Some celebrities spend their fortunes on cars or jewelry or real estate. Barbra Streisand, apparently, spent some of hers cloning her dog twice after it died.
That surprised a lot of people, who didn’t realize such a thing was even possible. It is, but (as you might expect), it’s not cheap.
Dog cloning came onto the scene in 2005 in Korea. That dog, an Afghan hound named Snuppy, lived until 2015. Since then, other companies have focused on the practice, with South Korea’s Sooam Biotech Research Foundation being one of the leaders. To replicate your pup, though, that group will charge you $100,000.
That’s twice as much as a Texas dog cloning company bills. Viagen Pets will store your dog’s (or cat’s) DNA at a cryo-storage facility. Join it to a donor egg to create an embryo and implant it into a surrogate.
It’s a six- to seven-month process, but there’s a waiting list right now. Dogs are $50,000. Cats cost half that.
The clones might look like your old dog, but will they act like him or her? That’s a bit more questionable—and even Streisand doesn’t know the answer yet.
“They have different personalities,” she tells Variety. “I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have [her previous dog’s] brown eyes and her seriousness.”