We have only really just begun to develop a suitable critical language for parsing the significance of Dolly’s coming into being. It is as though she is hidden behind a hedge of bad puns in a paddock. (Franklin, Reference Franklin2007: 1)
Cloned animals are often understood as ‘models’ whose embodiments demonstrate the viability of somatic cell nuclear transfer and its applicability to a species body. In her genealogical analysis of Dolly the Sheep, Franklin writes:
As the model organism of the Dolly technique, her importance is at one level simply to embody it and to confirm its viability. Her body cells have been repeatedly analyzed to provide confirmation of her genetic provenance, and so Dolly is the technique that made her in some importantly literal senses. (2007: 23)
Here Franklin shows how Dolly is prominently understood as a representational ‘model of’ (Keller, Reference Keller2000) a set of techniques known as somatic cell nuclear transfer.
Practice is a central trope in the field of science, technology and medicine studies, where the focus is on what humans and nonhumans do together.Footnote 1 Within this framework, Keller (2000) has argued that models in the life sciences are not simply cognitive representations of something else, but are also embodiments of action and practice that constitute the kinds of scientific questions that can be asked and how those questions can be answered.Footnote 2 Drawing on Keller’s language, I would say that, while we understand cloned animals as ‘models of’ somatic cell nuclear transfer, little empirical scholarship has explored what these animals are ‘models for’.Footnote 3 This article asks what practices cloned animals embody, focusing on endeavours to clone endangered wildlife in the United States. By retracing and situating the practices involved in cloning endangered wildlife, this article shows that the resulting animals are models for conducting science in zoological parks.
Focusing on cloning practices with endangered wildlife reveals many tensions and paradoxes. Indeed, the very idea of cloning endangered animals does not intuitively make sense. Somatic cell nuclear transfer has been positioned as a cloning technology and, as such, is generally understood as a system for mass-producing identical animals. This notion of copying animals multiple times over is at odds with the logic and practices of species preservation today, which are based on biodiversity. Tracing cloning practices with wildlife thereby challenges some of our core assumptions regarding cloning, endangered species and zoos. To address these tensions, I show how cloned endangered animals embody linkages and fissures between: (1) agriculture and conservation; (2) domestic and endangered species; (3) farms and zoological parks; (4) humans and animals; and (5) cloning and genetic diversity. Moving in and through these tensions, I reconsider what cloning has come to mean in and for the specific institutional context of zoological parks.
Why should we care about zoos? Rothfels (2002) has argued that zoos should be understood as sites that mediate varied historical and cultural meanings ascribed to wild animals and nature through the social relationships and practices that enable their collection and display over time.Footnote 4 Cloning, and the life sciences more generally, represent a new set of practices within zoos that are imagined to enable the collection and display of wild animals through regeneration. Cloning endangered animals is a contested set of practices because ‘future visions’ (Brown et al., Reference Brown, Rappert and Webster2000; Hedgecoe and Martin, Reference Hedgecoe and Martin2003; van Lente, Reference van Lente1993) of zoos are enacted, which entails visions for how humans should forge relations with wildlife. I contend that cloned endangered animals are not only models of interspecies nuclear transfer and models for conducting science in the zoo. As embodiments of practice, these animals also do certain things to the ‘material-semiotics’ (Haraway, Reference Haraway1991) of wildlife. Cloned endangered animals model new kinds of ‘assemblages’ (Deleuze and Guattari, Reference Deleuze and Guattari1987) in the reproduction of zoos, through which humans and animals alike are being co-constituted in relation to one another.
Studying cloning as practice
Animals of three different wild species have been born to date as part of an attempt to use cloning in species preservation within the United States. First, an endangered gaur was born in January 2001, but died days later. This endangered bovine was created through a collaborative project between an individual at the San Diego Zoological Society and two biotechnology companies, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) and Trans Ova Genetics. A subsequent project followed, but this time using a different endangered bovine species known as the banteng. One cloned banteng, born in April 2003, is currently on display at the San Diego Zoo. The San Diego Zoological Society considers this cloning experiment ongoing because they want to see if the cloned banteng can produce healthy offspring. Meanwhile, scientists at the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species (ACRES) in New Orleans, Louisiana have been conducting ongoing research in developing somatic cell nuclear transfer with endangered felines. Three litters of African wildcat clones were born across 2003 and 2004. In addition, two unrelated cloned cats reproduced a litter of healthy kittens in 2005. However, the African wildcat is not generally considered endangered. At the time of this study, scientists were using the technical processes developed with the African wildcats to clone an endangered Sand cat, but a live birth has not yet resulted. As of May 2008, this programme of research was ongoing. These three cloning projects represent the key ‘situations’ (Clarke, Reference Clarke2003, Reference Clarke2005; Clarke and Friese, Reference Clarke, Friese, Bryant and Charmaz2007) explored in this article.
To understand the practices embodied by these animals, I visited sites to see cloning and related practices, as well as interviewed people involved in or ‘implicated by’ (Clarke and Montini, Reference Clarke and Montini1993) these cloning endeavours. Interviews were conducted with reproductive scientists and geneticists working at research centres affiliated with zoos, universities and/or biotechnology companies (n = 15), members of and advisers to Taxonomic Advisory Groups and Species Survival Plans that manage captive populations of endangered animals (n = 8) and one field conservationist who works on habitat and species preservation in situ.Footnote 5 I visited the San Diego Zoological Park to see the cloned banteng on display and toured the San Diego Zoological Society’s research centre. I also visited the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species in order to see the procedures involved in cloning endangered cats. Finally, I attended the 2006 meetings of the Taxonomic Advisory Group for endangered felids in order to better understand the practices involved in managing endangered populations of zoo animals. Coupling these interviews and observations with my reading of different types of documents, I have sought to uncover the practices embodied by cloned endangered animals and to situate these practices within the uptake of reproductive and genetic sciences in zoological parks.
