#color genetics

[alhilton]

Is calico a possible Creasia coat color?

Ah, such a simple question, but so complicated to answer! Is it possible? Maybe. Likely to be expressed? No. You probably know how calicos are produced and anyone who doesn't can google that. Short review: you need at least one of the color alleles (in the case of the domestic cat, the black/red) located on the X chromosome. So males are always homozygous, but females can be heterozygous. Then you need the thing where neither color is dominant. Instead, females express both colors. This event alone will produce a tortie, not a calico. To get calico, you need one more thing: the piebald gene, which is present in many animals. It produces random colorless white patches, interspersed with the underlying color(s). Finally, in order to get a classic calico, you need the female zygote to have discarded her extra Xs (turned them into bar bodies) early enough to produce solid patches instead of a more blended coat. NOW you have a classic mi-ke calico. She will almost always be female, but can be male XXY or male chimera (having absorbed his twin!) or possibly an even rarer genetic event. On the flip side, solid red or black cats are male something like 75% of the time. Female solids would be homozygous for the trait, which is rarer. There are other genes that effect cat coat color and pattern, and of course there can always be new mutations, but those are the basics. Question: is color a sex-linked gene in other species of cats? Big cats have many things in common with domestic cats. Is this one of them? I could not find an answer to this. Probably no. But... I did have Caraca say at one point when she and Halvery were trying to reproduce Roup's color, "Solids are more likely to be male." This strongly suggests that some aspect of creasia color is on the X. So even if this is unlikely for big cats in our world, I have sort of committed to it on Lidian. But... Is the piebald gene present in other cats besides domestic cats? Again, no answer. The closest I could find was the white band gene that produces golden tabby tigers. It is not actually piebald, though. It's a completely different gene. If you read the wikipedia article about golden tabby tigers, you will notice a lot of inbreeding. This is how most usual colors in domestic (and semi-domestic) animals get a foothold. People notice a single unique mutation, decide they love it, and do some aggressive inbreeding to produce homozygous individuals. Many domestic animals have very shallow gene pools. Obviously, most of them handle it just fine. Wild animals avoid inbreeding. Nature tends towards outbreeding. Maximizing genetic diversity is a survival strategy, so animals evolve various barriers to inbreeding. There ARE more color variations in big cats that live in jungles/forests vs open plains. Tigers and leopards have more color variations than African lions. It doesn't seem to affect their odds of survival as much. Creasia live in dense forest, so it makes sense that they have some color variation. Rare mutations would pop up, but they would quickly disappear unless the creasia started selecting for them. So if they decided that piebald was fabulously beautiful and everyone wanted to have babies with those cats, they might quickly develop a piebald trait that is regularly expressed. But they tend to like colors that are "good for hunting," and those are browns/grays/black. They are starting to value other traits and expand their tastes, though. Anyway - the potential for something like a calico is probably in there somewhere. To specifically get calico, I think you'd see piebald popping up first.

[oldmanpuppyplay]

Timestamp Roulette - Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008), Dir. Darren Lynn Bousman Req. by @dolltwink

[blackbackedjackal]

Northeastern coyote (Canis latrans thamnos) by broncolane

[sims3melancholic]

DOWNLOAD \ info:

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sclera #5 - 3 colors in 5 options \ all ages & genders ♡

sclera #6 - 3 colors in 5 options \ all ages & genders ♡

🔖 Oh...eyes..long time no see 👀 I miss that! Hope you too! Brand new set of eyes & scleras + DEFAULTS (that works properly i swear, no more ugly shine 😅)

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[canisalbus]

Hypothetically if. If they had a kiddo. A puppy. Does that hypothetical child have a design in your genius artist head anywhere

.

[whatcoloristhatcat]

raises hand What is a chimera and how does it work <- this is me giving you the opportunity to infodump, if you'd like me to google it instead i can lol dw <3

i'm sure i've explained this at some point but i can't find it everyone says thank you tumblr search function

simply, a chimera is when two zygotes fuse in utero and become one cat (this can occur in all sorts of animals and plants and other kinds of organisms as well but we're talking about cats here)

it does NOT mean all chimeras have some kind of genetically impossible patterns or are inherently visually striking. there are definitely many kinds of chimeras out there that simply go unnoticed because they are two solid black cats or a red and a white cat fused, for example. chimeras can also have patches with xx and xy chromosomes if a female and male cat fused

here's a graphic from the messybeast about it

however, chimeras can of course display coat patterns that are generally otherwise genetically impossible, for example (chimeras from the messybeast):

dense and dilute colors (red and dilute black (blue)):

point and non-point, xx and xy (red (flame) point male and non-point tortoiseshell female):

(probable chimera) shorthair and longhair:

(probable chimera) solid and tabby (dilute black (blue) and red tabby):

genetically, they're really cool. i would love to see more actual research into them!

why i get so fired up about it is the misinformation that flies around online about chimeras. if you look at that graphic from the messybeast up top, you'll see a note that a split-face appearance in tortoiseshell is not an indication of chimerism.

anyways, let's google chimeras for a second

ok.

i'm in the trenches with seeing all these "we said so" chimeras because i'm constantly tagged in them. please note! i'm not mad that people tag me in them and don't know! it's not common knowledge especially with all the people trying to catch some internet fame with their super real for sure chimeras

so i could write a dissertation here about how it does still matter because it's misinformation and there could be some health consequences we don't know about and how it's skewing the public perception of chimeras and that could have some influence on what research is done in chimeras (which again occurs in all sort of organisms, including humans) but you didn't even ask about any of this. so i'm going to end here. please remember that a split-face tortoiseshell is very likely not a chimera ok. i love you

[abubaker1937]

Excol - Image Color Extractor

Excol is an Color Extractor, which extracts colors from the images. Which provides large amount color codes from the user's given Image

[minjimunji]

Grace siblings ⚡️

[hellsitegenetics]

I wonder what kind of sentence I'd have to write to get the genome sequence of a fox? I don't think just writing that by itself would be enough tho so I'm gonna tell yall abt my plans for Valentine's Day: cosplaying/dressing up for the first time! I'm making a mask for it n everything too >:3 it actually might be done by the time this comes up but don't quote me on that lol.

