Beloved Pets Everlasting?

By ERIC KONIGSBERG
NYT

Fairfax, Calif.

THE most difficult thing about the cloned puppies is not telling them apart, but explaining why they don’t look exactly alike. This was the problem Lou Hawthorne faced on a recent afternoon hike with Mira and MissyToo, two dogs whose embryos were created from the preserved, recycled and repurposed nuclear DNA of the original Missy, a border collie-husky mix who died in 2002.

To be sure, they have a very strong resemblance to each other and to Missy. It’s just that sometimes, as soon as people hear that the dogs are clones, the questions start coming:

“Why is one dog’s fur curlier?”

“Why aren’t the dogs the same size?”

“Why is one of them darker?”

“Why does this one have a floppy ear?”

(More here.)