Most of us have heard about cloning and have some idea about what it might be.
Cloning is seen in movies, books, on the TV and in newspapers, but what is it really?
Cloning is basically making a genetic copy of something. This might be copying just one cell, or it could be a whole animal. There's a bit more to cloning things than this explanation suggests, so you can get more information here.
A guy called Herbert Webber, from the US Department of Agriculture, invented the word clon in the early 20th century to describe plants that are genetically the same as their parent. Pretty soon clon became clone, and slowly the word became part of the English language.
The biggest star in the cloning world is a sheep named Dolly. Why she's called Dolly is an altogether different story. In 1996 Scottish scientists cloned Dolly from an adult sheep. This was the first time this had been done for a mammal. Dolly died in February 2003.
Now that cloning has been shown to be possible with mammals, people are getting really interested in cloning a special mammal - humans.
Not everyone agrees on whether cloning is ethically and scientifically right or wrong. Several governments around the world have made laws to stop public money being spent on human cloning research. We'll leave it to you to decide if you think it's good or bad.
If all else fails, you can always look at the lighter side of cloning.
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