The article you posted is also posted as hyperlink in the article you're commenting on. "Stanford University geneticist Greg Barsh told Sara Reardon at Science in 2024"
This is fairly typical for genetic studies. We can observe an association, without understanding the causal relationship. Those of us who take the molecular biology/biophysical view of genes and proteins have been watching the geneticists slowly discover that "the allele of a gene that codes for" mental model is very limited; at least they're starting to pay more attention to the regulatory changes and indels and structural rearrangements, even if they don't have the tools to explain the underlying mechanism.
Like most hair/skin coloring, it's related to melanin production, regulation, and distribution.
Very often the appropriate lens for genetic expression isn’t traits, it’s tools - a gene knockout isn’t “blue eyes now”, it’s “socket #6 is missing from the kit,” which is why you’ll see blue eyes and a bunch of other unrelated stuff.
I have gone through a slow attrition of “serious” subs over the years as they’ve all slowly become toxic. I pretty much just have goofy, fun stuff or niche interests left at this point.
I never understood the extreme love for cats. I considered getting one for my daughter but the toxoplasmosis alone makes cat ownership an immediate nope and that’s before the cat piss/poop you can immediately smell in a house with cats in them.
pretty sure its a sex thing - makes sense for females to lift up their rear and I guess there isn't any evolutionary pressure for that sensitivity to not exist in males as well.
Yes. But we also call redheads "redheads" as a rule, not "gingers" - except that the "ginger" thing has filtered over here via the Internet in the past, I dunno, 20 years.
Like, I can't recall anybody describing a redheaded person as a "ginger" in the 80s or 90s, (location: Missouri) it's something I've only encountered since there's been more language cross-pollination due to the Internet.
South Park really spread "ginger" as the term in the US. Since that episode, everyone I know uses ginger instead of redhead, whereas I only learned the word ginger from that episode.
In the US, "ginger" is a seasoning, not a color. Like, in general; we do not refer to anything as being ginger-colored unless it's a sort of pale yellowish tan.
My experience (cat owner myself, son of cat owners and regular cat-sitter) confirms what the article says: orange cats are no more or less prone to doing seemingly stupid/weird things than cats of any other color. More seriously, I think this stereotype is a direct continuation of stereotypes against red-haired humans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_people_...), so it shouldn't be encouraged...
I had couple of cats (orange male and tortoiseshell female) that lived 20 years after I picked them off the street. The female had only one kidney and the male had an extra vertebra but these things only became a problem in their last year.
They were both very calm creatures. The male was one of the most gentle cats I've ever known. I really miss him greeting me by nodding at me from the sofa when I got home.
I was just thinking how behavioral differences of red haired foxes, cats, and humans from their closest relatives are explained by the same sort of proopiomelanocortin and other substantia nigra differences from weak MC1R activity.
Did you know people with blue eyes are more likely to have bipolar disorder? This of course doesn’t mean everyone blue eyes has bipolar disorder but it makes it more likely. I think the issue may be playing out in orange cats as well. It’s certainly not going to give me every orange is weird, but it increases the likelihood and I think that’s why we see the stereotype play out.
I had an orange cat growing up in the 1970s well before the Internet and out of the seven cast I own as a child. It was very much different.
It's extremely interesting that the genes that regulate this are non-protein coding. More light shed on the actual functionality of "junk" DNA, even if it's for cats.
Which makes sense because anesthesia doesn’t work on them as well. One or two encounters with a dentist that doesn’t know it and it’s quite natural to develop such a fear.
That's true. They seem to be more sensitive to pain in general, though. And I've wondered if that might in some people lead to a heightened degree of something called Misanthropic Person Memory: https://oscarybarra.lsa.umich.edu/Main_Site/Publications_fil...
So in the US, they call them orange cats. In Korea, we call them 'cheese tabbies' or 'cheese nyang(kitten).' Someday, when I leave this place, I'd like to get a cat. I really like the ones with broad faces. But right now, I can barely even take care of myself
They finally proved that the brain cells of all orange cats are a single brain cell in a quantum state of superposition between all of them? Erwin Schrödinger would be proud.
I've long held that the nine lives of a cat are not a sequential thing, but a quantum superposition of the cat. Just as Pavlov selected dogs for his classic experiment in psychology; Schrödinger - understanding the quantum nature of cats - selected a cat for his thought experiment.
A cat lives nine simultaneous lives. This explains many of the phenomena that one observes with cats.
First off, there's the classic "that looks like my cat" from the internet, that other cat could very well be a parallel instance of your cat.
