Bereaved pet lovers have been cloning their favourite animals after death to give them a new life through a UK lab which is ‘Europe’s only one of its kind’.

From kittens to stallions, animals are now being given a second shot at life in an inconspicuous building at a farm in Shropshire. Gemini Genetics has only been cloning pets since 2019 after starting out as a firm specialising in artificial insemination to breed show horses.

Since cloning their first ever pet – a ginger Maine Coon cat – they’ve seen rising demand from animal lovers who want to have their pets genetically replicated, with around 1,000 animals now cloned each year. “The first thing people tend to think of when they hear the word ‘cloning’ is Dolly the sheep,” lab manager Lucy Morgan told The Mirror, referring to the 1997 breakthrough in genetic science.

“But the technology is now a million miles away from Dolly. The efficiency has come on leaps and bounds.” Gem, the firm’s on-site friendly cocker spaniel, is a cloned dog who started life as a piece of another dog’s ear tissue.







Lucy Morgan, left, and EJ Eldridge with cloned animals Gem the dog and Murkas Gem the stallion
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Mirror)

Lucy revealed that, while only a dog, the similarity to her original is clear to see. “Her personality is slightly different, but she does the same curl to her lip I’ve noticed.” Also on-site is stallion Murka’s Gem, a white horse who is used for breeding via artificial insemination, as his original had to have his testicles removed.

Cloning is done by pet owners having tissue samples taken and sent on to the lab – these need to be taken within five days of death, before they are washed with the DNA extracted, with the process costing around £600. This is then cryogenically preserved in tanks of liquid nitrogen at -196C.







Once extracted, the animals’ DNA is kept in vials and stacked into tanks of liquid nitrogen
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Mirror)

Once the owner is happy to go forward, the samples are sent to a partner lab in Texas, with the process itself costing $50-80,000 (£38-59,000) and takes up to a year, as horses’ pregnancies are over 11 months. The animals are born and weaned in the US before being returned to the UK. Cloning is banned under EU regulations so the process itself cannot currently be done on UK soil, but since Brexit, many believe this could change.

Lucy said: “There is taboo around cloning as it’s still a relatively new science. But in the same way our mobile phones have evolved in the past 20 years, the technology around cloning has, too.” The concept of cloning pets has become popular with celebs, too, with singer Barbara Streisand revealing last year she’d had her dead dog Samantha cloned twice, while Simon Cowell saying earlier this summer he was looking into the process.







Lucy Morgan, lab manager at Gemini Genetics in Shropshire with their cloned dog Gem
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Mirror)






Lucy shows The Mirror cells from a cat which will potentially be sent for cloning
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Mirror)

“Losing a pet is a real grief,” Lucy said. “I think unless you’ve ever lost a pet, many may not understand why people want to clone them after their death.” Gemini currently only clones cats, dogs and horses and claims to be the only lab in Europe to do so. However, on site are also kept tanks containing the DNA from zoo animals – from elephants and rhinos to tiny tropical frogs – to prevent them from future extinction should technology sufficiently advance.

Director Tullis Matson runs charity Nature’s Safe, as a ‘doomsday’ contingency to preserve species for the future. There are currently 279 species’ DNA samples in the lab, including a sloth bear, southern white rhino and a sacred ibis – a once-sacred bird native to African and the Middle East.

Dog owners Ian Clague and partner Dominika Sojka are hoping to clone their husky chow pup Bijoux, who was found dead on a roadside in Bournemouth in June, presumably struck by a vehicle. The eight-month-old had managed to escape the couple’s garden through a hole in the fence, and the injured pet was taken to a vet but couldn’t be saved.







Bijoux, the husky chow chow who is being cloned, with owner Dominikia Sojka, 34, from Bournemouth
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Dominika Sojka)






Dolly the sheep was the world’s first cloned mammal in 1996, but was put to sleep in 2003 after developing a progressive lung disease
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Getty Images)

Searching for any potential ways of keeping their pet alive, the couple came across Gemini Genetics online and were able to save a tissue sample in the nick of time. Ian, 62, told The Mirror: “I think a lot of people are emotionally attached to their dogs and I’ve stories of people doing this then having 25-30 years with the same dog. Or two reincarnations, even.

“Certainly for us it has given us a lot of hope. It transformed the feeling from one of sadness to hope we may be able to restore her.” Dominika, 34, a broker for a private jet firm, added: “Because Bijoux was so young, you wonder what she would have been like getting older. You have all these questions.”

How are pets cloned?

Tissue samples are taken from pets within five days of death so that scientists can extract DNA. This is then cultured and multiplied in the lab, and cryogenically stored. When it’s ready to be sent for cloning, scientists will:

  1. Select the nucleus of a donor cell, which is transferred into a host egg cell. The process is known as somatic-cell nuclear transfer.
  2. The implanted egg cell is zapped with an electric current to create an embryo.
  3. The embryo is then transferred into a surrogate mother. Some surrogates can carry different embryos for different clients, provided they will be distinctive enough to tell apart.
  4. The surrogate will carry the pregnancy to full term and give birth as normal.

While the science of cloning was first discovered in 1958, the process was first achieved in 1996 and revealed in February 1997 with Dolly the sheep, who started life in a test tube in a lab in Edinburgh. Prior to her birth, scientists had thought cloning would never be possible as it was believed cells such as skin cells wouldn’t be able to store information for creating a whole new organism.

However the issue of cloning remains controversial. Despite technologies having developed since early days, animal welfare charities continue to urge against the practice, claiming it treats animals as “commodities” and has the potential to cause unnecessary pain and suffering. An RSPCA spokesperson said: “There is so much more to an animal than their DNA. A cloned animal is never going to be an exact copy of the original pet, either in looks or behaviour; and clones will have different life experiences, resulting in animals with different personalities.

“There are serious ethical and welfare concerns around cloning technology. Cloning animals requires procedures that cause pain and distress, with high failure and mortality rates; and animals frequently suffer physical ailments such as tumours, pneumonia and abnormal growth patterns.

“We would recommend anyone looking for a new pet to become part of their family to adopt one of the thousands of animals in rescue centres looking for their forever home.”