
Clone of the endangered Przewalski's horse is born of DNA saved for 40 years - pseudolus
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/12/us/cloned-przewalskis-horse-trnd/index.html
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akiselev
_> The colt is a clone of a male Przewalski's horse and the first successful
cloning of the species, San Diego Zoo officials said in a news release on
September 4. It was born August 6 to a domestic surrogate mother._

I just wanted to note how nonchalant this paragraph sounded in the context of
the rest of the article. I remember the cloned sheep over a decade ago, but is
animal cloning now so common a procedure that we've moved on from " _Oh-em-
gee, we cloned an animal!_ " to species bingo?

The DNA may have been perfectly preserved in lab conditions and we've got a
sister species to carry the embryo so it's not comparable, but this is the
first step to Jurassic park!

~~~
misnome
> I remember the cloned sheep over a decade ago

Slightly out in your “remember a long time ago” - Dolly was born in 1996! Pet
cloning apparently started in 2004! So it’s been around long enough to
somewhat mature.

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akiselev
I don't know what's more horrifying - how old that made me feel or that pet
cloning is a thing. Marketwatch says it costs something like $50,000.

Of course there's been discussions on HN about it! [1][2]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723325)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16506712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16506712)

~~~
makx
Thanks for sharing those links! This is so f*ed up that that's an industry. If
all that money would have gone to preserving the wildlife we do still have
left (but are losing rapidly)...

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aaron695
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_that_have_been...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_that_have_been_cloned)

I think Joe Rogan talks to someone who mentions since horse clones are done by
rich people and it's maturing rapidly, it stands to reason someone has cloned
themselves by now, which is exciting.

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ncmncm
Disappointingly, it turns out that Przewalski's horse is not as exotic as
people used to think.

There were several species of horse in the Americas until quite recently. It
would be more interesting to clone some of them.

Also camels, a really big bison and bear, saber-toothed tigers, dire wolf,
giant beaver, giant sloth, and glyptodont, never mind woolly mammoth and
mastodon.

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unixfg
I wonder if the clone of an endangered species is subject to the same laws
protecting others.

