China’s first cloned police dog, three-month-old Kunxun, has begun training after arriving at a police base in Kunming, southwest China’s Yunnan Province earlier this month.
Kunxun was cloned from a 7-year-old female police dog named Huahuangma, which is considered a great detective (侦探的) dog. A study showed that Kunxun’s DNA is 99. 9 percent similar to Huahuangma’s.
Kunxun will begin training in drug detection, and is to be a grown-up police dog at 10 months. But it would take four to five years to train a dog like Huahuangma. The birth of Kunxun provides the possibility of extending animal clone technology to police dogs, and will significantly reduce the time to train one, Zhao Jianping, Sinogene deputy general manager, told the Global Times on Tuesday. He also noted that the cost of cloning remains a bottleneck for mass production.
Wan Jiusheng, a lead researcher at the Kunming Dog Base of Public Security, told the Science and Technology Daily that Kunxun shows a better potential than the regularly bred Kunming wolfdogs in a series of tests. Wan said Kunxun will be able to become a police dog when it is about 10 months old.
A police officer told the Global Times on Tuesday that preserving the police dog blood has always been a challenge, as traditional breeding methods would dilute (稀释) the original, and the next generation’s genes will be largely beyond control. The successful police dog clone technology would address those problems and lower the elimination (淘汰) rate of police dogs at the puppy training stage, he said.
However, such technology does not mean that the mass production of police dogs has already arrived, as factors like the surroundings and trainers’ skill also play an important role, Wan noted.
Kunxun is not the first cloned police dog. In South Korea, six cloned police dogs first appeared and began patrolling (巡逻) the streets in 2008. The world’s first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, was born in Scotland in 1996.
8. What is the benefit of cloning police dogs according to paragraph 3?
A.Living longer. | B.Costing less money. |
C.Reducing training time. | D.Completing harder tasks. |
9. What do Zhao Jianping’s and Wan Jiusheng’s opinions have in common?
A.Clone technology will be used on humans. |
B.Cloned animals can help people in some ways. |
C.Cloning police dogs hasn’t yet reached mass production. |
D.The cloned police dog trainers’ skill is very important. |
10. Where was the world’s first cloned police dog born?
A.In Scotland. | B.In China. | C.In the US. | D.In South Korea. |
11. Where is this text most likely from?
A.A diary. | B.A magazine. | C.A novel. | D.A guidebook. |