My experience (cat owner myself, son of cat owners and regular cat-sitter) confirms what the article says: orange cats are no more or less prone to doing seemingly stupid/weird things than cats of any other color. More seriously, I think this stereotype is a direct continuation of stereotypes against red-haired humans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_people_...), so it shouldn't be encouraged...
"Almost always male" is slightly overstating things. Cat color is a sex linked gene, so a male cat is orange when it has a copy of the gene on its single X chromosome. Female cats can also be orange under normal circumstances though, and about 20% of orange cats are female.
Compare that to tortoiseshell or calico cats, which requires two different color genes (with calico requiring the "white spotted" gene in addition to two colors). That means something unusual usually has to happen for those colors to occur in male cats, which is why less than 0.1% of calicos are male.
I was just thinking how behavioral differences of red haired foxes, cats, and humans from their closest relatives are explained by the same sort of proopiomelanocortin and other substantia nigra differences from weak MC1R activity.
As someone who lives with 4 cats, one of which who is orange and conforming with all stereotypes, I implore you to further that line of inquiry. While the OP paper doesn’t claim behavioral differences are supported, it doesn’t falsify them and there could be a dynamic there. If you could genetically encode shamelessness it might encapsulate the behavior. It’s not a lack of intelligence per se, more of a lack of inhibition.
This paper demonstrates a connection with behavior. I personally suspect gingers have smaller amygdala.
I had couple of cats (orange male and tortoiseshell female) that lived 20 years after I picked them off the street. The female had only one kidney and the male had an extra vertebra but these things only became a problem in their last year.
They were both very calm creatures. The male was one of the most gentle cats I've ever known. I really miss him greeting me by nodding at me from the sofa when I got home.
Can you describe what the male looked like? I have a tortoiseshell who's all crooked. Her paws are twisted inward, her tail is shaped like a spring, her rear legs are longer than her front legs. She's all weird. Now I'm wondering if she has extra stuff like a vertebra too. Does your male cat looked overall normal despite the extra vertebra?
We had a cat with a "pig tail" as in his tail was shaped like a pig's and couldn't straighten out. The vet said it was some relatively common birth defect and wasn't a major issue.
Oh, cool! I never heard about another cat with a similar tail as my tortie's. The vet said she was probably born like that, but didn't say anything about this being common-ish.
My brain seized up trying to picture this. They didn't say vertebrum, so that's not just a wee bone but a whole other second spine! How does it even...?? I must know!
You're correct. My neophyte Latin chops be exposed. Let me explain what I just learned with my figurative antennae (plural, not antenna which also ends in 'a' and is singular), something about first and second declensions and neutered...
Did you know people with blue eyes are more likely to have bipolar disorder? This of course doesn’t mean everyone blue eyes has bipolar disorder but it makes it more likely. I think the issue may be playing out in orange cats as well. It’s certainly not going to give me every orange is weird, but it increases the likelihood and I think that’s why we see the stereotype play out.
I had an orange cat growing up in the 1970s well before the Internet and out of the seven cast I own as a child. It was very much different.
"We first performed RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) on skin tissues obtained from the auricles of different adult calico cats (#19, #20, and #22, females, precise ages unknown)"
Auricles are the earlobes.
"We then analyzed multiple skin tissues obtained from a young calico cat that died of unknown causes (#01, female, 3 weeks old) "
"A) Expression levels of ARHGAP36 and IGSF1 in cat auricles (left) and skin tissues (right). RNA-seq data were obtained in small auricle pieces of different coat colors derived from different cats (left) and in skin samples of different coat colors derived from a single calico cat (#01) (right)."
Biological samples
Domestic cat blood Inakazu Dog & Cat Kashii Hospital https://www.inakazu-vet.com/
Domestic cat ovary Cat clinics in Japan N/A
Domestic cat auricular Cat clinics in Japan N/A
They finally proved that the brain cells of all orange cats are a single brain cell in a quantum state of superposition between all of them? Erwin Schrödinger would be proud.
I've long held that the nine lives of a cat are not a sequential thing, but a quantum superposition of the cat. Just as Pavlov selected dogs for his classic experiment in psychology; Schrödinger - understanding the quantum nature of cats - selected a cat for his thought experiment.
A cat lives nine simultaneous lives. This explains many of the phenomena that one observes with cats.
