Copy Cat Copied

Well, sort of.

I could not resist:

copy cat copies

These are the kittens of Copy Cat, the cat that was cloned back in 2001/2 at Texas A&M. They’re lovely. They were produced the old-fashioned way with a father who was also produced the old-fashioned way. Here’s an article about it.

copy catcopy cat rainbowDo you remember CC? To the right is one of the pictures that was going around when she was first introduced to the world, and to the left is one of her a little over a year after she was born, with Rainbow, the cat of which she is a genetic copy. No, they don’t look exactly alike. Nor do they behave alike, in fact. Their personalities are very different. Evidently their bodies are using the same DNA in different ways. Here’s an article about that. [Update: This is a good opportunity to point out that there’s indeed a lot more to biology and genetics than just DNA… How does one get from the DNA to a complicated final organism? What are the mechnisms involved? That’s a hugely important area called Development. Yvette in the comments brings up an aspect of this when remarking upon the origins of calico patterning in (mostly female, rarely male – because of a battle between two X-chromosomes) cat coats.]

-cvj

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11 Responses to Copy Cat Copied

  1. salem says:

    Hi ,
    What is the name of this brand of cats
    Thanks

  2. happy says:

    Wow, Cc does not look like Rainbow at all!!!

  3. polungtist says:

    Cc’s kittens look so much like Cc! how cute!

  4. LIndsey says:

    sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cute

  5. ARUNA says:

    this image wil for u

  6. revny says:

    as long as the cat is alright i’ll be fine about clone

  7. Supernova says:

    “The best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same, cat.”
    –Norbert Wiener, U.S. mathematician, 1945

  8. Amara says:

    Yvette, maybe the same thing that happens with Labradors?

  9. Yvette says:

    What I find interesting is the fact that they chose to clone a calico cat in the first place, since calico cats are due a Barr body where there is an inactive X chromosome in a female cell. As this has to do with the development and not the genes of the cat, you’re definetely not going to have a cloned kitty that looks similar.

    So the real question is this: does the same thing happen to fur color when you clone a non-calico cat?

  10. Cynthia says:

    I guess the cloning of cats is just as quantum as the behavior of subatomic particles. On second thought, the cloning of cats perhaps might be more quantum than the behavior of subatomic particle.

  11. spyder says:

    Next up a cloning parthenogenic replicating hybrid transhuman???