Barbra Streisand has revealed she had her beloved pet dog Samantha cloned, twice, before she died.
In an interview with Variety, the actress and singer said that cells taken from the 14-year-old Coton de Tulear’s mouth and stomach were used in the cloning process to produce her two puppies, Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett.
In the interview, Streisand said when the cloned dogs arrived, she dressed them in red and lavender to tell them apart, which is how they got their names.
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“They have different personalities,” Streisand said of the puppies. “I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her brown eyes and her seriousness.”
Streisand also has a third dog, named Miss Fanny after Streisand's character Fanny Brice in Funny Girl.
Miss Fanny is a distant cousin of Samantha's, “so it's furry much a family affair for Streisand and her pet pooches”, says the BBC.
The news of the cloned canines has prompted some backlash.
Animal rights group PETA tweeted that she should have adopted a dog from a shelter instead.
“Animals' personalities, quirks, and 'essence' simply cannot be replicated, and considering that millions of wonderful adoptable dogs are languishing in shelters every year or dying in terrifying ways when abandoned, you realise that cloning adds to the animal population crisis,” it wrote.
But Streisand “isn't the only person to have cloned their pets,” says the BBC.
Fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg and her husband Barry Diller paid a reported $100,000 to have their beloved Jack Russell terrier Shannon cloned in 2016.
Two puppies, called Deena and Evita, were created from Shannon's DNA by a South Korean company, Diller’s representative told the New York Post.
