What is rare is to find a male Calico cat. Is it Rare to Have a Female Calico Cat?Īnother fun fact about Calico cats is that most of them are female.
Keep reading to find out all about calicos. Several fun facts make calico cats so rare that they will be distributed in this article. Their patches are different, and you will never see any two calicos that look alike. So most Calicos come in orange, white and black.Ĭalico cats are rare but very unique. The rare mutation gives any breed of the cat an orange color on the fur. Imagine being so unique and rare that you are given fun facts? One of the fun facts about Calicos is that they happen due to gene mutation.
This article will discuss some of the reasons and fun facts that make calico cats rare. Male calicos are so rare that in 3000 cats, the probability of getting a calico cat is 1. A Calico is not a breed of cat, rather a condition where the cat has an extra X chromosome. This mutation exists in humans too, and it's called Klinefelter syndrome.Calico refers to any breed of cat with three fur colors: white, black, and orange. This is a chromosomal mutation known as XX male syndrome. If a male cat is calico (or tortoiseshell), this means that it has two X chromosomes and an Y chromosome. They can therefore only carry one variant of the orange gene in all their cells. Male cats, therefore, cannot be calico, since they only have one X chromosome. If they have the white patches, then these are a result of the white spotting gene, as explained in this article. The third color of a calico is a product of a completely separate gene. This is why some patches on the coat will be orange and some will be black. The cells in which the first X chromosome is silenced will express only the non-orange gene, and therefore produce the black (or brown) pigment, and the other cells will produce the orange pigment. If a female cat is a heterozygote for the orange gene (Oo), it will carry the orange allele (O) on one X chromosome and the non-orange allele (o) on the other X chromosome. This means that in some cells one X chromosome will be silenced and in the other cells the other one. One of these chromosomes will be silenced in all of the cells by a random chance. The orange allele O codes for the orange pigment “phaeomelanin”, and the non-orange o for the black/brown pigment “eumelanin”.įemale cats carry two copies of the X chromosomes in their cells. This is the gene for the orange color (O/o) and it comes in two variants (alleles) – the orange (O) and the non-orange (o). The gene which determines whether the coat will be orange or black (or one of the diluted colors) lie on the X chromosome. Thus, all calico cats are also tortoiseshell, but not all tortoiseshell cats are calico. A similar coat pattern is tortoiseshell, where there is a lot less white in the fur, and the colored patches are mottled. There is usually a significant amount of white in their coat, and the red and black patches form patchwork. Female cats carry two copies of X chromosomes in each cell (XX), while males have an X and an Y chromosome (XY).Ĭalico, or tricolor coat pattern, is the pattern of white fur with patches of two different colors, most commonly orange and black (or their diluted forms: cream, ginger, red and blue, tabby, gray). The 19th pair of chromosomes are sex chromosome X and Y. This means that all the alleles (variants of genes) on each chromosome will also be in two copies (one on one chromosome and the other on the homologous chromosome).
Each chromosome, therefore, comes in two copies. For comparison, humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes in each cell, whereas, dogs, have a whooping number of 39 pairs. Background informationĬats have a 19 pairs of chromosomes in each cell, which totals in 38 chromosomes. Learn more about this interesting phenomenon with Basepaws. Have you ever wondered why most calico cats are female? Well, it’s all about the power of genetics! This is also true for a similar coat pattern called tortoiseshell.
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