First off, there's the classic "that looks like my cat" from the internet, that other cat could very well be a parallel instance of your cat.
Second, there's the perceived goofiness of cats as they chase imaginary things when they're forgetting where their bodies are at a given time. One instance of the cat could be locked in mortal combat with the elusive red dot while the other one is jumping at what looks to the humans around him as zoomies or greebles ( https://www.reddit.com/r/greebles/ ).
Kittens are especially prone to being confused by their quantum nature and prone to those activities.
The easiest way to pay attention to only one self-instance for a cat is the simplest, sleep. This is why cats have been reported to sleep 12 - 16 hours, and kittens up to 20 hours per day ( https://www.petmd.com/cat/behavior/why-do-cats-sleep-so-much ).
Depressing that some would call you a kook. Creativity is where new science happens.
I have often been called a kook myself. I feel my Schizoaffevctive disorder is expressed because the quantum state most people express is not the same as mine.
Without the "this is a creative writing prompt", it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish someone writing tongue in cheek and playing with ideas for someone who has Time Cube like delusions about the nature of the universe.
I put that in so that readers start off with the expectation that this is something to be played with and engage the author rather than worrying if I'm a crazy cat dad with claims of enlightened understanding who's comment should be quietly collapsed.
If I was seriously claiming that cats live multiple lives and that the ultimate observer of the universe's entangled wave function was a cat playing with a cosmic ball of yarn... I think they could rightly call me a kook. I make none of those claims except in jest.
This leads us to Winger's cat (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend ). In the novel Timelike Infinity (great series btw), the Ultimate Observer is claimed to be the consciousness at the end of universe that collapses all entangled wave functions. Note the word "entangled" ... like a ball of yarn. The ultimate observer is a cat with a cosmic ball of yarn tracing back the histories of every particle.
Wave function collapse isn't caused by an observer, but rather "does the cat care about this?"
That could be why my cat, age 6, still hasn't figured out that that tentacle thing that always follows him is his own tail. He thinks it's another quantum Obie.
In the US, "ginger" is a seasoning, not a color. Like, in general; we do not refer to anything as being ginger-colored unless it's a sort of pale yellowish tan.
Were there many reds around when you were growing up? My family is full of redheads, and ginger was a well known term to me. I'm much older than South Park
Yes. But we also call redheads "redheads" as a rule, not "gingers" - except that the "ginger" thing has filtered over here via the Internet in the past, I dunno, 20 years.
Like, I can't recall anybody describing a redheaded person as a "ginger" in the 80s or 90s, (location: Missouri) it's something I've only encountered since there's been more language cross-pollination due to the Internet.
South Park really spread "ginger" as the term in the US. Since that episode, everyone I know uses ginger instead of redhead, whereas I only learned the word ginger from that episode.
“ Arhgap36 is known to cause developmental problems in other animals when it is over- or under-functioning. But it seems that in orange cats, the gene is overexpressed only in developing and mature pigment cells called melanocytes.”
This doesn’t make sense… if thousands of anecdotal reports in cats specifically report otherwise? And if it’s known to not be limited to melanocytes in other mammalian species?
Humans carry this GTPase as well. GTP is energy source of receptors called G protein coupled receptors. They are about 750 these and many of them are catecholamine receptors, like the serotonin and dopamine receptors.
For cats it very well may be different. Genes do not express activity the same indifferent species and they’re definitely not the same in different parts of the body. Genes can express RNA in one part of the body and more DNA and another part.
But I think this deletion is really about how it affects the methylation the gene.
Another anecdata - my cat growing up was orange, and he was plenty smart. He was very relaxed/chill but would come when called and was an excellent hunter of the house mice.
His mom was a very intelligent calico (she communicated with people impressively well), and his dad was an unknown feral cat, so I think his smart-cat genes were more noticeable than whatever correlates with orange.
So did my orange. He learned to open doors so he can maybe get some food.
He doesn't play with any of the cat toys (our other cat loves those and begs to play), is barely active and only runs (his whole belly jiggles side-to-side when he's running) after his dental treats which we throw so he can get some exercise.
He's an odd ball for sure. Goofy, loving. A little chubby, but the vet says it is probably fine considering his laziness and he is healthy otherwise (knock-wood).
pretty sure its a sex thing - makes sense for females to lift up their rear and I guess there isn't any evolutionary pressure for that sensitivity to not exist in males as well.
