Cloned dogs join police force in Beijing

BEIJING - The Beijing police force has a number of familiar-looking four-legged recruits -- six cloned dogs.

At a ceremony held Wednesday by the Police Dog Base of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Public Security, trainers put badges, colored collars and uniforms on the six cloned dogs, marking their official entry into the force.

Ma Jinlei, a police officer engaged in dog training techniques, said researching how to pass down the genes of excellent police dogs has been an important task for the base in recent years.

In early 2019, the base started cooperating with firms to produce the six cloned dogs based on skin samples of two police dogs.

The six dogs were born in August at the base, four of which were from the same litter. Their DNA is over 99 percent the same as the donor dogs.

Ma said the cloned dogs are only around four months old, but they have exhibited the same abilities as six-month-old non-cloned police dogs in terms of memory, courage and aggression.

The base will carry out strict training and close monitoring of the six cloned dogs and continue to work with enterprises on the research of batch cloning of police dogs as well as the establishment of a dog cell bank to fully preserve and utilize top-notch police dogs.