Dog Clone Family Romps At Ma & Pa Park

BEL AIR, MD — A long-haired Chihuahua is making history in Bel Air. His name is Bruce Wayne, and the 4-year-old pooch is living with four of his clones, reported to be the first group of cloned dogs in Maryland.

The pack went for a romp near the Ma & Pa Trail in April, the group's first outing to a dog park, according to owner Meesha Kauffman.

She documented the trip on YouTube:

Kauffman named her original dog Bruce Wayne after the billionaire philanthropist who is the secret identity of Batman.

It is fitting when you look at the pooch and his bat-like ears.

His clones are also named for comic characters: Tony Stark (Iron Man), Clark Kent (Superman), Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and Wade Wilson (Deadpool).

“Clark Kent, who is also the biggest of the pups, was the most outgoing,” wrote Kauffman after their jaunt at the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air.

There is a fifth clone, named Harvey Dent (Two Face), who is living with a friend of Kauffman. Both women blog about their dogs, and on her blog, Kauffman explained that she had planned for three pups in the cloning process but "in true superhero fashion," Bruce Wayne's DNA produced five.

"...cloning Bruce Wayne has been a dream of mine since I got him when he was 5 months old," Kauffman wrote. "I am gifting one to Kristen because I couldn’t physically take care of 5 of them and she is close enough to me that I can knock down her door when I want to visit Harvey Dent!"

Cloning was done in Texas, through a company called ViaGen, which charges $50,000 for dogs and $25,000 for cats. ViaGen has a connection to Maryland. It is a subsidiary of Intrexon, the Germantown-based biotech company that is working in part to make scientific advances available to consumers.

Before he was cloned, Bruce Wayne was already famous on Instagram. His account has more than 60,000 followers.

Kauffman decided to clone Bruce Wayne in fall 2017, she told WBAL, because she wanted to “see another piece of him and see how that would be." In the interview, broadcast on April 30, she reported of the cloned puppies: "The older they get, the more similar they are becoming to him."

Dog cloning involves creating DNA matches but the colors and personalities of each animal may vary. The sex is always the same, so Bruce Wayne's clones are all male.

The first dog clone was an Afghan hound in 2005 in South Korea, according to Scientific American. The phenomenon made headlines again recently when celebrity Barbra Streisand revealed that she had cloned her Coton de Tulears after losing her dog of 14 years.

Dog cloning requires multiple surrogates and surgeries, Scientific American reported, and is controversial for several reasons, including because there are thousands of shelter dogs who need homes.

Kauffman posted on her blog that she and Harvey Dent's owner both raise money for area dog rescues.

The dog cloning industry is also unregulated, according to National Geographic, which notes the Humane Society of America publicly opposed cloning in part because it uses animals as objects for reproduction and there is no oversight for their treatment.

For Bruce Wayne's clones, a beagle was the surrogate and the procedure came to fruition with the quintuplets' birth in October 2017 without any issues, according to WBAL. The news station reported that Bruce Wayne is the first dog cloned in Maryland.

Fans can also see what he’s up to through Kauffman's blog: I Party With Bruce Wayne.

Still from Bruce Wayne/YouTube.

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