Scientists in south-west China's Yunnan province have cloned what they called the "Sherlock Holmes of police dogs" in a programme they hope will help cut training times and costs for police dogs, state media reported yesterday.

The dog, named Kunxun, was cloned from a police sniffer dog by the Beijing-based Sinogene Biotechnology Company and the Yunnan Agricultural University, with support from the Ministry of Public Security.

Kunxun, now three months old, will undergo extensive training in drug detection, crowd control and searching for evidence, and will become a fully fledged police dog when it is about 10 months old.

Training usually takes about five years and costs as much as 500,000 yuan (S$100,800).