This article reconsiders the significance of cloning by tracing the practices, ideas, people and things brought together in cloning endangered animals. This question required that I ‘follow’ cloning around zoo worlds (Franklin and Roberts, Reference Franklin and Roberts2006; Latour, Reference Latour1987; Marcus, Reference Marcus1995). This represents a rather novel perspective on both cloning and zoos, allowing for a greater understanding of how the life sciences are being incorporated into zoological parks and the significance these knowledge practices have for the meaning of wildlife. However, this also provides a very specific perspective on the possible futures of zoos. It is important to recognize that many social groups, who are deeply involved in parks, are largely absent from the imaginaries presented below, including animal handlers, veterinarians and animal behaviourists. Thus, it needs to be emphasized that these cloned animals embody imaginaries for zoos that are held by, and contested among, particular sets of social groups within zoos. Future research is required to understand just how much these imaginaries are settling down within zoological parks, which will likely vary across different zoo occupations, different zoological parks and different national/regional contexts.
Models of cloning, models for the zoo
Each of the three cloned endangered animals born in the United States has been prominently understood as a model of interspecies nuclear transfer. Their birth demonstrated and validated that the somatic cell nuclear transfer process could be modified, so that the somatic cells came from an animal of one species while the egg cells are from another, closely related species. For example, domestic cow eggs were used to clone the gaur and banteng, while domestic cat eggs were used in the African wildcat experiments. This interspecies modification was intended to address the limited number of egg cells available for research among both endangered animals and humans. Indeed, ACT became involved in endeavours to clone endangered wildlife because scientists hoped that cow eggs could be used in human embryonic stem cell research, allowing them to work around the material and ethical challenges posed by human egg cells.Footnote 6
One of the surprises of this research was that these cloned endangered animals are extremely contentious within zoos. While cloning and contestation are generally synonymous, cloning endangered animals has been surprisingly uncontroversial in popular culture. My analysis of mass media coverage showed that reporting was generally positive in tone (Friese, Reference Friese2007). In addition, public opinion polls generally show more support for cloning endangered species than any other species of animal (Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, 2002), something that study participants frequently cited.
These debates did not solely focus on the ways cloned endangered animals stand as models of interspecies nuclear transfer.Footnote 7 In addition, these cloned animals were deeply contested as models for conducting science in zoological parks. To parse these debates, I use Keller’s dual conceptualization of models to unpack the practices embodied by different cloned animals. In the process, we will see that the cloned gaur and African wildcats are models for developing reproductive technologies in zoological parks, which is a contested mode of conducting scientific research in the park. Critiques of these practices were in part addressed in the banteng cloning project, which models a more pluralist approach to technology development.
By retracing and comparing the practices involved in cloning endangered animals, we will see that somatic cell nuclear transfer becomes meaningful as it is ‘articulated’ (Star, Reference Star and Law1991; Strauss, Reference Strauss1988) with other elements and practices in varying ways across local settings.Footnote 8 Cloning is not a technology per se in this context, but rather a set of practices that must be interwoven within the apparatuses used to conserve endangered wildlife. Articulating cloning enacts ‘endangered species’ as a meaningful category in varying and debated ways. As such, debates over cloning endangered species cannot simply be understood as contests over whose mode of scientific practices will come to dominate zoo-based reproductive science research programmes, in bids for resources and prestige. Rather, cloning endangered animals is controversial because ‘wildlife’ is being rendered meaningful in particular and divergent ways through these varying scientific practices.
I begin this section by situating the cloned gaur and African wildcats in the original uptake of reproductive sciences within zoological parks, an endeavour that focused on developing reproductive technologies in order to make zoo animals. This research focus has been unevenly shifting in parks, due to critiques posed by zoo-based reproductive scientists alongside changes in zoo animal management practices. I then show how the banteng cloning experiment was reorganized to respond to these debates, but nonetheless still raises questions regarding the meaning of captive endangered animals in the context of species conservation.
The reproductive sciences enter the zoo
The live animal trade, which zoos historically relied upon for their collections, was called into serious question during the second half of the twentieth century, as many wild animals were reclassified as endangered species (Hanson, Reference Hanson2002; Rothfels, Reference Rothfels2002). This industry operated by killing adult animals in a pack, capturing the young, and transporting them great distances (often with staggering death rates) to reside in captive settings (Rothfels, Reference Rothfels2002).Footnote 9 These highly wasteful practices in part contributed to the extinction and endangerment of many wild species, and were curtailed as previously colonized nations gained independence (Hanson, Reference Hanson2002). Collecting wild animals was further limited with the ratification of the Endangered Species Act (1973) in the United States and the International Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (1973). In this context, many zoological parks began to articulate ‘self-sustaining populations’ (Benirschke, Reference Benirschke1986) as a new priority. Advocates argued that zoo animal populations could be sustained over many generations by breeding, rather than collecting, wild animals. Self-sustaining zoo populations would not only keep wild populations intact, but could serve as a ‘back up’ or ‘reserve’ for dwindling counterparts in the wild. The long-standing curiosity about breeding zoo animals (Anderson, Reference Anderson, Wolch and Emel1998) increasingly became defined as a necessity in this context (Hanson, Reference Hanson2002).