Second, there's the perceived goofiness of cats as they chase imaginary things when they're forgetting where their bodies are at a given time. One instance of the cat could be locked in mortal combat with the elusive red dot while the other one is jumping at what looks to the humans around him as zoomies or greebles ( https://www.reddit.com/r/greebles/ ).
Kittens are especially prone to being confused by their quantum nature and prone to those activities.
The easiest way to pay attention to only one self-instance for a cat is the simplest, sleep. This is why cats have been reported to sleep 12 - 16 hours, and kittens up to 20 hours per day ( https://www.petmd.com/cat/behavior/why-do-cats-sleep-so-much ).
That could be why my cat, age 6, still hasn't figured out that that tentacle thing that always follows him is his own tail. He thinks it's another quantum Obie.
Depressing that some would call you a kook. Creativity is where new science happens.
I have often been called a kook myself. I feel my Schizoaffevctive disorder is expressed because the quantum state most people express is not the same as mine.
Interesting question. Cats apparently have "dichromatic" vision, and orange is among the colors that they basically can't distinguish from grey.
I have an orange male. He's awesome, and he doesn't leave anything on the table as far as cognitive ability goes. He's just very wrapped up in his important cat business that mostly resolves around territory, chipmunks and hanging out with his enemies.
My cat desperately meowed at me this morning to go outside to hang out with her enemies, which I denied her request. She brought a very much alive and unharmed chipmunk home the other day which was booking it around our great room until we corralled him outside with a broom. The live bird incident was even more dramatic. It’s like having a mischievious goblin living in your house. But she does keep the mice from coming in during the winter!
“ Arhgap36 is known to cause developmental problems in other animals when it is over- or under-functioning. But it seems that in orange cats, the gene is overexpressed only in developing and mature pigment cells called melanocytes.”
This doesn’t make sense… if thousands of anecdotal reports in cats specifically report otherwise? And if it’s known to not be limited to melanocytes in other mammalian species?
Another anecdata - my cat growing up was orange, and he was plenty smart. He was very relaxed/chill but would come when called and was an excellent hunter of the house mice.
His mom was a very intelligent calico (she communicated with people impressively well), and his dad was an unknown feral cat, so I think his smart-cat genes were more noticeable than whatever correlates with orange.
So did my orange. He learned to open doors so he can maybe get some food.
He doesn't play with any of the cat toys (our other cat loves those and begs to play), is barely active and only runs (his whole belly jiggles side-to-side when he's running) after his dental treats which we throw so he can get some exercise.
He's an odd ball for sure. Goofy, loving. A little chubby, but the vet says it is probably fine considering his laziness and he is healthy otherwise (knock-wood).
Humans carry this GTPase as well. GTP is energy source of receptors called G protein coupled receptors. They are about 750 these and many of them are catecholamine receptors, like the serotonin and dopamine receptors.
For cats it very well may be different. Genes do not express activity the same indifferent species and they’re definitely not the same in different parts of the body. Genes can express RNA in one part of the body and more DNA and another part.
But I think this deletion is really about how it affects the methylation the gene.
"We first performed RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) on skin tissues obtained from the auricles of different adult calico cats (#19, #20, and #22, females, precise ages unknown)"
Auricles are the earlobes.
"We then analyzed multiple skin tissues obtained from a young calico cat that died of unknown causes (#01, female, 3 weeks old) "
"A) Expression levels of ARHGAP36 and IGSF1 in cat auricles (left) and skin tissues (right). RNA-seq data were obtained in small auricle pieces of different coat colors derived from different cats (left) and in skin samples of different coat colors derived from a single calico cat (#01) (right)."
Biological samples
Domestic cat blood Inakazu Dog & Cat Kashii Hospital https://www.inakazu-vet.com/
Domestic cat ovary Cat clinics in Japan N/A
Domestic cat auricular Cat clinics in Japan N/A
I thought this seemed familiar; it's a rehash of a 2024 discovery: https://www.science.org/content/article/gene-behind-orange-f...
The article you posted is also posted as hyperlink in the article you're commenting on. "Stanford University geneticist Greg Barsh told Sara Reardon at Science in 2024"
The article says there's no evidence of the gene being responsible for behavior.
Which means it's inconclusive if the gene is responsible for behavior.
But, collectively we know it may be.
This is fairly typical for genetic studies. We can observe an association, without understanding the causal relationship. Those of us who take the molecular biology/biophysical view of genes and proteins have been watching the geneticists slowly discover that "the allele of a gene that codes for" mental model is very limited; at least they're starting to pay more attention to the regulatory changes and indels and structural rearrangements, even if they don't have the tools to explain the underlying mechanism.
Like most hair/skin coloring, it's related to melanin production, regulation, and distribution.
