Attack of the Clones?

I fully understand the love an owner (or parent, as some of us tend to view ourselves), and the sense of loss felt upon losing a pet. I would love to have Reese, Ebbie, Morgan or Ernie back, because they were great pets, and friends. At the same time, I feel that they had their place in time and in my life, and I would never seek to replicate them through the process of cloning. I love the two cats I have right now, and one of them, Frankie, is a flamepoint Siamese just like Ernie was. While I see similarities in character and behavior, I am under no illusion that Frankie is a replacement for Ernie.

To me, pet cloning is a emotionally cheap, fiscally irresponsible way for a pet owner to weaken their sense of loss. The clone will come into the world with the same genetic code as the deceased, but with be an entirely different individual aside from that. While DNA can help to mold parts of a personality, I believe that personal experience truly makes us who we are. The cat in the article, Spot, cannot be brought back through cloning. The Wolf's will get themselves another blue abyssinian through this process, but Spot is gone. Forever.

Issues of overpopulation and bioethics appear to be valid concerns, but the main thing I'm not buying in this article is the idea of the pets' "life force." Animals are like people, in more ways than most people appear willing or able to admit. A clone of this particular cat may or may not have the same disposition as the original. Just like people, pets are often shaped by the environment in which they are raised. Spot's "life force" lives on with his owners. Those owners, the Wolf's, owned Spot for 18 years... they are likely much different people today than they were nearly two decades ago (three, really, since the article was published in 2000), and any pet they get now, clone or not, would be emotionally sculpted in a way that reflects who they are now, rather than who they were when Spot was growing up.

I also enjoy the search for and discovery of a pet that will be a good fit in my home. In some cases, working with and training a new pet to be a better fit might be more rewarding than simply cloning someone you already know. I don't know how deep the cloning technology runs these days, but I can understand cloning from a business standpoint in terms of livestock, or a sickening militaristic standpoint if some government wanted to breed super soldiers or something... but when it comes to pets, I simply don't find cloning to be a legitimate use of our scientific knowledge.

No Such Thing as a Snow Dragon!

Aerobic Cellular Respiration is the way that most multi-cellular organisms create the ATP needed for molecules to function throughout their bodies. Aerobic Cellular Respiration sounds like it would be a physically active and strenuous form of Cellular Respiration, but in reality, it is active in eating and breathing. We don't have to do jumping jacks or hop on a stair climbing machine to participate in Aerobic Cellular Respiration - it's almost like our cells hit the gym, even if we don't! Woo!

Humans could not function using just Anaerobic Cellular Respiration. This process doesn't create enough ATP to keep pace with what our bodies need, and we would eventually (very, very quickly, I imagine) stop being able to function. Anaerobic Cellular Respiration is there for us in case we need to push our bodies just a little harder, but it is certainly not something we could rely on as a form of survival (unless we're running from a freakin' tiger).

I could be wrong, but I think the difference in the activity levels of warm- and cold-blooded animals is caused by warm-blooded animals having a higher level of homeostasis than that of cold-blooded animals. Cold-blooded animals need more heat in order to be active - thus the reason you aren't in danger of stepping on a snake in the Arctic (although... I imagine a snake that's able to live up there would be pretty wicked). It's almost like they're solar-powered. While warm-blooded animals can adapt and live in almost any climate, cold-blooded creatures need a climate where they can be warm. No such thing as a snow dragon... they live in the Komodo islands.