Snuppy – the world's first cloned dog - is a father. A team of Seoul National University scientists said Tuesday that 10 puppies were born in May using sperm from Snuppy artificially inseminated into two cloned female dogs. The scientists say the births mark the world's first breeding among cloned dogs. “Scientific doubt over whether breeding by cloned dogs is possible has been resolved,” Lee Byeong-chun, head of the research team, told The Associated Press. Lee said his team has cloned about 30 dogs and five wolves since it succeeded in cloning Snuppy in April 2005. The Seoul National University team suffered a blow to its reputation after internationally acclaimed breakthroughs in stem cell research by its former head, Hwang Woo-suk, were found to have been faked. Lee said the university's forensic medicine team has identified Snuppy's pups as his offspring through DNA tests. He also said he presented the births to an international conference in Greece late last month. Snuppy, a black Afghan hound, has been living at a university facility with three other female dogs – tan Afghan hounds cloned by the team in 2006. On Wednesday, the university showed off four of the puppies, which scampered, wagged their tails and frolicked with their parents. The four dogs, all different colors, have Korean names: Gang, Byul, Bom and Ga-eul, which mean river, star, spring and autumn. “The mother dogs have became very modest since giving birth to their puppies,” said Oh Hyun-ju, a researcher who has taken part in the team's dog cloning work since Snuppy's birth. “They also showed dogs' typical parental affection - they barked and were so restless when we took their puppies to measure weights and conduct other tests,” she said. Oh said Snuppy has shown some slight changes in behavior since becoming a father. “Snuppy didn't like baby dogs before, and whenever he was approached by small dogs, he walked away,” she said. “But now he doesn't budge when his puppies are near him,” she said. “So we think Snuppy has truly became a father.”
