Barbra Streisand revealed in an interview Tuesday that she had her late, beloved dog, Samantha, cloned twice before the dog’s death last year.
Streisand told Variety that her two Coton du Tulears, Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett, were cloned using cells taken from Samantha’s stomach and mouth before she passed away last fall.
“They have different personalities,” she told the outlet of the cloned dogs. “I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her [Samantha’s] brown eyes and seriousness.”
The 75-year-old singer and actress also has a third dog, Miss Fanny, a distant cousin of Samantha.
Streisand’s interview raised the ire of PETA, which issued a statement Tuesday discouraging the practice of cloning pets.
“We all want our beloved dogs to live forever, but while it may sound like a good idea, cloning doesn’t achieve that — instead, it creates a new and different dog who has only the physical characteristics of the original,” the animal welfare group said in a statement.
“Animals’ personalities, quirks, and very ‘essence’ simply cannot be replicated, and when you consider that millions of wonderful adoptable dogs are languishing in animal shelters every year or dying in terrifying ways when abandoned, you realize that cloning adds to the homeless-animal population crisis. And because cloning has a high failure rate, many dogs are caged and tormented for every birth that actually occurs — so that’s not fair to them, despite the best intentions.”
“We feel Barbra’s grief at losing her beloved dog but would also love to have talked her out of cloning,” the group added.
The introduction of her dogs was part of Variety‘s cover story interview with Streisand, which also included the singer’s thoughts on President Donald Trump and the 2016 election.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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