Rebecca’s War Dog of the Week: South Korea’s clone dog army

By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense chief canine correspondent

Chase was South Korea’s best sniffer dog — making headlines as a record-holding service dog until he retired in 2007. Now, Chase’s descendants are in the spotlight for their remarkably keen noses. Which, genetically speaking, are exact replicas of their “father’s” because South Korea is cloning sniffer dogs. Does anyone else hear the music Twighlight Zone?

A scientist by the name of Byeong-Chun Lee successfully cloned a littler of seven puppies in 2007. Three of those dogs, referred to as “Tomorrow Dogs” and called “Toppies” for short, are now employed, and enjoying extremely successful careers with the security team at Customs in the Incheon International Airport.

One of those dogs, Tutu, a bounding and very enthusiastic yellow Labrador Retriever, has been particularly good at his job, holding the record for detecting “the most drugs” at the airport. He and his handler have been working together for three years and so far so good. (You can watch CNN’s report of the happy pair here.)

Tutu and the rest of his cloned siblings are “part of an ongoing study on how genetic reproductions of prized work animals may revolutionize their use in the field.” Each Toppy is reported to run a price tag of around $100k, which is tens of thousands more costly than your average bomb-detecting dog but their rate of success is inordinately high: “Incheon security estimates that about 30 percent of their dogs are able to be used …  every single cloned dog passed the test to become a drug-sniffer…”

I’d be curious what handlers think about this new development and whether or not the U.S. military should follow suit and clone IED detection dogs (if it hasn’t already). We’re already genetically “enhancing” dogs’ olfactory abilities. But where do we draw the line? Dr. Lee and his team have also done work cloning endangered species like grey wolves. That seems worthwhile, but what about glow-in-the-dark dogs? FP‘s own Josh Keating reported in 2009, scientists at Seoul National University have already done that.

Okay, now cue the music.

Hat Tip: Dimitry.