The reproductive sciences entered US zoological parks in this context, during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The research endeavour was largely conceived as an applied project in technology development, with the idea that reproductive technologies could help resolve the intertwined problems of endangered species preservation and zoo animal reproduction. A zoo scientist who was central to solidifying the field commented during an interview:
We were all very young and idealistic. And I remember that we all sort of felt that there would be a quick fix. There was the birth of Louise Brown. … So everybody in the late 1970s, early 1980s sort of thought at the same time, ‘Well, how can we use these high-tech approaches to enhance offspring production [of wild and endangered species]?’ (Telephone interview with author, July 2006)
The initial goal of reproductive scientists was to achieve live births in wild and endangered species using reproductive technologies. This goal fitted the logic of demography that then pervaded zoo animal reproduction, which focused on increasing the number of animals in the population. In this context, reproductive scientists used the gametes of animals that were most readily available because any addition to the zoo population was considered an added value.Footnote 10
Many wild animals are rather reticent to breed in captivity, which has been a primary barrier to self-sustaining populations.Footnote 11 In response, one key area of early research focused on using domestic animals as gestational surrogates for wild species. One zoo scientist summarized this focus as follows:
I mean the whole idea behind some of the original work was that we could use interspecies embryo transfer, so you could put zebra embryos into horses and bongo embryos into cows and all that. (Telephone interview with author, July 2006)
Reproductive scientists were in part interested in working around endangered animal bodies, which are problematic research subjects, by working with domestic animals to the greatest extent possible.Footnote 12
Taken together, the reproductive sciences also represented a new way to collect wild animals, which could help distance the zoo from its colonial legacy rooted in the collection practices of natural history. In turn, the life sciences have fostered new ways of seeing wildlife. The scientific goal is no longer to display wild animals vis-à-vis one another in order to pictorially represent species bodies, as in natural history. Rather, reproductive scientists have been part of an attempt to change the reproductive processes of wild animals as endangered species, in order to make captive populations more robust.Footnote 13 As Hanson (2002) has pointed out, zoo animals have become ‘ambassadors’ for their threatened counterparts in the wild. Reproductive scientists wanted to make, rather than collect, endangered animals in this context.
Models for reproductive technology development
The cloned gaur and African wildcat experiments are, in many respects, consistent with the initial incorporation of the reproductive sciences within zoos. Both were organized according to the logic of technology development, where the primary goal was to prove the feasibility of interspecies nuclear transfer in wildlife. The assumption was that the technologies developed in one species body could rather easily be transferred to another species.Footnote 14 In order to learn whether and how interspecies nuclear transfer was feasible, scientists used the cells and bodies of animals that were most readily available. The gaur was chosen because interspecies gestation had previously been demonstrated with that species. Meanwhile, the African wildcat was chosen because the laboratory had a research colony. This was consistent with demographic approaches to zoo animal management, or increasing the number of animals in the zoo. Finally, both projects were premised upon working around problematic research materials—endangered animal egg cells and surrogates—by working with domestic animals to the greatest extent possible.
While the cloned gaur and wildcats are both models for technology development in the park, it is important to point out that these two animals embody quite different ways of enacting this project. The gaur was created through collaboration between a zoo and two biotechnology companies. As a human embryonic stem cell company, ACT had particular scientific and financial interests in the project, and therefore financed the research. Specifically, ACT wanted to prove the principle of interspecies nuclear transfer. If this technique worked with endangered and domestic animals, the company might be able to use cow eggs instead of human eggs to create embryos for stem cell derivation. When conducted with humans, this experimental and controversial research was a public relations disaster. But ‘endangered species’ tend to bring substantial support for controversial biomedical technologies (Haraway, Reference Haraway, Franklin and Lock2003) and cloning endangered animals was no different. This point was made clear in the following statement, made by an industry scientist involved in the gaur project:
But it was really unusual when we started to work with endangered species. The perception of the technology changed completely. So it was acceptable to use this, you know, God-fearing technology for saving endangered species. … So we kind of decided to do the endangered species project to test the technology but also to use it as, a little bit of PR purposes, to kind of sway people’s opinion of the technology. (Telephone interview with author, July 2005)
While ACT was interested in proving the principle of interspecies nuclear transfer in a manner that would promote the company’s public image, the zoo would be able to exchange cryopreserved fibroblast cells for a living, breathing animal of an endangered species. The general idea was that if cloned animals are going to be produced they might as well serve multiple purposes. One scientist demonstrated this idea in the following statement:
Like the people up north who cloned the mule into a horse. They could have just as well have cloned a Przewalski horse to enrich the gene pool of these horses, which at least have a pedigree. And, one could say, these genes are of interest. (Zoo scientist, telephone interview with author, September 2005)
Similarly, a university scientist commented that the collaboration embodied by the gaur could become a standard avenue through which zoos produce animals in the future. However, as we shall see, this project raised questions about who gets to decide what kind of animal the zoo gets out of these purportedly mutually beneficial projects.Footnote 15
Meanwhile, the African wildcat cloning projects brought technology development into the zoo itself. The goal wasn’t simply to make a cloned animal, but rather to learn how to engage in the cloning process using wildlife. The zoo financed the research endeavour and in the process acquired the embodied knowledge required to do cloning. One scientist involved in this project stated:
I mean it’s not like we had this recipe book, that we just followed this recipe. You can build on others’ work. You can take others’ work and decide whether you think that’s how you want to approach it or whether you want to do it differently, whether you can—I don’t want to say do it better but at least in your hands you think it’s a better way to do it. It may not be the same in somebody else’s hands. So we feel like we have had to develop the knowledge and the techniques to be able to do what we’re doing and it wasn’t just something that we just went in the lab one day and produced embryos and transferred them and had a baby. I mean this whole system that we use has evolved over—well, as I said earlier in the conversation, I began this in the late 1980s. So I will soon have spent most of my time, the last twenty years, doing this. (Telephone interview with author, March 2006)
When asked, this scientist said he hoped this laboratory system would one day provide a service function for zoos. For now, however, he thought that the focus needed to be on learning how to engage in technical processes.Footnote 16 As such, the endangered cat somatic cells used in the experiments are often those that are most available, rather than from animals that zoos want to reproduce. That is, zoo scientists, rather than animal population managers, decide what kind of animal will be produced on the basis of experimental rather than zoo-based requirements.
I spent a day at ACRES, observing the work that goes into cloning an endangered felid. What I saw was a very carefully choreographed set of relations between the different people in the lab, the vast array of non-humans that make up a reproductive science laboratory, and the domestic cats that were the primary research subjects. Significantly, my only sighting of an endangered cat was in the form of a somatic cell, represented in digital form on a computer screen. While reproducing an endangered cat was the objective of the day, by this stage of work its presence had been reduced to the cellular level. Minimizing the presence of endangered animals in cloning practices has been controversial because contested definitions of wildlife are therein being enacted, as we shall see.
