CLONED MULE RACE

Shammy Davis · Postby **Shammy Davis** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 12:32 pm

Very interesting stuff happening in ID. Place your bets! :wink:

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/artic ... 0000000001

Barbaro06 · Postby **Barbaro06** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:35 pm

They showed the race on the news tonight. That's weird stuff.... :roll:

Shammy Davis · Postby **Shammy Davis** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 6:47 pm

It's really something. Apparently both sisters were winners. Certainly gives me pause to wonder if the future of breeding has found its fault line. Two cloned equine, mules in this case, both with similar athletic ability. Certainly simplifies the process of selection. There is none. One equals two or three or . . .

xfactor fan · Postby **xfactor fan** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 1:01 am

The race coverage that I saw had the two clones coming in 3rd and 7th. How many of these clones are there?

Sam · Postby **Sam** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 1:34 am

xfactor fan wrote:The race coverage that I saw had the two clones coming in 3rd and 7th. How many of these clones are there?

3

Idaho Gem
Idaho Star
Utah Pioneer. And they are all males, not females.

Gem is the most famous of the three and the first born. He's the one that was touring the fairs as a young foal

Gem and Pioneer as foals:

The Winnemucca speed trials are a two day event. Kind of like QH qualifying for the big 2yo races ... only you don't get 2 weeks rest, you get maybe 20 hours. You trial on Saturday and the finals are on Sunday.

Idaho Gem and Idaho Star both won their Saturday heats, then finished 3rd and 7th in the Sunday Final.

The third mule doesn't seem all that interested in racing. Last I heard, they're going to train it to do dressage or something.

These are NOT clones of Taz. They are clones of what would have been a full sibling to Taz. The reason I say would have been is because it was not allowed to fully gestate. They had to kill the embryo at 45 days. From what I understand, they had to let it grow to a certain point before the cells were 'cloneable' or something.

I've not really been following this .. something about the whole thing doesn't sit well with me.

xfactor fan · Postby **xfactor fan** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:15 am

They harvested the embryo --you are correct this is a full sib to Taz, then split the embryo--sort of duplicating the process that generates identical twins. The resulting fragments were then implanted into hoste mares and there were three live births. Don't know how many they started with, or how many are still hanging around in cryo someplace.

Calling them clones of Taz is not correct. All the news coverage calls them clones. Sometimes the news media makes me crazy.

Sam · Postby **Sam** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 2:11 am

xfactor fan wrote:Don't know how many they started with, or how many are still hanging around in cryo someplace.

They had 14, only three developed heartbeats and eventually were born.

http://www.equine-reproduction.com/index.shtml

They're calling them clones of a full to Taz, but personally I would think it more accurate to call them artificial twins. As you say, all they did was manually force the cells to divide as it would if it were to develop natural twins then replaced the nucleus of one cell with another. Not true cloning IMO.

xfactor fan · Postby **xfactor fan** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 9:42 pm

These could be the mule versions of Secretariat and The Bride. Full sibs, one with the talent, the other not so good.