May 2nd, 2018 by WCBC Radio

 Five Chihuahua puppies that are genetically identical to a dog named Bruce Wayne may be Maryland’s first cloned dogs.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Bruce Wayne’s owner, Meesha Kauffman, paid a Texas animal cloning company $50,000 for the copies. The five puppies were born in October and have thrived. Four live in Kauffman and the fifth lives with a friend of Kauffman’s in Baltimore.

ViaGen Client Service Manager Melain Rodriguez says ViaGen is the only company in the United States that clones pets and livestock. Rodriguez says the pups aren’t the first cloned pets in Maryland as they’ve previously cloned cats. But she says they are the company’s first cloned dogs in Maryland.

Thirty-five-year-old Kauffman has named her new pups Clark Kent, Peter Parker, Wade Wilson and Tony Stark.