China Says it Cloned a Police Dog To Speed Up Training

A cloned dog, believed to be the first of the kind in China, has started training in Yunnan Province in a program to reduce the cost and time needed for training police dogs. From a report: Kunxun, a female of the Kunming wolfdog breed, was born on Dec. 19 last year in Beijing and arrived on March 5 for training at the Kunming Police Dog Base of the Ministry of Public Security. She was cloned from a 7-year-old female dog, known as Huahuangma, that has been in service in the city of Pu'er, Yunnan, by Sinogene, a Beijing-based biotechnology firm. The cloning is part of the ministry's research program.

Huahuangma played important roles in helping detectives with dozens of murder investigations, and was accredited the first-level merit in 2016, said Wan Jiusheng, an officer who is responsible for training Kunxun. Huahuangma's outstanding abilities as a police dog made her an eligible donor of genes, Wan said. 'It takes four to five years to train a meritorious dog such as Huahuangma, and costs hundreds of thousands of yuan,' he said. Police dogs serving in real tasks are not usually used for breeding. The cloning program helps researchers copy their excellent genes and reduces the time and costs needed for training, researchers familiar with the program said.

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