Contesting cloned animals
These cloning projects have sparked considerable contestation within and across zoological parks, a recurrent theme in the interviews I conducted. Study participants often used interviews to argue that cloning is expensive, inefficient and invasive. Trying to develop this set of techniques is therefore premature, particularly given that artificial insemination, the most basic of assisted reproductive techniques, remains elusive in most endangered species. Others were concerned that all the publicity surrounding cloning made this very uncertain set of techniques appear as a kind of ‘magic bullet’ against species extinction, which could erode public support for more tried and true preservation practices. Finally, a number of people argued that the experiments did not make sense as conservation. Gaur reproduce quite well in captivity; African wildcats are not generally considered endangered and are not a managed population in US zoos. But beyond that, it was hard for some to imagine why learning to clone would ever be of service in the context of species preservation. Indeed, the very notion of cloning—where a genetic copy is the goal—seems antithetical to conservation, which is premised upon generating genetic diversity. In order to understand these debates, it is important to discuss briefly how the reproductive sciences and the zoo itself have shifted their practices over the past two decades.
Shifts in the reproductive sciences
Almost thirty years after the reproductive sciences began to be incorporated into wildlife research, even some of the most ‘basic’ of reproductive technologies (e.g. pregnancy tests and artificial insemination) remain elusive with most wild animals. As in other areas of biomedicine, people involved in conservation are becoming critical of supporting a research trajectory premised upon technology development that does not have clear and tangible benefits.Footnote 17 We see this frustration articulated in the following statement, made by a person who manages endangered species in zoos.
A lot of the initial interest is in just showing the feasibility of a technology. You hear a lot about ‘world’s first’ of this or that. And it drives us crazy because to me that’s the easiest part. You do enough procedures and if that animal, if it’s physiologically similar to something that’s worked before, you do enough procedures, over time eventually something will work. And you point to the one offspring and say ‘we’ve done it’ and then you walk away and nothing else ever gets done with that. And to me the feasibility is the easiest part. It’s making it efficient enough that you can consistently produce offspring that way [that is difficult]. (Interview with author, April 2006)
In this context, some zoo-based, reproductive science researchers have foregone high-profile technology development in favour of more ‘basic’ research.
This shift is most vividly demonstrated in David Wildt’s discussion of his own research trajectory. In the early 1980s, Wildt helped start Conservation Science, a biomedical research facility within the Smithsonian Institute that operates in conjunction with the National Zoo. Wildt’s initial goal was to develop artificial insemination with cheetahs. Consistent failures led Wildt to what he referred to as his ‘ah-ha’ moment during an interview, wherein he realized that ‘a cheetah is not a cow’ (see also Wildt, Reference Wildt, Gordon and Bartol2004). Here, Wildt realized that the techniques and protocols used to reproduce domestic cows would not necessarily work to reproduce a cheetah. In response, he and his colleagues began a fifteen-year study of the cheetah’s reproductive physiology (Wildt, Reference Wildt, Gordon and Bartol2004).
Wildt has since shifted his scientific practices to focus on basic, biological questions rather than technology development. Here basic knowledge can eventually lead to the development of existing techniques for wild animal reproduction, such as the successful use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with cheetahs after fifteen years of study. Or, basic research may lead to the creation of new techniques. We see this in the following statement, made by Wildt during an interview:
One of the most recent high-profile accomplishments is the production of Tai Shan, the giant panda cub. That animal was produced not using cow technology or human technology, but was from a database that we had developed over the course of about nine years working in China with our Chinese colleagues, worrying about giant panda sperm and how to collect it, how to keep it alive, how to put it in a female at the right time, which is totally different than what you might expect for a cow. (Telephone interview with author, July 2006)
Most importantly for Wildt, this research agenda is primarily based on acquiring a better understanding of endangered animal physiologies, rather than technology development. This shift in focus is demonstrated in another statement Wildt made during an interview:
[A]ll these species have these unique physiological characteristics and that itself dictates whether or not a particular technique has any relevance. So the bottom line is that for me the technology—whether we’re talking about semen collection and sperm evaluation or we’re talking about cloning—the value of that technology is really as a tool to understand species uniqueness, the different mechanisms among species that make them so different from one another and allow them to be reproductively successful and able to transfer their genes from generation to generation. It’s not—actually, it has very little to do with the ability to produce offspring. (Telephone interview with author, July 2006)
By focusing on basic, physiological research, Wildt no longer needs to justify his work by making technoscientific animals. Rather, the legitimacy of his research programme lies in the ability to make new knowledge about the physiologies of understudied species.
Technology developers tended to emphasize similarities across species. The thought was that, given that technical know-how exists, why not use it to conserve wildlife as part of a moral agenda? This is part of a discourse on wildlife that emphasizes aesthetic aspects of wildlife and the morality of preserving endangered species, a discourse that generally aligns with the entertainment function of the zoo.Footnote 18 In contrast, basic researchers tended to emphasize the differences between species. While extinction is still viewed as a moral problem here, it is also viewed as a loss in valuable knowledge. This conceptualization of wildlife links up with biodiversity and bioprospecting discourses, where the focus is on gaining knowledge about vanishing entities before it is too late.
From a basic research perspective, the reduced presence of endangered animals in cloning experiments poses a problem. Transposing the bodies and techniques of domestic animals in cloning experiments is of central concern here. While working around the inaccessibility of endangered species bodies may be a pragmatic route to endangered animal reproduction, it does not provide a platform for enhancing understanding of basic physiological similarities and differences between endangered species and more well-studied animal models. In addition, there is no space to learn about the social and behavioural aspects of reproduction in endangered wildlife. This sentiment can be seen in the following statement, made by a zoo scientist during an interview:
For a while it was so popular and so sexy to do all these assisted reproductive technologies. We were thinking, ‘Well, gosh, we’ll never have to have animals together anymore, we can do it all artificially.’ Well, if our eventual goal truly is re-introduction or self-sustaining populations that doesn’t—those two things don’t work because you don’t want to produce a whole generation of animals that can’t reproduce on their own. It makes no sense. … I believe it is our obligation to find better ways to get these animals to reproduce more naturally. Focus on giving the animals what they need to reproduce on their own and that could be better enclosures, better nutrition, better medical care. … I mean, ultimately, if you have done an excellent job of providing the animals what they need socially, nutritionally and spatially they should reproduce. (Telephone interview with author, May 2006)
Here we see the critique that the reproductive physiologies and behaviours of endangered species are excluded from cloning and other assemblages based on assisted reproduction.
