By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense chief canine
correspondent
Chase was South Korea's best sniffer dog -- making headlines as a
record-holding service dog until he retired in 2007. Now, Chase's descendants
are in the spotlight for their remarkably keen noses. Which, genetically
speaking, are exact replicas of their "father's" because South Korea is cloning
sniffer dogs. Does anyone else hear the music
Twighlight Zone?
A
scientist by the name of Byeong-Chun Lee successfully cloned a littler of seven
puppies in 2007. Three of those dogs, referred to as "Tomorrow Dogs" and called
"Toppies" for short, are now employed, and
enjoying extremely successful careers with the security team at Customs in the
Incheon International Airport.
One
of those dogs, Tutu, a bounding and very enthusiastic yellow Labrador
Retriever, has been particularly good at his job, holding the record for
detecting "the most drugs" at the airport. He and his handler have been working
together for three years and so far so good. (You can watch CNN's report of the
happy pair here.)
Tutu
and the rest of his cloned siblings are "part of an ongoing study on how
genetic reproductions of prized work animals may revolutionize their use in the
field." Each Toppy is reported to run a price tag of around $100k, which is
tens of thousands more costly than your average bomb-detecting dog but their
rate of success is inordinately high: "Incheon security estimates that about 30
percent of their dogs are able to be used ... every single cloned dog
passed the test to become a drug-sniffer..."
I'd
be curious what handlers think about this new development and whether or not
the U.S. military should follow suit and clone IED detection dogs (if it hasn't
already). We're already
genetically "enhancing" dogs' olfactory abilities. But where do we draw the
line? Dr. Lee and his team have also done work cloning
endangered species like grey wolves. That seems worthwhile, but what about glow-in-the-dark
dogs? FP's own Josh Keating reported in 2009,
scientists at Seoul National University have already done that.
Okay,
now cue the music.
Hat
Tip: Dimitry.
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