Very often the appropriate lens for genetic expression isn’t traits, it’s tools - a gene knockout isn’t “blue eyes now”, it’s “socket #6 is missing from the kit,” which is why you’ll see blue eyes and a bunch of other unrelated stuff.
(With love to my blue-eyed friends in the thread)
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Yeah but there's good reason for an investigation here, in particular:
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https://www.reddit.com/r/catbongos/
Recently I went through the list of all of the subs that I follow and 80% of them were all cat related.
Do you think it’s always been that way?
I have gone through a slow attrition of “serious” subs over the years as they’ve all slowly become toxic. I pretty much just have goofy, fun stuff or niche interests left at this point.
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I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of all subreddits are cat related.
fyi: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd6EjvCDRRWlkHjEYvSfOkA
Get rid of the other 20%.
I've been blocking subs in RES for years now, it's over 7000 last I checked and most I see on /r/all now is cat content. It's GLORIOUS
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I never understood the extreme love for cats. I considered getting one for my daughter but the toxoplasmosis alone makes cat ownership an immediate nope and that’s before the cat piss/poop you can immediately smell in a house with cats in them.
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this one is always funny, anyone know why my orange would pull his ass so high to get a nice smack? almost as if they feel some sort of relief
It might just be because he loves you. Of course, it could also be:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scent_rubbing#Domestic_cat
pretty sure its a sex thing - makes sense for females to lift up their rear and I guess there isn't any evolutionary pressure for that sensitivity to not exist in males as well.
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Ever have someone bang on your lower back that way? It feels good :)
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Wait, do people in the US really call them "orange cats" - I just thought that was a reddit / internet thing.
In the UK these are ginger cats.
Yes. But we also call redheads "redheads" as a rule, not "gingers" - except that the "ginger" thing has filtered over here via the Internet in the past, I dunno, 20 years.
Like, I can't recall anybody describing a redheaded person as a "ginger" in the 80s or 90s, (location: Missouri) it's something I've only encountered since there's been more language cross-pollination due to the Internet.
South Park really spread "ginger" as the term in the US. Since that episode, everyone I know uses ginger instead of redhead, whereas I only learned the word ginger from that episode.
We call them orange cats (gatos laranjas) in Portuguese too!
I thought it was popularized by internet/Reddit as a joke denoting that ginger cats are "special": https://www.reddit.com/r/OneOrangeBraincell/
No, they've been orange since long before that. Cause, y'know... that's their color!
Turns out it's a dead tie in English books though, wow: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=orange+cat%2Cg...
It's because they have no soul!
Many places outside the US call them orange as well.
I'm an ex Brit, living in the US, and have an orange tabby that I like to say is orange, but his name is "Gingey".
Does that help? :)
I always found this funny as well. We say ginger cats (chats roux) in French too!
But doesn't roux/rouge just mean "red"?
"Ginger" doesn't mean "red", except for hair color. And that's the interesting part.
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Cookie vs biscuit, vacation vs holiday, gasoline vs petrol, etc, etc.
Cookie and biscuit are two different things. Which two depends on country, but still two different things
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FWIW, I believe petroleum is a synonym for crude oil. If you put it in your cars fuel tank, you'll have a bad time. Gasoline is made from petrolium.
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We use both terms here. Ginger has become more popular recently, probably due to UK Internet influence over recent years.
You might be shocked that we say "red heads" instead of ginger as well.
In the US, "ginger" is a seasoning, not a color. Like, in general; we do not refer to anything as being ginger-colored unless it's a sort of pale yellowish tan.
People will still refer to redheads as "ginger" but only some of the time
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The redhead, ginger, color link comes from early season ginger, which has reddish pink tips around the leaves right above the fresh root.
If you would then please explain the "kick a ginger day" from SouthPark
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In UK English ginger isn't exactly a color either. It's not like yellow or orange. It's a state of being.
I don't know why this is being downvoted. Does "ginger-colored" sound right to you? It doesn't quite work.
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Hey now, that's prejudice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw
I always called the orange even when I was in the UK.
In Australia they're known an ranga cats (ranga as in orangutan).
I'm in the US, but through cultural osmosis, ginger in the UK context is in my vocabulary. I think things like this are going to coalesce, slowly.
in italian we call them "red cats"
UK and USA are brotherly nations divided only by their common language.
They are mostly tabbies at the end of the day. But colloquially, yes: the US tends to simply call them orange.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OneOrangeBraincell/ I think it is relevant.
My experience (cat owner myself, son of cat owners and regular cat-sitter) confirms what the article says: orange cats are no more or less prone to doing seemingly stupid/weird things than cats of any other color. More seriously, I think this stereotype is a direct continuation of stereotypes against red-haired humans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_people_...), so it shouldn't be encouraged...