This would be a plausible explanation tho I've been told that cats don't move their tail that way when they're in heat. It doesn't go up but rather sideways.
So in the US, they call them orange cats. In Korea, we call them 'cheese tabbies' or 'cheese nyang(kitten).' Someday, when I leave this place, I'd like to get a cat. I really like the ones with broad faces. But right now, I can barely even take care of myself
Which makes sense because anesthesia doesn’t work on them as well. One or two encounters with a dentist that doesn’t know it and it’s quite natural to develop such a fear.
That's true. They seem to be more sensitive to pain in general, though. And I've wondered if that might in some people lead to a heightened degree of something called Misanthropic Person Memory: https://oscarybarra.lsa.umich.edu/Main_Site/Publications_fil...
Interesting question. Cats apparently have "dichromatic" vision, and orange is among the colors that they basically can't distinguish from grey.
I have an orange male. He's awesome, and he doesn't leave anything on the table as far as cognitive ability goes. He's just very wrapped up in his important cat business that mostly resolves around territory, chipmunks and hanging out with his enemies.
My cat desperately meowed at me this morning to go outside to hang out with her enemies, which I denied her request. She brought a very much alive and unharmed chipmunk home the other day which was booking it around our great room until we corralled him outside with a broom. The live bird incident was even more dramatic. It’s like having a mischievious goblin living in your house. But she does keep the mice from coming in during the winter!
My parents' cat delivered a live baby bunny to the entrance hallways in the middle of my pre-wedding dinner. Once released the thing unfroze and zoomed under some baskets. It was an all-hands-on-deck exercise to corral both the terrified bunny, as well as the over-excited large dog who "wanted to get to know it".
I have similar stories with mine. Bringing game into the house isn't mischief though. It's the highest praise a cat can express: as a trusted member of the pride, you're entitled to a share of the catch. You're also expected to notice the prowess.
It's extremely interesting that the genes that regulate this are non-protein coding. More light shed on the actual functionality of "junk" DNA, even if it's for cats.
The color is genetic. The behavior is due to them not having a soul. While there is an obvious relationship, it's not direct but mediated by the color.
The article you posted is also posted as hyperlink in the article you're commenting on. "Stanford University geneticist Greg Barsh told Sara Reardon at Science in 2024"
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 25.2 ms ] threadI think the association with discrimination against red haired humans is a stretch though
Compare that to tortoiseshell or calico cats, which requires two different color genes (with calico requiring the "white spotted" gene in addition to two colors). That means something unusual usually has to happen for those colors to occur in male cats, which is why less than 0.1% of calicos are male.
This paper demonstrates a connection with behavior. I personally suspect gingers have smaller amygdala.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381166835_The_Skin-...
They were both very calm creatures. The male was one of the most gentle cats I've ever known. I really miss him greeting me by nodding at me from the sofa when I got home.
We only found out their health issues from exams.
My brain seized up trying to picture this. They didn't say vertebrum, so that's not just a wee bone but a whole other second spine! How does it even...?? I must know!
Actually, I think I got it right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebra
No that's plenty enough. Carry on!
I had an orange cat growing up in the 1970s well before the Internet and out of the seven cast I own as a child. It was very much different.
Have had >13 cats in my life, and they're all fucking weird.
Source: I have had my genome sequence. I was not dissected.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222...
"We first performed RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) on skin tissues obtained from the auricles of different adult calico cats (#19, #20, and #22, females, precise ages unknown)"
Auricles are the earlobes.
"We then analyzed multiple skin tissues obtained from a young calico cat that died of unknown causes (#01, female, 3 weeks old) "
"A) Expression levels of ARHGAP36 and IGSF1 in cat auricles (left) and skin tissues (right). RNA-seq data were obtained in small auricle pieces of different coat colors derived from different cats (left) and in skin samples of different coat colors derived from a single calico cat (#01) (right)."
Biological samples Domestic cat blood Inakazu Dog & Cat Kashii Hospital https://www.inakazu-vet.com/ Domestic cat ovary Cat clinics in Japan N/A Domestic cat auricular Cat clinics in Japan N/A
Second, they clipped the cats ears at specific places because they needed different color hair follicle samples. They describe it in the paper.
