You’ve probably heard that tricolor cats are always female.Are they still women?
In this article on Animal Chest we explain why this happens with all the details so that you can know if this is a characteristic of women or, on the contrary, men can also have hair in three colors.
- Read on to find out the answer to the question: why tricolor cats are female and see if this doesn’t really happen in male cats.
Tricolor cats, also known as carey, are characterized by a particular pattern of coloration in the fur, their fur has orange, black and white tones, the proportions of each color vary.
In cats there are three basic colors, black, orange and white, the rest of colors are the result of gradients and mixtures of the previous ones.
The animal’s genes are responsible for hair patterns, scratching, smooth or spotted, as well as the combination of colors and colors in the hairs.
Hair color in cats is a sex-related characteristic, i.e. information about hair color is found on sex chromosomes.
Chromosomes are structures found in the nucleus of cells and contain all the animals’ genes.Cats have 38 chromosomes: 19 from their mother and 19 from their father.Sexuals are the chromosomes that determine sex and each is provided by one parent.
Cats, like all mammals, have two sex chromosomes: X and Y.The mother gives the X chromosome and the father can give the X or Y.
The colors black and orange are on the X chromosome, that is, for X to express itself, the X chromosome must be present, the male has only one X, so it will only be black or orange, females with two Xs can have genes for black and orange.
On the other hand, the white color is not related to the sex of the animal, it is presented regardless of the genus.For this reason, a cat can have all three colors, because it has two x chromosomes and white also appeared.
Depending on the chromosomal endowment received by the individual, any of the colors will appear, black and orange are encoded on the same chromosome, if the X0 allele is present, the cat will be orange if the Xo allele is black, this is the case of X0Xo, when one of the genes is inactive, responsible for the tricolor appearance.
Women can inherit three combinations
Men have only two:
White is determined by the W gene (white) and expressed independently, so combinations can be made with the other colors.There are black and white cats, orange and white and only white.
Within tricolor cats, there are several types, differ only in the proportion of white or in the type of hair pattern:
Yes, there are tricolor cats, although it is very rare to see them due to a chromosomal abnormality.These cats instead of having two sex chromosomes (XY) have three (XXY).Because they have two X chromosomes, they can occur as black and orange females.
It is known as Klinefelter syndrome and usually causes infertility, it is a rare disease that dispels the myth that all tricolor cats are female, but since it is an anomaly, we can say that in normal situations all tricolor cats are usually female.
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