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here are some pictures of him
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is my cat a makeral tabby or a spotted tabby?
- Thread starter sutapa tasnim
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Spotted! Gorgeous, wild-looking kitty you have there!
Spotted tabbies can have some bars mixed in with the spots. If you were a breeder and wanted a "perfect" spotted tabby, the bars would be imperfections, but this particular kitty is not a purebred nor required to have perfect spots, and therefore I say he is ideal!
Spotted tabbies can have some bars mixed in with the spots. If you were a breeder and wanted a "perfect" spotted tabby, the bars would be imperfections, but this particular kitty is not a purebred nor required to have perfect spots, and therefore I say he is ideal!
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some one told me that he is a broken makeral tabby, can u say something about that?
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Broken mackerel tabby is kind of the mid point between spots and stripes. A broken mackerel tabby cat has, as the name suggests, broken stripes--dashes instead of dots.
Basically, there is one genetic locus for whether a cat will have a mackerel tabby or a "classic"/ blotched tabby pattern.
Then there is a separate gene for Spotted Tabby . If a cat inherits that, it causes the mackerel or classic tabby pattern to be broken up into spots ... but it is influenced by various other little genes, so it can vary in just how much it is broken up. When the stripes are broken up some but still kind of look like stripes, some people call that a "broken mackerel tabby" pattern.
Then there is a separate gene for Spotted Tabby . If a cat inherits that, it causes the mackerel or classic tabby pattern to be broken up into spots ... but it is influenced by various other little genes, so it can vary in just how much it is broken up. When the stripes are broken up some but still kind of look like stripes, some people call that a "broken mackerel tabby" pattern.
Very interesting. Do you know about ticked tabby genes / genetics? I'm into self cats so all these tabby genetics (beyond agouti / non-agouti) are something I know nothing about!
Yes, the Ticked Tabby gene is thought to be yet a different locus. If they get the gene for Ticked tabby, it breaks the pattern up completely on the body , causing each guard hair to be agouti banded. It's a partial dominant, so that a cat with one copy of it, there is still tabby striping on the legs and tail. maybe some on chest. But with 2 copies of Ta , it is also broken up in those areas (at least much more so.... but it seems there is polygenetic influence because clearing the coat of barring is not so simple as it would be if it were just one gene .) .................. With any of the tabby patterns, in a eumelanistic ( black based) color , they also need the Agouti gene to make the pattern show distinctly. but you probably know that. .....................BTW, if you read old books that talk about tabby genetics, you may see them explain it differently, because it used to be thought that all the tabby pattern genes were alleles at the same locus with Ticked > Spotted> Mackerel>Classic. but now the theory is that there are 3 separate loci for pattern (PLUS Agouti ) . Here is a page that a U.S. Oriental breeder and geneticist I know made several years ago, briefly explaining this as a working hypothesis , with photos of the different patterns. http://people.ysu.edu/~helorimer/TabPat.html This idea she proposed as early as the 1990s is now widely accepted among feline genetic researchers.
That's a great page, thanks.
