearnYouALisp 4mo agoAre they doing transformer-training on the population?
- gordian-mind 4mo agoWhat about the polo player's genome?