Anyway this is a wacky blog. this webbed site is truly full of wonders.

String identified:

at tc ' a t t t gt t g c a ? 't t t tg tat t g t ' ga t a at a at' a: cag/g t t t! ' ag a a t tg t >:3 t acta gt t t t c t 't t tat .

Aa t a ac g. t t t .

Closest match: Miltochrista miniata genome assembly, chromosome: 18 Common name: Rosy footman moth

[amber-tortoiseshell]

if you vote yes, please tell me which color(s)!

[alhilton]

Worldbuilding-ish question! Since this is a popular topic in xenofiction fanbases, I figured I'd ask what colors and patterns you'd think of first when someone considers making an "edgy" or "special-looking" fan character for any of the Hunters Unlucky species. Coden and Storm's pale gray and Roup and Teek's gold have already been noted in the books and you've touched on piebaldism in creasia before, but I'm wondering if there might be more, maybe especially among the species that seem to be more popularly-read as less visually diverse, e.g. telshees and curbs. If I wanted to make a fan character that looked really wild and unique without being utterly impossible, what sorts of looks would you highlight for that?

(Note: I'm not actually making any fan characters based on this question, but it's a consideration I really enjoy chewing on in a more general sense with both what I read and what I write in my own time... I definitely do think it would be cool to see some flashy-looking fan characters with rare traits around in the tags, though!)

Oh, let's see... Ferryshaft could probably come in most colors that foxes or dogs come in. Farmed foxes (sadly) come in an immense array of improbable colors. Creasia could probably come in most colors and patterns cats come in. In both cases, the variety of colors that already occur reveal that there isn't heavy selection pressure for color currently acting on the population. There was in the past, but creasia have gotten so much smarter than their prey, and ferryshaft have become so good at *not* being prey, that there isn't as much selection pressure for color as there once was. For curbs, the ones living on the plain would come under a lot of pressure to have colors that blend with grasslands. However, I've already mentioned that some of those living in the mountains look different. Dazzle's curb frienemies, Eclipse and Abyss are melanistic. Eclipse might even be chimeric. I describe them as "unusually dark in color, black in places, with white streaks and brindling. One had a completely black face and the other had a striking two-toned face, half black and half white." There's also one in Thrive (not yet published) called "Brokenstripe" because her stripe pattern is broken and might, in fact, look like spots. The mountains have more varied terrain, and I would think you'd get different colors. As for telshees, hmmm... I think of them as being mostly devoid of pigment. They frequently travel to great depths and dark places. But perhaps a pigmented one might pop up now and then. Or maybe they shape-shifted and got some color leftover, lol. They are magical animals, so less bound by the laws of biology.

[kingsmoot]

um. can i be honest. with you. i think it's dumb as fuck when people talk about great house genetics in asoiaf as if they're a plot hole or a world building flaw and not like. a very cute and fun and purposeful feature of the world. you fr have no sense of whimsy.

[linkedin-offficial]

kitty colony au anybody?

[incognitopolls]

Complete heterochromia: Each eye is a different color

Central heterochromia: The central ring of your iris is a different color from the outer ring of your iris, usually with distinct edges between the two colors (rather than a smooth gradient)

Partial or sectoral heterochromia: Segments of your iris are a different color from the rest

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[serendippertyy]

Can I request a pinkie x rarity next gen?? ✨💕

i immediately knew what colors I wanted to use 💙🩷

[whatcoloristhatcat]

hi hi hi you’ve probably got this question before but are there technical no “brown” cats? Is there a difference between a black tabby that looks more brown and a black tabby that looks more black? Are dilute black tabby’s always blue/grey?

i am incapable of short answers! there's some nuance here

so, yes, the "brown tabby:"

is genetically black (a tabby's stripes are the solid color of its true melanin). the brown areas in a black tabby's fur are caused by banding of the agouti furs which takes on a yellowish tint, thus looking brown to the eye

however, there are cats that appear actually brown! chocolate and cinnamon eumelanin has that appearance:

the havana brown is chocolate but this color is always noted in the breed standard as brown (this may be kind of loophole for me to include):

seal sepias get pretty close too:

so it depends how pedantic you want to be. there's absolutely cats that appear brown, but whether they're actually called brown is another thing.

to answer your other questions:

there may or may not be differences in warmer or cooler/lighter or darker tabbies depending on the genes at play. the rufousing polygene can effect how warm a tabby cat is, especially on the lower parts of the body. there could also be potentially no genetic differences in the eumelanin and differences in color appear as a result of normal, random variation in the yellowing or banding any individual tabby may have

dilute black tabbies are always blue! it's the same thing as a solid black cat with dilute genes, just with tabby genes now at play. like dense tabbies, these blue tabbies can also display rufousing if they carry the genes for it