Shifts in zoo animal management
While some reproductive scientists have reconsidered the meaning of their work in the context of species preservation, zoos have also been shifting the management strategies used to sustain their captive populations. Today, demographic approaches to animal management are increasingly critiqued within zoos on the basis that these strategies led to highly inbred populations. For example, one geneticist remarked during an interview: ‘If they could get two animals to reproduce, they would breed those two animals over and over, getting maybe thirty offspring. We now know that caused the problem of genetic bottlenecks in captive populations’ (Interview with author, July 2005). In response, zoos have increasingly begun to manage their populations at a genetic level.
Species Survival Plans (SSPs) began to be developed within the American Zoo and Aquarium Association during the 1980s and expanded significantly during the 1990s. The goal of SSPs is to selectively breed zoo animals in a manner that maximizes the genetic diversity of the captive population that is held across zoos, either regionally or worldwide. Using studbooks and kinship charts, SSP organizers choose which two individuals should be bred, and also make recommendations about which particular animals should not breed. One Species Survival Plan manager described her work as follows:
You keep the pedigree, the historical pedigree of all the animals that we know about that have ever existed in the captive population. There’s some real slick software that you can use to establish things like the diversity within the population, mean kinship. You use these mean kinship values to help you set up the best pairings, or the pairings that will ideally help you preserve the most amount of gene diversity that you can possibly preserve. (Telephone interview with author, October 2005)
Here zoos have co-opted studbooks and kinship charts from agriculture and the pet industry, but they use these technologies rather differently to out-breed animals for the purpose of biodiversity.Footnote 19
This has resulted in a fissure between technology development and endangered animal reproduction in zoos. Reproductive scientists had previously legitimated their work by producing an animal, which was in line with demographic approaches. However, the animals produced today are evaluated according to the logic of genetic management. If an animal is genetically redundant, many population managers will argue that the reproductive sciences are playing a problematic rather than beneficial role, creating animals that take up valuable and limited space without contributing to the diversity of the population. We see this clearly articulated in the following statement:
And you can’t just clone animals for the heck of it. The offspring have to be healthy and they have to be genetically worthwhile individuals. Unfortunately, when it became very popular to do artificial reproduction in zoos, a lot of animals were produced that were actually genetically surplus. What was the point of that? To make—just to prove that you can do that? I mean, it’s interesting from a scientific standpoint but the bottom line is a lot of individuals were produced that were surplus to the SSP, which is surplus to the captive population. So they took up space in zoos without having any desirable genetic input into the population. If you’re going to produce an animal, spend the time, the money and actually do what you need to do to these animals—which is not always non-invasive—it behoves you to make sure that the offspring you produce are not only healthy, but are genetically valuable and make a significant contribution to the population. (Zoo scientist, telephone interview with author, May 2006)
As a result, many have argued that SSP managers, not scientists or biotechnology companies, should decide what animals are produced as part of technology development. Some researchers comply with these arguments. Others contend such reproductive decision-making would slow scientific research too significantly, and so they continue to use readily available, rather than genetically valuable, research materials.
A model for pluralist technology development
Following the birth and death of the cloned gaur, both ACT and Trans Ova Genetics expressed interest in conducting another cloning project. However, extensive debates were occurring within the San Diego Zoological Society regarding how this cloning experiment was organized and whether another experiment should be pursued. According to my interviews with people involved, the criticisms that arose in this context align with those outlined earlier. Nonetheless, a number of board members were still interested in conducting another cloning experiment.
In this context, Oliver Ryder, Head of the Genetics Divisions, was asked to write a white paper detailing when cloning experiments should and should not be conducted. Ryder had previously argued that cloning could be a useful technique for species preservation, on the basis that somatic cell nuclear transfer made it conceivable to consider cryopreserved somatic cells from endangered animals as part of the reproductive population (Ryder, Reference Ryder2002; Ryder and Benirschke, Reference Ryder and Benirschke1997).Footnote 20 In his white paper, Ryder drew on his earlier arguments while also addressing many of the concerns articulated by critics within the zoo. He argued that cloning experiments should only be conducted with endangered animals if: (1) the species is generally understood from both a physiological and behavioural perspective; (2) the animal is part of an endangered species actively managed with a SSP; and (3) there are cryopreserved somatic cells that, if re-embodied using cloning, would increase the diversity of the captive population through downstream selective breeding. Based on these criteria, Ryder argued that the gaur was not the best animal to clone. Rather, a ‘genetically valuable’ banteng that died in the 1970s before reproducing was deemed the best animal to clone. As previously noted, a subsequent experiment was conducted and one living banteng resulted.
Thompson (2002) has argued that, in the politically charged environment of conservation, scientific practices must engage multiple perspectives. The goal in the banteng cloning project was not only to create a model of interspecies nuclear transfer, but also to develop a model for conducting technology development in a more pluralist manner. As a result, the banteng did not simply address the material needs of ACT and Trans Ova Genetics, but also the needs of zoological parks.Footnote 21 Through the experiment, the cloned banteng demonstrated how somatic cell nuclear transfer, a technique that is presumed to create genetic homogeneity, could also be rendered meaningful as genetic diversity.
