pet
Millennial Mexican woman takes a selfie with her cocker spaniel.

Meanwhile on Instagram: Pet Cloning Is the New, Creepy Trend For Furbaby Influencers

It’s hard to let go, especially when we’re talking about our four-legged friends. Some people simply can’t…which is why “pet cloning” has become a new, creepy trend, especially among Instagram influencers.

Texas-based ViaGen Pets is just one company offering to make real-life copies of your dead animals. For $50,000, you can get a new Fido; for $35,000, a new Fluffy. Weirdoes who have horses will have to shell out $45,000 as an initial payment. Then, the company takes your original pet’s cells, creates an embryo, and transfers it to a surrogate mother. The resulting new furbaby will have the same DNA profile as your OG pet, but of course, there’s no predicting personality.

And yet, people are doing this, in droves. And by “people,” we mostly mean attention-starved nutcases who have built social media followings for their pets. But what happens when a canine or feline celebrity meets an untimely end? They just make a new one.

Some influencers are even urging others to start harvesting those cells early, before the pet dies. (God forbid you lose a day of “likes” to mourn the loss of your beloved pet.)

“I have preached that to everyone since going through this process. Preserve cells now, the worst that happens is you’re out like $1,000 or so and don’t have any regret in case something unexpected does happen,” Kelly Anderson, who runs the Instagram account @adogandacat, told Newsweek.

Her cat, Chai, amassed a following of 64K on Instagram before kicking the bucket while in the care of a pet sitter (so much for those nine lives). Now, Anderson pimps out Chai’s clone, Belle, on the photo-sharing platform.

(Does that cat look crazy or is it just us?)

While you can reproduce your favorite furry friends, you clearly can’t fix stupid.

Cover Photo: ferrantraite (Getty Images)

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