If She Were A Male It'd Be Harvey Quinn

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Can I just say that I love that my siblings named their new black-and-orange split-face kitten Harley Dent? Because I really, really do.

Comments

[beccastareyes]

It would be very rare for a black-and-orange (tortoiseshell or calico) cat to be male. The red/not-red genes are carried on the X chromosome, so cats with red and black/brown patches* must have two X chromosomes. One chromosome is randomly silenced during fetal development, so the cat ends up with red and black/brown patches depending which chromosome the hair cells are mostly ignoring.

You can get XXY cats that are male but have tortoiseshell markings, but it's really uncommon.

* Or cream and blue/lilac/fawn, since cream is a form of red.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I looked up cat coat genetics a while back to base some alien genetics on. The point here was that my siblings had to figure out a proper way to mash up Batman villain names,and it just seemed wrong to name a female "Harvey."

[beccastareyes]

Fair enough. Just noting that it would be hard to find a Harvey Quinn.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

True. I'd heard that chimeras weren't super rare among cats, but I could be wrong. I forgot half of the stuff I learned, anyway.

[beccastareyes]

Fair enough. I remember a lot of this stuff since one of the Internet games I play is a cat breeding sim with decent attempts at genetics*.

* They have plenty of dominant/recessive/incomplete-dominance single-trait genes, as well as genes interacting. (Aka there's genes for tabby/solid, as well as genes that determine tabby type that only are expressed on tabbies as well as genes that only are expressed on cats with silver and tabby) The traits for things like size and eye shape and build and so on are simpler than they are IRL, though there's an optional mode that makes them a bit more complicated.

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

That is indeed an awesome name!