Articulating cloning with SSPs in this manner has particular appeal in the context of zoological parks, which are trying to create self-sustaining populations. Despite all the selective breeding protocols currently employed, zoos remain a closed population unless new individuals are brought in. Capturing wild animals remains a necessary, but maligned, practice for zoos because it directly contradicts the conservation identity of parks. We see this in the following statement, made by a reproductive scientist and Species Survival Plan manager:
Every time these animals breed, every time you get a new generation, you’re losing genetic variation. No matter how intensively you manage this population, you can’t stop that if you’ve got a small population, a closed population. Now the way to fix that is to have 3000 animals or have 500 animals, but we can’t do that in the zoos. I can’t. I have a hard time finding 100 spaces [for a species across all North American zoos]. You can prolong the generation interval because you don’t lose genetic variation until these animals reproduce. So by prolonging the generation interval instead of having them breed at two, you have them reproduce at ten. So you can basically delay the loss of genetic variation that way. The third way is introducing new founders. And the way we’ve done that traditionally is we’ve gone out to catch wild cats and we bring them into the zoo. We don’t like doing that. We did it with Pallas cats ten years ago and I didn’t like it then. … Preferentially we would never take another wild animal out of the wild. But we need founders. You have to have some sort of gene flow into the captive population. (Interview with author, April 2006)
In this context, the cloned banteng embodies a novel means to bring new individuals into the captive populations: as cells as opposed to fully formed animals. The genomes of deceased animals can be re-embodied, as seen with the cloned banteng, in order to untangle the limits of the individual life course from the needs of the population.Footnote 22 In addition, some people have argued that cloning represents a new way of capturing wild animals, as somatic cells rather than fully formed animals.Footnote 23 Franklin (2007: 41) has emphasized that somatic cell nuclear transfer enables biology to be re-temporalized and re-spatialized. In the case of endangered animal cloning, this re-temporalization and re-spatialization of animal bodies allows zoos to imagine collecting wildlife in new ways. Here, cloning provides a means of ‘remediation’ (Harrington et al., Reference Harrington, Becker and Nachtigall2008): the wasteful colonial legacy of zoological parks based in natural history can be fixed with a re-temporalized, re-spatialized and regenerative zoo produced through the life sciences.
It is important to point out that cryopreservation is crucial for articulating cloning and the kinship chart in this way. Landecker (2007: 232) has argued that the history of biotechnology has been premised upon realizing and exploring the plasticity of biological time in living organisms. In cloning endangered wildlife, the plasticity of cells is operationalized as part of a biopolitical formation that links cryopreserved cell lines, embodied individuals and populations into a novel management scheme. Drawing on Foucault (1978), cloning endangered animals is radical because death is no longer the limit of biopolitical power. Overcoming the death of an individual through cryopreservation practices is particularly salient in the context of species preservation, where the death of an individual is so intricately intertwined with the death of the species.
Some of the most ardent critics of the gaur and African wildcat cloning projects were at best ambivalent and at times even positive in their remarks concerning the cloning project that resulted in the banteng.
The banteng is a little bit different story. The banteng cells came from a male who was genetically quite valuable and did not breed during his lifetime. He died pretty early in his lifetime. That is more justifiable in my mind, than to produce gaur, which are practically a dime a dozen in captivity and reproduce very well. So that was merely a demonstration of technology, which I did not think should happen with endangered species. (Zoo scientist, telephone interview with author, May 2006)
Nonetheless, some people remained critical of this cloning project. As in the gaur and African wildcat projects, these critiques focused on how knowledge and management practices enact a particular kind of human relation with wildlife. We see this in the following statement made by a field conservationist:
So if the technologists had the technology to be able to stuff our freezers with the full range of genetic diversity we’ve got all over the world and they can pull it out of the freezer and recreate it at any one point, what does it overlook? It overlooks the fact that they have made themselves the god of the new creation. There are a large number of countries, and particularly Third World countries, which have conserved their wildlife, whereas North America hasn’t; it’s lost most of its big and dramatic animals. We’re very dedicated to conserving them in the natural setting and to living with them as a part of our heritage. We do. We live alongside the species and we take a very dim view of people who would say, ‘Well, don’t worry about your species, you might fail. We can pop them in the freezer and we’ll pull them out and give them back to you.’ We don’t want the technologist to be the arbitrator of our heritage and future anymore than they were in the past. So I think there’s an issue of control of your own—just as you would like to see the control of your own reproductive future, so in many countries we would like to see the control over our own biodiversity future, from the past through the present to the future. (Field conservationist, interview with author, April 2006)
To this conservationist, cloning exerts colonizing forms of control over other animals and other people by obscuring alternative modes of living with wildlife.Footnote 24
Control and domination have been key discourses in constituting the modern zoo. The ability to collect, transport and keep wild animals represented the imperial power of colonial centres (Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier, Reference Baratay, Hardouin-Fugier and Welsh2002; Hoage et al., Reference Hoage, Roskell, Mansour, Hoage and Deiss1996; Ritvo, Reference Ritvo1987, Reference Ritvo, Brewer and Staves1996; Rothfels, Reference Rothfels2002; Thomas, Reference Thomas1983). In addition, zoos have been used to cultivate certain behaviours among visitors, as part of class-based, social reform movements (Hanson, Reference Hanson2002).Footnote 25 Cloning reinvents this theme of control through the life sciences, where the focus is on making and remaking wildlife so that species can withstand the social ordering of the zoo and possibly the material reordering of the planet.
Rethinking the significance of cloned animals
This article has explored the meaning of cloning by retracing this technology as practice. These practices become effaced or ‘black boxed’ (Latour and Woolgar, Reference Latour and Woolgar1986 [1979]) when cloned animals stand as models of somatic cell nuclear transfer. Through this retracing, we have seen that somatic cell nuclear transfer does not become meaningful in isolation, but rather through the processes of ‘articulation’ (Star, Reference Star and Law1991; Strauss, Reference Strauss1988). Exploring this set of techniques as practice, I have sought to contribute to a growing body of social science literature regarding cloning. Anthropologists, historians and sociologists have begun to explore the ways in which somatic cell nuclear transfer is embedded in and an outcome of experimental approaches in the life sciences (Landecker, Reference Landecker2007; Maienschein, Reference Maienschein2001, Reference Maienschein2002, Reference Maienschein2003), the development of reproductive science and technologies across biomedicine and agriculture (Clarke, Reference Clarke2007; Franklin, Reference Franklin1997, Reference Franklin2007), as well as social orders associated with modernity (Franklin, Reference Franklin2007). This article has situated cloning in the zoo, allowing us to see how technique and institution are co-constituting one another.