Most likely this is because orange cats are almost always male, and (neutered) male cats tend to be goofier than females.
I think the association with discrimination against red haired humans is a stretch though
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I had couple of cats (orange male and tortoiseshell female) that lived 20 years after I picked them off the street. The female had only one kidney and the male had an extra vertebra but these things only became a problem in their last year.
They were both very calm creatures. The male was one of the most gentle cats I've ever known. I really miss him greeting me by nodding at me from the sofa when I got home.
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I agree but I don't think it's related to prejudice against redheaded humans, wrt the cats I think it's some sort of confirmation bias.
Have had >13 cats in my life, and they're all fucking weird.
I was just thinking how behavioral differences of red haired foxes, cats, and humans from their closest relatives are explained by the same sort of proopiomelanocortin and other substantia nigra differences from weak MC1R activity.
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Tangential and sample size n = 1, but the two orange cats in my life were spankers/lovers of cat bongos whereas all other coloured cats were not.
There is something different about them, and the red hair thing is a coincidence.
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Hey, some of us love and appreciate that red hair too!
Did you know people with blue eyes are more likely to have bipolar disorder? This of course doesn’t mean everyone blue eyes has bipolar disorder but it makes it more likely. I think the issue may be playing out in orange cats as well. It’s certainly not going to give me every orange is weird, but it increases the likelihood and I think that’s why we see the stereotype play out.
I had an orange cat growing up in the 1970s well before the Internet and out of the seven cast I own as a child. It was very much different.
Turns out racism is funny and accepted if directed against those you don't like
Racism towards...orange cats? Is that your contention?
It's extremely interesting that the genes that regulate this are non-protein coding. More light shed on the actual functionality of "junk" DNA, even if it's for cats.
Realistically, we've been working with non-protein-coding genes for some time, and the controversy about "junk" (true junk) DNA still continues.
See: https://cryptogenomicon.org/encode-says-what.html and https://thefinchandpea.com/2012/09/10/random-genome-naked-ge... for one perspective on how to approach this.
Fun fact: people with red hair have more fear for dentists:
https://www.dentistryiq.com/dentistry/article/55260898/redhe...
Which makes sense because anesthesia doesn’t work on them as well. One or two encounters with a dentist that doesn’t know it and it’s quite natural to develop such a fear.
That's true. They seem to be more sensitive to pain in general, though. And I've wondered if that might in some people lead to a heightened degree of something called Misanthropic Person Memory: https://oscarybarra.lsa.umich.edu/Main_Site/Publications_fil...
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IetAK3sIAZ0
Still no way to track the one neuron that they all share.
Plot twist: It's actually a D-flip-flop. :-)
I wonder why there's no even a trace of "orange cats are goofy" stereotype in Russia and neighboring countries, as far as I know.
So in the US, they call them orange cats. In Korea, we call them 'cheese tabbies' or 'cheese nyang(kitten).' Someday, when I leave this place, I'd like to get a cat. I really like the ones with broad faces. But right now, I can barely even take care of myself
Missed headline opportunity: "60-year orange cat itch finally scratched"
They finally proved that the brain cells of all orange cats are a single brain cell in a quantum state of superposition between all of them? Erwin Schrödinger would be proud.
{I am not a kook - this is creative writing}
I've long held that the nine lives of a cat are not a sequential thing, but a quantum superposition of the cat. Just as Pavlov selected dogs for his classic experiment in psychology; Schrödinger - understanding the quantum nature of cats - selected a cat for his thought experiment.
A cat lives nine simultaneous lives. This explains many of the phenomena that one observes with cats.
First off, there's the classic "that looks like my cat" from the internet, that other cat could very well be a parallel instance of your cat.
Second, there's the perceived goofiness of cats as they chase imaginary things when they're forgetting where their bodies are at a given time. One instance of the cat could be locked in mortal combat with the elusive red dot while the other one is jumping at what looks to the humans around him as zoomies or greebles ( https://www.reddit.com/r/greebles/ ).
Kittens are especially prone to being confused by their quantum nature and prone to those activities.
The easiest way to pay attention to only one self-instance for a cat is the simplest, sleep. This is why cats have been reported to sleep 12 - 16 hours, and kittens up to 20 hours per day ( https://www.petmd.com/cat/behavior/why-do-cats-sleep-so-much ).
That could be why my cat, age 6, still hasn't figured out that that tentacle thing that always follows him is his own tail. He thinks it's another quantum Obie.
This implies that the act of observing a cat doesn't collapse their wavefunction. This could have big implications for quantum computing!
