This is seriously the most adorable cat I have ever seen!
Just curious because I’m only half-remembering how it’s determined - Would a clone of the kitten have the same colorations?
No. The tiny little gonads will be either gray or orange. The gonads may still be a mixture, but each individual cell will be one or the other. So the gamete produced by that cell will have the same DNA of just that cell even though the organ is a mixture.
Hold on, so this cat is an actual chimera?
Yeah it is possible. So if I am remembering college correctly a chimera in biology is when two zygotes merge in the first few days of life. This means that some of the cells will divide off zygote one and some off zygote two. This can lead to stark lines in phenotype expression. Such as two colored animals.
Though also if I remember correctly the color in cars is sex linked. So if the cat is female. One X chromosome could have one color and the other X chromosome could have a different color. Depending on which X is activated in each cell it can lead multiple colors. That is how you get calico cats. I just can’t remember if that can lead to this type of color expression.
Oh and just because someone is going to wonder white is not a color. It is the lack of a color.
It looks that way. From a pretty early stage I would guess. Like 4 or 8 cells or something?
Chimeras are not that rare. They happen e.g. whenever some mutation happens early in development: one half of one quarter or one eighth, … of the cells will be of the mutated kind. There’s also other ways
“It is obvious to the most simple-minded that Lokai is of an inferior breed.”
“The obvious visual evidence, Commissioner, is that he is of the same breed as yourself.”
“Are you blind, Commander Spock? Well, look at me! Look at me!”
“You’re black on one side and white on the other.”
“I am black on the right side.”
“I fail to see the significant difference.”
“Lokai is white on the right side. All of his people are white on the right side.”
As a child I literally learned about prejudice from that Star Trek episode.
Chessboard Kitteh
I can never hear or read that word without being haunted.
Ed…Ward…
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Is it possible to upvote and downvote at the same time?
Maybe you could combine an upvote and a downvote with alchemy.
Beautiful cat! Thanks. Is there any particular reason to think it’s a chimera? If it’s a female, it’s more likely to be X chromosome inactivation.
Do you get X inactivation with such clean divisions? I thought it was a stochastic process much later in development? This isn’t my area so I’m relying on something like high school biology on this one.
I actually don’t know, it’s a good point. It’s definitely stochastic, but I don’t know how late in the development it happens. There are definitely cats with colours completely jumbled cats with large patches of each colour. But I just realised that colour comes from melanocytes. And melanocytes must migrate from the back, as they come from neural crest. Which strikes me as a great reason for straight division on the front (the cells coming from left and right meet there) that we see here, regardless of the origin of diversity of cell colours. So I think it shouldn’t matter, but it’s just a guess.
Cute kitten 😻
vehk
