Orphan Black Inspired Dog Names

One of the central themes of the television series Orphan Black is that of the moral and ethical dilemmas that occur when experimenting with cloning technology. While Sarah Manning eventually finds out that she is one of several clones in the show, the cloning of a human being thus-far is still in the realm of science fiction. The cloning of other animals, however, is now science fact, and clones have been made of everything from simple bacteria to complex mammals, including sheep, dogs, and in 2018, the first primates, a pair of crab-eating macaques named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua.

The first cloned mammal was Dolly the Sheep in 1996, and several other types of mammals were cloned over the next few years, but dogs proved difficult due to a shortened breeding season and difficult to harvest eggs. The first dog was cloned in 2005, nearly a decade after Dolly. He was an Afghan Hound dubbed Snuppy, a name derived from the university the research team was based in, Seoul National University, SNU, combined with the word puppy. He was created using a single cell from the ear of a male Afghan Hound named Tai, using a process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, in which an egg is taken from a female, the nucleus of the egg is removed, and the genetic material derived from the ear cell is injected into the egg. Once the genetic material is introduced into a viable egg, it is implanted into a surrogate mother. Out of 1,095 extracted eggs, implanted in 123 surrogate mothers, only Snuppy survived, and thrived.

The success that Seoul National University had with Snuppy led to additional canine cloning, from both SNU and other institutions. In 2008, artificial insemination was used to impregnate a cloned female dog with Snuppy’s sperm, and ten healthy pups were born, proving that cloning canines does not negatively affect their ability to procreate, and although Snuppy passed away in May of 2015, his ten years on this planet proved that the lifespan of cloned canines is not significantly affected by cloning. Shortly after his death, researchers from the university took cells that had been harvested from Snuppy and employed the same somatic cell nuclear transfer that was used to create him in the first place. The cloning process improved a great deal since Snuppy’s emergence, and only 94 reconstructed embryos were placed in seven surrogate mothers, and four puppies were born. One of the four died at an early stage, due to digestive problems, but the three remaining pups are reported to be strong, healthy dogs, with no signs of genetically induced diseases or rapid aging.