For decades, orange cats have lived among us, boldly wreaking havoc with a level of confident stupidity that inspires both affection and bewilderment.
I know my wonderful orange little idiot does. But for years, there’s been one question regarding orange cats that has plagued the scientific community: why are they even orange in the first place?
Two independent teams of researchers, including a group from Stanford and another from Japan, recently published their findings in Current Biology. They found that the secret to ginger cats is a mutation that rewires their fur color.
This is Why Orange Cats Are Orange
Lead author Chris Kaelin explained that orange cats produce more of an orange/red pigment called pheomelanin than they do a black/brown pigment called eumelanin, which isn’t too dissimilar from redheaded humans.
While human gingers owe their color to changes in the MC1R gene, the orange cat mutation is located in one gene called Arhgap36. The scientists say that the protein produced by this gene disrupts the biological pathway that determines a cat’s coat color, effectively shutting down eumelanin production and letting orange pigment take over.
As for why most orange cats are dudes, that has everything to do with a cat’s X chromosome. Males only get one, so if that X carries the mutation, it’s a ginger. Females, having two Xs, need both to be mutated to go full orange.
This rogue pigmentation-altering gene doesn’t mess with other parts of the body, including the brain, even though it should be active there. Now, does this somehow prove that orange cats are indeed dumber than other colored cats? No. That’s still a mystery.
For now, we can only assume that they choose to be this stupid.
The post We Finally Figured Out Why Orange Cats Are Orange appeared first on VICE.
