That being said, Noah Yuval Harari has very forward thinking writing along these lines. He uses the context of potential AI superior to our own intelligence, and how they will treat humans, to advocate for animal rights.
> Groups of chimpanzees within central Africa are more different genetically than humans living on different continents
> Our genetic homogeneity implies that anatomically modern humans arose relatively recently (perhaps 200,000 years ago) and that our population size was quite small at one time (perhaps 10,000 breeding individuals).
> approximately 90% of genetic variation can be found within [continents], and only about 10% of genetic variation separates the populations.
Calling us different species is laughable. We’re the genetic equivalent of putting 2 rabbits in a box and opening it up to find 300.
(To be 100% clear, I’m just quoting what a person who thinks this way would say, just as slave holders in the US used to say)
But the field has gained a lot of complexity in the last decades. There are ring species, and cryptic species, and sometimes the DNA of a parent is entirely discarded. Changing our point of view is possible with better data, except that we need to find this data first.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynogenesis
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgenesis
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybridogenesis_in_water_frog...
Not necessarily a clone because sometimes happens in several steps. For example, horse x donkey hybrids are sterile in principle, but if just by chance they produce an ovule keeping only the DNA of one of their parents, it can be fecundated. A female mule can deliver a foal that is either a pure horse or a pure donkey, never another mule.