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Depressing that some would call you a kook. Creativity is where new science happens.
I have often been called a kook myself. I feel my Schizoaffevctive disorder is expressed because the quantum state most people express is not the same as mine.
No, but there is only one cat in the entire universe, and it's travelling through time and space (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe)
Do orange cats know they’re orange?
Interesting question. Cats apparently have "dichromatic" vision, and orange is among the colors that they basically can't distinguish from grey.
I have an orange male. He's awesome, and he doesn't leave anything on the table as far as cognitive ability goes. He's just very wrapped up in his important cat business that mostly resolves around territory, chipmunks and hanging out with his enemies.
My cat desperately meowed at me this morning to go outside to hang out with her enemies, which I denied her request. She brought a very much alive and unharmed chipmunk home the other day which was booking it around our great room until we corralled him outside with a broom. The live bird incident was even more dramatic. It’s like having a mischievious goblin living in your house. But she does keep the mice from coming in during the winter!
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Now we need a paper about how black cats are secretly red and tabby.
(and you can see it on them in bright sunshine, perfect black cats are not, they exhibit both stripes and reddishness)
“ Arhgap36 is known to cause developmental problems in other animals when it is over- or under-functioning. But it seems that in orange cats, the gene is overexpressed only in developing and mature pigment cells called melanocytes.”
This doesn’t make sense… if thousands of anecdotal reports in cats specifically report otherwise? And if it’s known to not be limited to melanocytes in other mammalian species?
people are very good at seeing their pets conforming to their expectations, whether that is scientifically true or not :)
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dog-breed-individual-beh...
> Breed offers little predictive value for individuals, explaining just 9% of variation in behavior.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0639
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/which-dog-breed-s... (here note how big the overlap is between breeds for most traits, and clumpiness is rare, but present)
Only an anecdote, but our orange cat doesn't really conform to any of the stereotypes. He so smart he taught himself how to open doors.
Another anecdata - my cat growing up was orange, and he was plenty smart. He was very relaxed/chill but would come when called and was an excellent hunter of the house mice.
His mom was a very intelligent calico (she communicated with people impressively well), and his dad was an unknown feral cat, so I think his smart-cat genes were more noticeable than whatever correlates with orange.
So did my orange. He learned to open doors so he can maybe get some food.
He doesn't play with any of the cat toys (our other cat loves those and begs to play), is barely active and only runs (his whole belly jiggles side-to-side when he's running) after his dental treats which we throw so he can get some exercise.
He's an odd ball for sure. Goofy, loving. A little chubby, but the vet says it is probably fine considering his laziness and he is healthy otherwise (knock-wood).
I LOVE MY ORANGE CAT LOL
There's the "my anecdote trumps those scientists facts" guy. Never fails.
Wait until you find out about the thousands of anecdotal reports from parents about “sugar rush” in their kids- also without foundation
Humans carry this GTPase as well. GTP is energy source of receptors called G protein coupled receptors. They are about 750 these and many of them are catecholamine receptors, like the serotonin and dopamine receptors.
Humans also carry this gene. https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/Q6ZRI8/entry
In humans, both DNA and RNA are mostly expressed in the brain and in the endocrine system.
https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000147256-ARHGAP36/tissue
For cats it very well may be different. Genes do not express activity the same indifferent species and they’re definitely not the same in different parts of the body. Genes can express RNA in one part of the body and more DNA and another part.
But I think this deletion is really about how it affects the methylation the gene.
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60 years of dissecting fluffy orange kittens is a lot of fluffy orange kittens. =(
Good news: Genetic research does not involve direction.
Source: I have had my genome sequence. I was not dissected.
They did hurt some cats. You cannot do RNA sequencing without looking at tissue samples:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222...
"We first performed RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) on skin tissues obtained from the auricles of different adult calico cats (#19, #20, and #22, females, precise ages unknown)"
Auricles are the earlobes.
"We then analyzed multiple skin tissues obtained from a young calico cat that died of unknown causes (#01, female, 3 weeks old) "
"A) Expression levels of ARHGAP36 and IGSF1 in cat auricles (left) and skin tissues (right). RNA-seq data were obtained in small auricle pieces of different coat colors derived from different cats (left) and in skin samples of different coat colors derived from a single calico cat (#01) (right)."
Biological samples Domestic cat blood Inakazu Dog & Cat Kashii Hospital https://www.inakazu-vet.com/ Domestic cat ovary Cat clinics in Japan N/A Domestic cat auricular Cat clinics in Japan N/A
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Why would you need to dissect kittens for a gene study?
Dissected cats indeed make for terrible jeans. Very kitsch.
You would make a terrible Igor
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