We have two male black and white cats (also known as tuxedo cats, or holsteins), shown here. The older one, Ippy, is well known in the neighborhood for playing with kids in the park a block away, and following people walking by our house to the grocery store across the park, waiting for them outside, and walking with them back to our house. Ippy was almost a year old when he adopted the younger, Tacaribe, without involving us in the decision (Tacaribe had two cameos on Tigerhawk soon after Ippy adopted him).

We had already discussed the interesting behavior of the black-and-white males with our vet, who told us that every single one she had run across had a very playful, mischievous and outgoing personality. She thinks it is much more pronounced in the males than the females. My husband's family had a black-and-white that was very similar to Ippy in his personality. He was people-centered rather than place-centered, which is uncommon in cats (a solitary species). For example, when they traveled and stopped in hotel for the night, they could put him out and he would come back to their room in the morning. We have come to the conclusion that the trait involved with such behavior is probably one that causes neoteny, or retention of juvenile (kitten) behavior in the adult.

This is not a particular breed of cat; Ippy and Taca have very different body types, and really only are similar in their coloring and spunky behavior. Looking in a big cat book at a book store once I noticed that many listed breeds had a black-and-white form, generally distinguished by a mostly black cat with white feet, chest/belly, and often forehead spot. For some reason, this behavior seems to be associated with this particular black-and-white coloring. Although this might seem a strange association, it is not unheard of. In Drosophila, the yellow gene, which is involved with the production of melanin (pigmentation) in the flies, also has neurological effects. Mutant males without the normal yellow gene have lower mating success than normal males, and there are apparently effects on larval foraging as well.

Behavioral neoteny in flies wouldn't really make much sense, because flies undergo complete metamorphosis - there wouldn't really be a way for an adult to act like a larva. But it is intriguing that there seems to be a similar connection between pigmentation and behavior in my cats.

Labels: behavior, cats, flies, genetics