We have seen that the work involved in doing somatic cell nuclear transfer is an under-theorized but crucial site where ‘cloning’ is rendered meaningful, at times in ways that defy some of our core assumptions. In practice, somatic cell nuclear transfer is surprisingly flexible (Wyatt, Reference Wyatt, Hackett, Amerdamska, Lynch and Wajcman2008), despite the deterministic rhetoric that frames cloning as copying. Indeed, copying endangered animals many times over does not make sense within the discourse of biodiversity that undergirds much of the work in species preservation and zoological parks today. Contrary to the assumption that cloning necessarily means genetic homogenization, we have seen how this set of techniques may instead be bound up in genetic diversification through its articulation with other techniques that zoos use in reproducing their populations.
Aligning with Franklin’s (2007) arguments in relation to Dolly the Sheep, the banteng cloning project shows that asexual reproduction does not necessarily replace sexual reproduction in cloning practices. Rather, these two modes of reproduction are being co-configured as somatic cell nuclear transfer is articulated with the kinship chart, which remains the primary institutional technology of the zoo. Cloning is not used to mass produce animals here. Cloning is instead significant and novel because these practices can expand the kinds of ‘individuals’ amenable to selective breeding. Through this articulation work, cloning came to defy expected equivalences between cloning, copying and genetic homogenization.
The meaning of both selective breeding and cloning are significantly reconfigured as these technologies are transposed from agricultural and pet industries to zoos. Ritvo (1995) has analysed Robert Bakewell’s intensive in-breeding practices, a key development in producing capital-intensive bodies by exploiting biogenetic relations. She contends that Bakewell was able to create ‘genetic capital’ by transferring the value of an animal from the location and environment in which the animal dwells to the biogenetic genealogy from which the animal came (see also Orland, Reference Orland, Schrepfer and Scranton2003).Footnote 26 Bakewell innovatively capitalized on the reproductive potential of prized male sheep, loaning out such individuals for a breeding season in exchange for a stud fee. Purchasers bought the reproductive potential of such individuals and its transformative powers for an agriculturalist’s herd. As such, Bakewell created a system of value that was based on the inheritance of traits, thereby producing a kind of reliability in reproduction (Ritvo, Reference Ritvo, Brewer and Staves1995: 415–416). Through this kind of specification, agriculturalists could have a flock with very different phenotypic traits in a relatively short period of time. By selecting particular rams, Bakewell not only commodified a prized individual but also the genealogical potential of that individual and the continuance of that lineage into the future (Ritvo, Reference Ritvo, Brewer and Staves1995: 415). Record-keeping practices, specifically studbooks, had to be produced in order to demonstrate this valuation system.
In selectively breeding animals for their genomic difference, SSPs can be understood as an instantiation in the move to industrialize the mechanisms of inheritance in a way that parallels agricultural developments. However, selective breeding for genomic difference is, at the same time, a radical departure from artificial selection. SSPs focus on reproducing animals that embody certain genetic information, which is symbolized through kinship charts. In sharp contrast, selective breeding has traditionally focused on reproducing the desired physical traits of certain individuals, symbolized through their lineage. As such, SSPs denote a shift in selective breeding from a focus on the phenotype to the genotype. The focus is no longer on producing certain types of animals that exhibit certain phenotypic traits, but rather on producing certain kinds of genomic configurations. This is a new form of managing evolution.Footnote 27
The shift from genetic capital to genetic value is significant here. Zoos are industrializing the mechanisms of inheritance in order to increase the yield of value among their zoo populations. This raises the question: what makes a zoo population valuable? Sunder Rajan (2006: 41) aptly summarizes the usefulness of the word ‘value’ as follows:
Value one of those nice double-jointed words that always already imply two different things. One the one hand, ‘value’ implies the market value that gets realized through the processes of exchange. On the other, it implies the nonmarket values that might be called … ethics.
To understand the genetic value that cloning and other technologies are used to produce in zoos, we need to attend to both the market and non-market values associated with zoo animals. Breeding is not used directly to produce capital here. Rather, selective breeding represents an ethical way of sustaining the zoo, one that distances the park from its colonial predecessors. However, if zoos do not have animals for paying publics to see, the zoo will cease to exist. While breeding animals does not directly generate capital, regenerating animal populations does provide a means for generating capital in zoos. As such, genetic value pushes on the ethical side of the word value, but in a manner that—at a distance—does generate capital for zoological parks.
Animal cloning is often thought only to matter if somatic cell nuclear transfer is transferred to human bodies, opening up the spectre of human cloning. However, by exploring these cloning practices, we see that humans and endangered animals are travelling together in the material and semiotic production of regeneration, and are thereby bound up in the processes of ‘transbiology’ (Franklin, Reference Franklin2006). In contemporary biomedical practices with humans, regenerative medicine holds the promise that one’s ‘body can share its vitality with another through the redistribution of tissues, from donor to recipient, through biotechnical intervention’ (Waldby and Mitchell, Reference Waldby and Mitchell2006: 2). Here, the focus is on enhancing the individual body. In contrast, in the case of cloning endangered wildlife, bodily parts are redistributed with the hope of revitalizing the population body through the production of ‘genetic value’. Thus, both humans and endangered animals are bound up in the technical development of interspecies nuclear transfer and ideas about regeneration, which promise longevity that operates at the individual level with humans and at the population level with endangered species.
Cloned endangered animals are in turn bound up in the social reproduction and transformation of zoos, a key site where historical and contemporary ideas about nature are tinkered with and represented. Cloned endangered animals represent a set of practices that work around endangered animal bodies by working with domestic animals. The reproductive sciences are used here for the purpose of making animals that can assist in remaking captive populations. Given the iconic status of cloned animals, they have the potential to obscure and change other ways of knowing and living with wildlife, as lost knowledge in the context of biodiversity and as ‘companion species’ (Haraway, Reference Haraway2008) in semi-controlled spaces through which humans and animals can remake one another in unanticipated ways (Western et al., Reference Western, Strum and Wright1994). Cloning is a site where human relations with wildlife are being imagined and enacted in particular kinds of ways, which has consequences for humans and animals alike.
