Pet Cloning: The Science and Reality Behind Recreating Beloved Animals

When Kelly Anderson’s ragdoll cat Chai passed away unexpectedly at age 5, she was devastated. She didn’t want to adopt some other furry companion—she wanted Chai back.

“She was my soulmate pet,” Anderson says. “I've never had an animal in my life, or even really a human either, that just innately understood me like she did. I just felt robbed of time with her.”

The trend of pet cloning had recently come up in conversation with her roommate, so the idea was fresh in her mind. She spent the night after Chai’s death feverishly researching options and found a cloning company located near her in Texas. “I didn't know anything about it besides that it was possible, so I did a bunch of research and found out that it was $25,000 at the time,” Anderson says. “I was like, you know what? That's basically like buying a car.”

She started the process the very next morning, back in 2017, thanks to a personal loan. (Today it would cost about $50,000, but she received a large discount when the burgeoning cloning company was hoping to drum up business). Anderson had some of Chai’s DNA transferred from her veterinarian’s office, where the cat had been frozen overnight. With the help of technology, a new version of her old best friend would eventually emerge. She details her journey on her website Clone Kitty and social media platforms.

But just how similar to Chai could this clone be? The question harkens back to the age-old nature vs. nurture debate—the extent to which genetic inheritance influences a person, compared to their lived experience. As thousands of grieving pet owners turn to cloning in attempts to bring back their lost loves, scientists are exploring the differences in personality between original pets and their clones.

Cloning outcomes is a growing but niche field, and only small, limited-scope experiments have been done on personality traits—in fact, none have focused on cloned cats and their behaviors compared to their original predecessors. The limited evidence so far suggests that cloning can copy some aspects of an animal’s personality, but not all of them.

Broad temperament traits from the original animal, like activity levels and sociability, tend to match those of clones quite well, but those tied to learning and environmental factors are less consistent. And while some studies report personality similarities between clones and their original predecessors, these findings often come with the caveat that the animals were raised under similar environmental conditions, which may have also played a role.

“I think these cloning companies are kind of trying to market what they do as recreating the original pet, and they're not succeeding there,” says James Serpell, a professor emeritus of ethics and animal welfare at The University of Pennsylvania. “And they never will because there's so much that happens post-conception to change how that original DNA is expressed. You can compare it to a set of identical twins; they’re born with identical DNA, but by the time they’re adults they’re quite distinct people with different personalities and preferences––they’re no longer truly identical.”

Science has come a long way since Dolly the sheep was cloned nearly 30 years ago. Today, pet cloning is becoming more commonplace. The $50,000 price tag is expensive, but within reach for some wealthy individuals or those willing to take out loans. Celebrities like Paris Hilton, Barbra Streisand, and recently Tom Brady have cloned beloved pets.

The procedure isn’t as simple as running an animal through a sci-fi replicator machine.

“The process involves extracting viable eggs from the fallopian tubes of the female animal being cloned,” Serpell says, “then they inject a surrogate animal with hormones and implant the egg and hope it implants properly. Unfortunately, many of these embryos don't implant successfully, so many of the dogs miscarry, and some of the puppies that are born are malformed and don't survive very long.”

While the process isn’t usually dangerous for the surrogate it’s likely unpleasant, as many women who have undergone IVF can attest. And a 2022 study found a success rate only as high as 16 percent, though at least one company currently claims 80 percent.

A clone ultimately created through this process will likely resemble the original pet more than a random member of the same species, both in appearance and behavior. But their personalities probably won’t be an exact match.

One line of evidence comes from a 2025 study on cloned miniature pigs, which found that while some traits appear to be linked to genetics, others vary among clones, meaning they’re shaped more by life experiences.

“Based on the mini-pigs, it seems that some personality traits are quite consistent among clones, for example activity levels, while other traits like boldness seem not to be very consistent within clone lines,” said Adam Reddon, study co-author based at Liverpool John Moores University in England. “All personality traits emerge as an interaction between genetic background and the environment an animal experiences but the work on cloned mini-pigs suggests that some behaviors may be more strongly determined by genetics than others.”

A 2017 study found that cloned puppies had more stable and predictable personalities over time than non-cloned puppies. When tested at two different ages, the cloned dogs tended to keep the same overall temperament, while the control dogs’ personalities shifted more. The cloned puppies were especially consistent in traits related to how they interacted with people, responded to training, and handled stress and fear.

But although their overall fear levels appeared to be quite similar, the way they acted when they were afraid differed. They also deviated on aspects of personality tied to learning, experience, and changing social situations, such as curiosity (just like the mini-pigs). Research has also found that dogs’ experiences during their first year of life influence their later behavior and temperament.

For the highest chance of a personality match, it may make sense to simply find another animal that already seems very similar to the original—no cloning required. Instead of investing $50,000 in genetic replication, a prospective pet owner could search far and wide for an animal that looks and behaves similarly––and may end up with one that’s more like the original pet than a clone would have been anyway.

“It seems to me unlikely that the cloned pet would have the same or maybe even similar personality given what we know about the importance of experience in shaping personality,” Reddon said. “There may be some tendencies with a stronger genetic basis which the clone may be predisposed towards, but in general, personality emerges from the interplay of genes and experience, so shared genetics only accounts part of the equation.”

Anderson made her decision to clone Chai in 2017. But the process took so long (possibly due to the fact that the DNA samples were somewhat degraded from being frozen) that Anderson didn’t get to meet her cloned cat until 2021, which may have been a blessing in disguise.

“It was a really hard four years, but I think I was in a much better place to receive my new cat, Belle,” Anderson says. “I had time to fully grieve Chai and I could better appreciate Belle for being her own cat—not just a copy of my original cat.”

Anderson suspected her clone might behave differently than Chai before even meeting the new kitten. “The original cat was very sick as a kitten,” Anderson says. “She was quarantined and isolated and never really socialized for the first four or five months that I had her, so that totally shaped her personality. She was always pretty standoffish around people and not interested in anyone except for me.”

Belle, however, was out and about right away. She visited a pumpkin patch for photos the day after Anderson received her, and has regularly accompanied her to places like bars and breweries.

“Temperament-wise, they're the exact same,” Anderson says. “They are both bold, sassy queen cats that boss around all the other animals in my house. But Belle’s extra socializing has made her much more outgoing and independent than Chai was.”

Ultimately, Anderson agrees with scientists: anyone who wants to clone a pet should understand that the result will be a unique animal, not a carbon copy of the original.

“You have to realize it's not reincarnation or bringing your pet back from the grave,” Anderson says. “It’s more like getting an identical twin but just at a later date.”