Skip to main content

China has cloned its best police dog. Now it wants to mass-produce more

Anthony Wallace/Getty Images

Virtually everyone reading this will, at some point in their lives, have experienced the sadness that comes with losing a beloved pet. In the case of a working animal, like a renowned police dog, the death of an older animal can hit extra hard — because it also involves the knowledge that you’ll have to train its successor to fill its shoes (or, well, paws) going forward.

In China, scientists from southwest China’s Yunnan Province have possibly gotten around this second issue by launching a program to clone a particularly skilled police sniffer dog. The genetics of the dog described as the “Sherlock Holmes of police dogs” (presumably meaning that it’s great at hunting for evidence, rather than possessing a morphine habit and penchant for smoking pipes) will live on in mass-produced form.

According to Chinese state media, the project is already paying off. Beijing-based Sinogene Biotechnology Company and the Yunnan Agricultural University this week announced the successful cloning of the police sniffer dog in question. The clone, named Kunxun, is already three months old. It is the first step in a plan aimed at “volume production” of similarly cloned police dogs that would presumably lead to reduced training times. The work is supported by the Ministry of Public Security.

Kunxun will now go through the necessary drug detection, crowd control, and evidence searching training. At around 10 months old, the dog will then graduate to the level of official police dog. Training of a police dog usually takes around five years to complete, a report claims. Police dogs are always a risky investment, since there is no guarantee that a dog will take to the work as hoped for. By cloning a successful police dog the idea is that some of this risk may be mitigated.

As futuristic as the idea of cloning dogs may be, this isn’t unprecedented. The world’s first cloned dog was created by scientists in South Korea in 2005. Since then, cloning has been used for both official and consumer purposes. One of the most dystopian and Black Mirror-like of these scenarios was the revelation by singer Barbra Streisand that she keeps the same pet pooch by cloning it over and over again.

Editors' Recommendations

Luke Dormehl
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Why AI will never rule the world
image depicting AI, with neurons branching out from humanoid head

Call it the Skynet hypothesis, Artificial General Intelligence, or the advent of the Singularity -- for years, AI experts and non-experts alike have fretted (and, for a small group, celebrated) the idea that artificial intelligence may one day become smarter than humans.

According to the theory, advances in AI -- specifically of the machine learning type that's able to take on new information and rewrite its code accordingly -- will eventually catch up with the wetware of the biological brain. In this interpretation of events, every AI advance from Jeopardy-winning IBM machines to the massive AI language model GPT-3 is taking humanity one step closer to an existential threat. We're literally building our soon-to-be-sentient successors.

Read more
The best hurricane trackers for Android and iOS in 2022
Truck caught in gale force winds.

Hurricane season strikes fear into the hearts of those who live in its direct path, as well as distanced loved ones who worry for their safety. If you've ever sat up all night in a state of panic for a family member caught home alone in the middle of a destructive storm, dependent only on intermittent live TV reports for updates, a hurricane tracker app is a must-have tool. There are plenty of hurricane trackers that can help you prepare for these perilous events, monitor their progress while underway, and assist in recovery. We've gathered the best apps for following storms, predicting storm paths, and delivering on-the-ground advice for shelter and emergency services. Most are free to download and are ad-supported. Premium versions remove ads and add additional features.

You may lose power during a storm, so consider purchasing a portable power source,  just in case. We have a few handy suggestions for some of the best portable generators and power stations available. 

Read more
Don’t buy the Meta Quest Pro for gaming. It’s a metaverse headset first
Meta Quest Pro enables 3D modeling in mixed reality.

Last week’s Meta Connect started off promising on the gaming front. Viewers got release dates for Iron Man VR, an upcoming Quest game that was previously a PS VR exclusive, as well as Among Us VR. Meta, which owns Facebook, also announced that it was acquiring three major VR game studios -- Armature Studio, Camouflaj Team, and Twisted Pixel -- although we don’t know what they’re working on just yet.

Unfortunately, that’s where the Meta Connect's gaming section mostly ended. Besides tiny glimpses and a look into fitness, video games were not the show's focus. Instead, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted to focus on what seemed to be his company’s real vision of VR's future, which involves a lot of legs and a lot of work with the Quest Pro, a mixed reality headset that'll cost a whopping $1,500.

Read more