Species | Macaca fascicularis |
---|---|
Sex | Female |
Born | Zhong Zhong 27 November 2017 (age 6 years) Hua Hua 5 December 2017 (age 6 years) Shanghai, China |
Nation from | China |
Known for | First primates to be cloned using the somatic cell nuclear transfer method |
Zhong Zhong (Chinese: 中中; pinyin: Zhōng Zhōng, born 27 November 2017) and Hua Hua (Chinese: 华华; pinyin: Huá Huá, born 5 December 2017) are a pair of identical crab-eating macaques (also referred to as cynomolgus monkeys) that were created through somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the same cloning technique that produced Dolly the sheep in 1996. They are the first cloned primates produced by this technique. Unlike previous attempts to clone monkeys, the donated nuclei came from fetal cells, not embryonic cells.[1][2][3][4][5] The primates were born from two independent surrogate pregnancies at the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.[6]