| PEACEAnimals: 'Are All Calico Cats Female?' Gretchen DeWitt - PEACEAnimals | |
| go to original August 25, 2015 |
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The only calico cats I´ve spotted as calicos have been black, orange and white, so I didn´t recognize the grey, beige and white kitten I was fostering as a calico.
I checked what I thought was only an almost-calico kitten for sex, and it was a female.
When Anna and her family took the kitten to their vet for a check-up on Friday, he said because it was a calico, it was a female cat and therefore unnecessary to check sex. It was a very safe bet. But not a 100% certainty.
I learned a few years ago that a calico cat is not always female. One in approximately three thousand calicos is male and only one in ten thousand of male calicos is fertile. For a male cat to have the tri-coloration of a calico, the feline has to have an extra X-chromosome.
The X-chromosome is what determines, with the possible exception of white, fur color in a cat. The Y chromosome of course determines the sex.
The XXY combination found in male calicos can occur when there is an incomplete division of the male's XY chromosone pair at the time of fertilization - and it doesn't just happen in cats, it also occurs with humans.
Read the original at Gretchen's Blog along with all the other news about what's going on at PEACEAnimals in Puerto Vallarta.
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