![]() “ An excerpt from Wild Cats of the World“. “ Rare male tortoiseshell cat attracts 100s wanting to adopt“. “ DNA shows domestic cat had origins in Near East“. Department of Biology, University of Miami. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 85: 37-40. “ ‘Warts and all’ – the history and folklore of warts – a review“. “ The troll turned cat“, in Death of an Underground Person. International Cat Care Just to prove I’m not fibbing:Īndreassi, Katia. I’m sure you have one or two local cat charities or shelters you could help. Probable motto: I can be cute and camouflaged all at once. However, the average domestic short hair is 25 centimetres / 9.8 inches high and 46 centimetres / 18 inches long, without the tail.Įndangered? Nope, domestication usually takes care of that. How big? Can vary massively, as tortoiseshell is just a colour. Where? Um, millions of homes worldwide, as well as the odd farm and feral versions. What? Colour of domestic cat with black and ginger blotches, caused by a genetic “mosaic expression”. And for at least some of you reading, more cuteness. So what does the tortoiseshell tell us about ourselves? Well, it’s plain for all to see – it’s a demonstration of what our own genes are doing, only with more blotchiness. ![]() He remained in the lap of luxury until the latter died, at which point he changed back and ran off to service the willing widow. An amorous troll disguised himself as a male tortoiseshell to avoid his beloved’s angry husband. (Purely anecdotal, but I suffer severe cat harassment when the wind is high.) And in one Danish tale, it was the cat that went under the radar. Stories from Scotland and Japan also posit that tortoiseshells could sense incoming storms at sea. I’m not sure which would impress the cat less, but rubbing the tail of a tortoiseshell – alive or dead – on warts was once believed to cure them. Such a bizarre pattern attracts its fair share of bizarre stories too. So when a rare male tortoiseshell was born in New Jersey in 2017, the rescue centre was swamped with hopeful owners. (Didn’t they make toys in the 80s?)īut going back to the tortoiseshell: a male can only exist if he has an extra X chromosome – XXY – or Klinefelter Syndrome. Said lack of pigment is due to another gene entirely, and this particular moggy mish-mash is known as “calico”. To further complicate matters, some cats have white patches as well, due to a lack of pigment. So in female cats, some of their cells will have the X chromosome with the ginger allele active, others, the black, resulting in a “mosaic expression” of ginger and black blotches. One of the two X chromosomes in a cell will be inactivated, and this can be random from cell to cell. Females, on the other hand, can carry one of each, but their story doesn’t stop there.įor all female mammals, something called “lyonisation” happens very early on in their development. Since males have only one X chromosome, they can only carry one of the alleles, so will either be ginger or black. Cats have several genes that control fur colour, and one which has both a black and a ginger version, or allele, is only found on the X chromosome. Going back to high school biology, each cell has one pair of sex chromosomes – XX if female, XY if male. You might want to top up your coffee, because we’re about to look at genetics. Unless it was sarcastically obeying, these don’t exactly match up. In a small 2012 survey by the University of California Berkeley, people reported several “tortie traits”: on the one hand, “aloof”, “intolerant” and “sassy”, but on the other, “easily trainable”. But is opinion as reliable as the science? So we made this discovery mainly thanks to a DNA study.īeing a keen and independent hunter, like its ancestor, is one of the characteristics commonly associated with the tortoiseshell. Since our relationship was more a slow burner of mutual convenience, there aren’t as many records of cat and human interactions compared to, say, dogs (although for future generations, the internet has filled that gap about a trillion times over). Like all domestic cats, the tortoiseshell split off from Felis silvestris, or more specifically the Near Eastern wildcat, about 130,000 years ago. In fact they reveal something about us, and I don’t mean in a vomit-inducing, inspirational poster sort of way. Tortoiseshells are interesting for reasons other than their latest antics, for instance at a genetic level. Hey, if I can write about creatures that literally don’t exist, I’m allowed to do a cat colour variant.īefore any non-cat people roll their eyes and turn away, this won’t be a narcissistic deluge about my own.
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