Do calico cats experience pain after death?
I've long held that the nine lives of a cat are not a sequential thing, but a quantum superposition of the cat. Just as Pavlov selected dogs for his classic experiment in psychology; Schrödinger - understanding the quantum nature of cats - selected a cat for his thought experiment.
A cat lives nine simultaneous lives. This explains many of the phenomena that one observes with cats.
First off, there's the classic "that looks like my cat" from the internet, that other cat could very well be a parallel instance of your cat.
Second, there's the perceived goofiness of cats as they chase imaginary things when they're forgetting where their bodies are at a given time. One instance of the cat could be locked in mortal combat with the elusive red dot while the other one is jumping at what looks to the humans around him as zoomies or greebles ( https://www.reddit.com/r/greebles/ ).
Kittens are especially prone to being confused by their quantum nature and prone to those activities.
The easiest way to pay attention to only one self-instance for a cat is the simplest, sleep. This is why cats have been reported to sleep 12 - 16 hours, and kittens up to 20 hours per day ( https://www.petmd.com/cat/behavior/why-do-cats-sleep-so-much ).
I have often been called a kook myself. I feel my Schizoaffevctive disorder is expressed because the quantum state most people express is not the same as mine.
I put that in so that readers start off with the expectation that this is something to be played with and engage the author rather than worrying if I'm a crazy cat dad with claims of enlightened understanding who's comment should be quietly collapsed.
If I was seriously claiming that cats live multiple lives and that the ultimate observer of the universe's entangled wave function was a cat playing with a cosmic ball of yarn... I think they could rightly call me a kook. I make none of those claims except in jest.
Wave function collapse isn't caused by an observer, but rather "does the cat care about this?"
In the UK these are ginger cats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw
Turns out it's a dead tie in English books though, wow: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=orange+cat%2Cg...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw
Like, I can't recall anybody describing a redheaded person as a "ginger" in the 80s or 90s, (location: Missouri) it's something I've only encountered since there's been more language cross-pollination due to the Internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_Kids
Does that help? :)
This doesn’t make sense… if thousands of anecdotal reports in cats specifically report otherwise? And if it’s known to not be limited to melanocytes in other mammalian species?
Humans also carry this gene. https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/Q6ZRI8/entry
In humans, both DNA and RNA are mostly expressed in the brain and in the endocrine system.
https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000147256-ARHGAP36/tissue
For cats it very well may be different. Genes do not express activity the same indifferent species and they’re definitely not the same in different parts of the body. Genes can express RNA in one part of the body and more DNA and another part.
But I think this deletion is really about how it affects the methylation the gene.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dog-breed-individual-beh...
> Breed offers little predictive value for individuals, explaining just 9% of variation in behavior.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0639
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/which-dog-breed-s... (here note how big the overlap is between breeds for most traits, and clumpiness is rare, but present)
His mom was a very intelligent calico (she communicated with people impressively well), and his dad was an unknown feral cat, so I think his smart-cat genes were more noticeable than whatever correlates with orange.
He doesn't play with any of the cat toys (our other cat loves those and begs to play), is barely active and only runs (his whole belly jiggles side-to-side when he's running) after his dental treats which we throw so he can get some exercise.
He's an odd ball for sure. Goofy, loving. A little chubby, but the vet says it is probably fine considering his laziness and he is healthy otherwise (knock-wood).
I LOVE MY ORANGE CAT LOL
> If you still support Trump/ICE even slightly, you're not welcome in this sub
Ah, Reddit
So maybe it's that but maybe it's something else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scent_rubbing#Domestic_cat
https://www.dentistryiq.com/dentistry/article/55260898/redhe...
I have an orange male. He's awesome, and he doesn't leave anything on the table as far as cognitive ability goes. He's just very wrapped up in his important cat business that mostly resolves around territory, chipmunks and hanging out with his enemies.
Rabies in bats is rare in Switzerland but still possible, so I had to go through post exposure prophylaxis.
See: https://cryptogenomicon.org/encode-says-what.html and https://thefinchandpea.com/2012/09/10/random-genome-naked-ge... for one perspective on how to approach this.
Which means it's inconclusive if the gene is responsible for behavior.
But, collectively we know it may be.
(and you can see it on them in bright sunshine, perfect black cats are not, they exhibit both stripes and reddishness)