What are the exact odds of a calico cat being born male? Since they are so rare, what do they sell for?
My first hit on googling “male calico cat” yields this link.
I found more detail on the second site listed.
Interesting stuff, genetics.
There are calico humans???
Ohhh… nm, I get it now.
Like MLS said, male calico cats have to be XXY males. Because of this, they are almost always sterile. That extra chromosome really screws up the production of viable sperm. As such, XXY males are usually only valuable for their novelty, certainly not for their ability to sire more like themselves. If you found folks who really wanted to have a conversation starter pet, then they might be willing to buy your male calico for a pretty penny. Of course, you have to wonder about the quality of life a pet acquired for such a reason might have.
Why do you ask?
I have also heard that male calico cats are worth a huge sum of money because the are so rare. For the life of me, however, I can’t imagine who is in the market for such an animal and would be willing to shell out big bucks to get one.
To explain a little more about the genetics, the orange (dominant) and black (recessive) traits are determined by a single gene; that is, they are alleles of the same gene, like brown and blue eyes in humans. This gene is on the X chromosome. In female mammals, one X chromosome is "“turned off” in each cell (to avoid an imbalance of gene product in females compared with males, who have only one X anyway). Which one is turned off during the course of early embryonic development is random; but all cells descending from a cell after it is turned off have the same X turned off. Therefore females are a mosaic of areas where each of the two Xs is turned off. This mosaic pattern can be seen in the coats of calico cats, which are females which have both the orange and black alleles, each of which is turned on in certain sections of the coat.
See here under “Sex-linked Traits”:
Admit it: I’m not the only one who came in here expecting to hear about delightful sweaty activities on old-fashionedy print flannel sheets. You did too, didn’t you!?
All right, I admit it.
::hangs head in shame::
That or a historical porn movie set during the Anti-Rent War.
Nope. I came in here thinking I was gonna learn about a new dynamite band. :smack:
…(cough) or something the Kama Sutra never thought of. :smack: :smack:
Am I correct that the majority of tortishell cats are male?
Also, in (at least my breed of) dogs, black is dominant and orange is recessive. Out of two litters of four out of a black female by a red sable male, I have had three black and one orange sable in each litter. Do the genetics for color differ between canines and felines?
The trouble with trying to have this pet as a novelty is that the owners would constantly have to hold it up and be all, “Look! Look at his penis! See his penis? He’s a male calico! Look at his penis!” Because otherwise how would anyone know?
On the subject of breeding calico cats: At one time I had a black & white female cat and an orange & white male cat. Before I finally had the time & money to get the male cat neutered they produced two litters, both of which consisted solely of calicos. All females, of course; but I was told (after I had had the make neutered, of course) that this was unusual & that I could have made some money breeding calico kittens.
Urban legend, I’m almost certain. Maybe the occasional sucker shells out big bucks for one, but as far as I know they generally aren’t worth more than any other non-pedigreed cat ( which is to say, not much ). There was one at the SFSPCA shelter a while back that a friends of mine ( a volunteer there ) was fond of and it didn’t exactly generate a bidding war to take him home ;).
- Tamerlane
Not exactly. Cat penises are completely retractable, and they only come out for urination and mating. The scrotum is always in view, though. You wouldn’t have to hold him up to see his balls; just wait 'til he walks away from you.
I can just see the proud owners now. Picking the poor thing up, lifting his tail. “Look at his scrotum. See? He’s a male calico. They’re extremely rare! Look at his scrotum! Why aren’t you looking at his scrotum?”
No, like calicos they are almost all female. The basic genetics is the same; the calico differs from tortoiseshell only in the white patches in the fur, which are produced by an entirely different gene.
Quite possibly. However, from the cross you describe it is impossible to say for certain which of the two alleles is dominant. The probability is that it is black, from the ratio of the offspring, but you might just have had a couple of litters that went against the odds. You would need to have a much greater number of crosses in order to determine statistically which is dominant. All you can tell from that cross, assuming the coat color is produced by alleles of the same gene, is that 1) one of the two is dominant and the other is recessive; they are not co-dominant; 2) one of the two parents is a heterozygote (has both alleles) and the other is a homozygote (has only one of the two alleles.
No, just the opposite. Tortoiseshell is a variant of calico and they are, as noted, overwhelmingly female.
They do, I’m pretty sure. Colibri adressed that in part. In cats for example I believe the tabby pattern gene, which would be the original wild type, is dominant.
- Tamerlane
[hijack]
One of my cats, when we adopted her from the shelter, caused the young lady at the shelter a moment of confusion when she got to the ‘color’ line, on which she finally decided to write ‘calico tabby’. Unusual indeed, I thought … but it seems to be accurate. Said kitty has what looks like typical calico coloring in spots, blending into the common tabby coloration on most of her body. Any of you feline genetics whizzes have any idea how that happened?