In the picture: Beagle brings the world's first cloned polar wolf to the world

The world's first cloned wild polarwolf was born after it was held by a beagle.

After two years of meticulous work, the wolf named Maya was born in a laboratory in Beijing, which was described as a milestone for the preservation of less frequent and endangered species.

"In order to save the endangered animal, we started research cooperation with Harbin Polarland to clone the polar wolf in 2020," said Mi Jidong, General Manager of the company of the Sinogenic Biotechnology Co.

"After two years of painstaking efforts, the Polarwolf was successfully cloned. It is the first case of this kind worldwide."

Maya's donor cells came from the skin sample of a wild polar wolf female that died in captivity in Harbin Polarland, a wildlife park in the northeast of China.

The team of sinogenic initially generated 137 polar wolf embryos by combining skin cells of the original Maya with eggs of dogs through the process, which is known as a somatic cell kernel transfer (SCNT).

A total of 85 of these embryos were then transferred to seven beagle replacement animals that were selected because there were not enough female wolves in captivity for the experiments.

Fortunately, dogs and wolves share enough DNA together so that pregnancy is successful.

Only one of these transplanted embryos developed completely during pregnancy, which led to the new Maya.

The wolf now lives with her surrogate mother in a sinogen laboratory in Xuzhou, Ostkina. It will soon be moved to Harbin Polarland to join other polar wolves.

sinogenic announced a new partnership with the Beijing Wildlife Park in order to might clone other species in the near future.

gao Wei, the deputy manager of Beijing Wildlife Park, told Global Times that the company could offer another way to maintain rare and endangered species if artificial reproduction is not possible.