Rethinking models
This article has used Keller’s notion of ‘models for’ to recoup the work that goes into cloning an animal. However, it is important to emphasize that Keller proposed models of/models for addressing epistemological questions regarding the relationship between thought and action in scientific knowledge production, thereby contributing to the conceptual development of ‘technoscience’ in STS (science and technology studies).Footnote 28 Through its focus on scientific practices in zoos, this article shows how modelling practices have consequences not only for scientific knowledge production but also for institutional reproduction. As such, this extends Keller’s notion of modelling not only to account for the social and embodied nature of knowledge practices occurring in the laboratory, but also the ways these practices ‘co-produce’ (Jasanoff, Reference Jasanoff and Jasanoff2004; Reardon, Reference Reardon2005) the zoo as a social institution, which has been a critical site in defining ‘nature’ over time. In other words, this article extends Keller’s conceptual framework to address what models do at an institutional/organizational level.Footnote 29
Examining what cloned animals do offers more a sociological than an epistemological approach to modelling. A number of scholars have shown that models of something else often mediate social orders (e.g. Kohler, Reference Kohler1994; Lowy, Reference Lowy1992; Lowy and Gaudilliere, Reference Lowy, Gaudilliere, Lowy and Gaudilliere1998; Shostak, Reference Shostak2007). Rather than explore models as mediators between theory and practice, this literature examines how models mediate social relations between mentors and mentees (Kohler, Reference Kohler1994), bench and bedside (Lowy and Gaudilliere, Reference Lowy, Gaudilliere, Lowy and Gaudilliere1998), as well as science and regulation (Shostak, Reference Shostak2007). But while these scholars have tended to focus on how different social groups gather around a model of something else as a boundary object (Star and Griesemer, Reference Star, Griesemer and Biagioli1999 [1989]), this article has instead shown that the very processes involved in making a model produces, reproduces and transforms social orders.
Returning to the epigraph, it seems that we may need an expanded vocabulary to articulate the ways cloned endangered animals necessarily extend Keller’s conceptual infrastructure. In other words, we need a vocabulary to think about modelling as a site where cloning, the zoo and nature are co-produced (Jasanoff, Reference Jasanoff and Jasanoff2004), as scientists seek to make and remake the world through their laboratory practices (Latour, Reference Latour1988).
To address these aspects of modelling, I propose that these cloning experiments may be best understood as ‘assemblages’ (Deleuze and Guattari, Reference Deleuze and Guattari1987), emergent and contingent sites wherein heterogeneous things with varying historical legacies come together because they more or less work to pursue certain goals. Assemblages can accommodate the ways making a cloned endangered animal requires articulating somatic cell nuclear transfer with varied laboratory materials and practices, paradigms of endangered animal reproduction, and the historical legacies of zoos. By focusing on the histories of varying elements, the concept of assemblages also accommodates the notion that selecting research materials (e.g. gaur versus banteng somatic cells) establishes cloned animals as meaningful entities not only in the changing landscapes of reproductive science research but also in zoological parks. Finally, because it is a more ephemeral metaphor of social organization compared to social worlds/arenas (Clarke, Reference Clarke and Maines1991; Clarke and Montini, Reference Clarke and Montini1993; Clarke and Star, Reference Clarke, Star, Hackett, Amsterdamska, Lynch and Wajcman2007) or Actor Network Theory (Callon, Reference Callon and Biaglio1999 [1986]; Latour, Reference Callon and Biaglio2005), the concept of assemblages is able to attend to the uncertainties of cloning as an endeavour while also opening up how such practices may constitute new ways of doing zoos and seeing wild animals. As Rabinow (1999) has shown, assemblage is a key concept for understanding the tentative productivity of emergent forms and practices in the life sciences.
In turn, I propose that cloned endangered animals may be understood as model assemblages, embodying ways to articulate emergent techniques with heterogeneous elements in order to pursue long-standing goals in new ways. How somatic cell nuclear transfer gets assembled with which elements becomes the critical question. Assembling cloning in certain ways enacts a particular ‘future vision’ (Brown et al., Reference Brown, Rappert and Webster2000; Hedgecoe and Martin, Reference Hedgecoe and Martin2003; van Lente, Reference van Lente1993), which becomes embodied by the resulting animal. The form that these model assemblages take thereby becomes deeply contentious, as certain people, animals, other elements and relations are incorporated, erased, emphasized and marginalized. As such, ‘model assemblages’ allow us to see how cloned endangered animals are contentious not simply as models of interspecies nuclear transfer, or as models for reproductive science research in zoos. Rather, cloned endangered animals are controversial because these animals model the assemblages that may be used to transform the zoo into the future, and thereby the symbolic value of wildlife more generally. In sum, model assemblages help us to see that the practices involved in cloning endangered animals are significant because wildlife and the zoo are being provisionally reproduced and transformed in and through cloning practices, creating sites for tinkering with the meanings and practices of emergent techniques while considering practical and symbolic consequences.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the people who shared their stories, provided tours of their workplaces and even opened their homes while this research was conducted. Adele Clarke, Laura Foster, Janet Shim, Tiago Saraiva, Charis Thompson, Stefan Timmermans and Rachel Washburn graciously read and commented on different drafts of this article. A later version was presented at the BIOS Centre roundtables, where valuable feedback was provided; particular thanks goes to Valentina Amorese, Des Fitzgerald, Sarah Franklin and Uffe Jensen. Comments from three anonymous reviewers at BioSocieties were extremely helpful in finalizing the manuscript. Generous support for research and writing was provided by: the BIOS Centre and Sociology Department, London School of Economics; the Center for Society and Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles; a Graduate Student Research Award from the University of California, San Francisco; an Andrew Vincent White Scholarship from the University of California Humanities Research Institute; a Chancellor’s Dissertation Research Fellowship from the University of California, San Francisco; and an Anselm L. Strauss Dissertation Research Fellowship from the University of California, San Francisco.
