As they scamper in the grass, they look like any other adorable puppies.

But these two playful pups - and a third from the same DNA donor - are the world's first commercially-cloned dogs and are now at the centre of a huge ethical and scientific row.

The U.S. company behind their creation will next month hold an online auction to give five wealthy pet owners the opportunity to have their dogs cloned.

The successful bidders will be able to make a genetically-identical copy of an existing pet - or create a new puppy from the frozen tissue of a long-dead pet. Bidding is expected to begin at more than $100,000 - about £50,000.

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Resurrected: The clone firm's boss used genetic material to clone these two puppies from Missy, the huskie cross

While pet cloning may appear little more than a bizarre and morbid extravagance for the super-rich, it comes at a high price.

Cloning is still a hit-and-miss procedure and for almost every success comes a stream of miscarriages, stillbirths and premature deaths.

Animal welfare campaigners and ethical experts have condemned the move, accusing BioArts - the company offering the service - of exploiting owners' fears over losing a pet.

But Lou Hawthorne, head of BioArts, believes there will be no shortage of those willing to pay for the chance to copy a beloved dog.

'It could easily end up being price comparable to a luxury car, or a vacation house,' he said. 'It's not going to be cheap. But then the process isn't cheap.'

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Happy family: BioArts International chief executive Lou Hawthorne poses with dogs cloned from his family pet

The three puppies - named Mira, Chingu and Sarang - were created from small pieces of skin and other body tissue taken from Missy, a colliehusky cross which belonged to Mr Hawthorne's mother.

Samples of Missy were taken in 1997 and after her death in 2002. They were cloned using the same technique developed by British scientists for Dolly the sheep.

The clones were created in a joint venture with the disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk.

He produced the world's first cloned dog in 2005, but was forced to resign from Seoul University after it emerged that he had faked many other aspects of his research.

His team used single cells taken from Missy's body and removed their nuclei, the blobs at the centre of cells which contain a complete set of DNA.

Each nucleus was injected into a hollowed-out egg cell taken from another dog and then fused with electricity. The cell began to divide and grow, just like a newly-conceived embryo.

After a few days, the scientists selected the healthiest embryos and implanted them into a donor female, which gave birth 60 days later. Each puppy is a genetic copy of Missy.

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Genetic source: Missy is seen in Muir Beach, California, in 1999

Mira was born in December, while Chingu and Sarang were born in February.

Although the puppies share the same genetic make-up as their 'mother', there is no guarantee that they will have the same personality.

Their fur colouring and size, which is influenced by conditions in the womb, are also unlikely to be identical.

A spokesman for BioArts said cloning had a 25 per cent efficiency rate, with one in four implanted embryos developing into a healthy pregnancy. Of the cloned puppies that were born, one in five didn't survive to adulthood.

Animal welfare campaigners and ethical experts say cloning is cruel and unnatural, with three dogs needing operations - the DNA donor, the egg donor and the surrogate mother.

Dr Penny Hawkins, of the RSPCA, said: 'People would be better off giving a home to an unwanted dog.'