Explosives detectionAussies to clone explosives sniffer dogs
Two Aussie dog-breeding companies will collaborate with South Korean scientists on cloning explosives and drug sniffer dogs; the first batch of ten dogs will go into service in 2013; the Australians cloned dogs would be made from tissue samples taken from a German shepherd called Hassan von Gruntal, who died in 2001; cloned sniffer dogs have already been used in South Korea and the United States
Trackr, cloned in 2008 // Source: thedogfiles.com
Australian law enforcement and military agencies have come up with a new way to make sure they have the best explosives sniffing dogs on service: clone currently serving sniffing dogs.
The Herald Sun reports that the first batch of ten cloned explosives and drugs sniffer dogs would be made available to Aussie government agencies and companies in the private sector by 2013. Two Australian companies — Detector Dogs Australia and Von Forell International – already breed and train dogs for different tasks, including bomb detection at Port of Melbourne. The two companies will now collaborate with a South Korean company on the dog cloning project.
The Herald Sun notes that the cloned dogs would be made from tissue samples taken from a German shepherd called Hassan von Gruntal, who died in 2001. Hassan came “from an East German bloodline known for courage and commitment,” the paper notes.
Sniffer dogs cloning is not new. The world’s first cloned sniffer dogs was employed in South Korea in July 2009. An American police dog called Trakr, who sniffed out survivors in the rubble of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks, was privately cloned in 2008.
