Tortoiseshell, calico, and torbie cats were rated as more frequently aggressive toward humans, but so were black-and white cats, and gray-and-white cats. In 2016, researchers at UC Davis set out to discover whether cats of any particular coat color or pattern were more likely to be aggressive toward humans in certain circumstances, including petting, grooming, and vet visits. ĭo calicos and tortoiseshell cats behave differently than other cats? Most rarely, skin cells in a developing kitten spontaneously mutate, resulting in calico or tortoiseshell coloring. Rarely, a male calico is just a spontaneous mutation Unfortunately, a cat with Klinefelter syndrome is usually sterile and might have other health issues related to the disorder. Some individuals actually have a mix of tissues with XX and XY cells jumbled in. Klinefelter syndrome is a genetic disorder that occurs in cats, humans, and other species, in which males end up with XXY chromosomes. Some male calicos have Klinefelter syndrome An XY/XY chimera might have a mix of colors simply because different parts of his skin would originate from different fertilized eggs! Similarly, if two male embryos fuse, the resulting kitten would have XY/XY chromosomes. He might have tissues that are genetically male, and may appear to be male, but he would have enough “Xs” in some cells to allow him to end up as a calico or tortoiseshell. If a female embryo fuses with a male embryo, the kitten would have XX/XY chromosomes. This can happen when two kitten embryos fuse together in the womb. A chimera is a person or animal that has cells containing DNA from two different individuals. Most commonly, a calico or tortoiseshell male cat is a chimera. Most male calicos and tortoiseshells are chimeras There are three possible ways to end up with a male calico cat. And male cats typically have only one X chromosome.Īnd yet, according to a study out of the University of Missouri’s College of Veterinary medicine, one out of every 3,000 calico cats is male. I’ve explained that it takes two X chromosomes to be a calico or tortoiseshell. So, any cells that divide from those already-decided cells will be the same color. Thus, bigger patches of orange, or bigger patches of black.Īre there any male calico or tortoiseshell cats? When lyonization occurs earlier in development, there are fewer cells all the way around. Being lyonized means they've already decided whether they will be black or orange. It is also believed that larger patches happen if the lyonization process happens earlier in a kitten’s development in the womb. If the calico has a lot of white fur (because she inherited the white-spotting gene from both parents), she will likely have fewer patches all together, and they will all be larger. There seems to be a couple of factors that affect the size and number of patches on a calico cat. Tortoiseshell cats usually only have small patches, or even a kind of salt-and-pepper look to their fur. Some calico cats have big patches of color and some have smaller patches. But all the cells don’t “agree” on which one to deactivate, which is why, when a calico or tortoiseshell kitten is born, she will have patches of both colors. This is called “lyonization.” Lyonization is random, and there’s no way to predict whether black or orange will deactivate. While a kitten is still an embryo, growing in her mother’s uterus, one of the genes in every cell will deactivate. Here’s the problem: a female kitten may get a black gene and an orange gene from her parents, but her body’s cells don’t allow both to be active at once. If that X has a gene that codes for orange fur, the boy cat will have orange fur. Male cats, on the other hand, only have one X, which they get from their mothers. A female cat needs to inherit an orange gene from her mother and her father to be orange. If she gets orange genes from both of her parents, she will be an orange cat. We already know that a female cat gets two Xs, so she could end up with two orange genes, two black genes, or one of each.
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