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Posted by bookofjoe 2 days ago

Secret of Orange Cats Revealed After 60-Year Search(www.sciencealert.com)
208 points | 168 commentspage 2
codesnik 6 hours ago|
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.
jdw64 9 hours ago||
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
quotemstr 7 hours ago||
Missed headline opportunity: "60-year orange cat itch finally scratched"
bitwize 10 hours ago||
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.
shagie 8 hours ago||
{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 ).

bitwize 3 hours ago|||
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.
antonvs 5 hours ago||||
This implies that the act of observing a cat doesn't collapse their wavefunction. This could have big implications for quantum computing!
shagie 5 hours ago|||
This leads us to Winger's cat (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend ). In the novel Timelike Infinity (great series btw), the Ultimate Observer is claimed to be the consciousness at the end of universe that collapses all entangled wave functions. Note the word "entangled" ... like a ball of yarn. The ultimate observer is a cat with a cosmic ball of yarn tracing back the histories of every particle.

Wave function collapse isn't caused by an observer, but rather "does the cat care about this?"

roughly 4 hours ago|||
Also explains the purring. Waveform collapse as all nine cats coalesce for pets.
Noaidi 7 hours ago|||
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.

dekhn 4 hours ago||
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)
optimalsolver 8 hours ago||
Do orange cats know they’re orange?
topspin 7 hours ago|
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.

wincy 6 hours ago||
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!
larkost 5 hours ago||
My parents' cat delivered a live baby bunny to the entrance hallways in the middle of my pre-wedding dinner. Once released the thing unfroze and zoomed under some baskets. It was an all-hands-on-deck exercise to corral both the terrified bunny, as well as the over-excited large dog who "wanted to get to know it".
MichaelZuo 9 hours ago||
“ 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?

pas 9 hours ago||
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)

combobyte 8 hours ago|||
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.
magneticnorth 6 hours ago|||
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.

le_curious 3 hours ago|||
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

kjs3 8 hours ago|||
There's the "my anecdote trumps those scientists facts" guy. Never fails.
Noaidi 9 hours ago|||
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.

Angostura 8 hours ago||
Wait until you find out about the thousands of anecdotal reports from parents about “sugar rush” in their kids- also without foundation
lstodd 4 hours ago||
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)

yoonge2 8 hours ago||
[flagged]
TurkishPoptart 4 hours ago||
[dead]
ourmandave 10 hours ago|
60 years of dissecting fluffy orange kittens is a lot of fluffy orange kittens. =(
Aurornis 9 hours ago||
Good news: Genetic research does not involve direction.

Source: I have had my genome sequence. I was not dissected.

Noaidi 7 hours ago||
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

liveoneggs 6 hours ago||
stray cats are fixed and have ears clipped in several countries so you have an excess of those tissues hanging around no matter what
Noaidi 5 hours ago||
First, it still hurts the cats.

Second, they clipped the cats ears at specific places because they needed different color hair follicle samples. They describe it in the paper.

shiandow 10 hours ago||
Why would you need to dissect kittens for a gene study?
etatester 8 hours ago|||
Dissected cats indeed make for terrible jeans. Very kitsch.
ReptileMan 9 hours ago|||
You would make a terrible Igor
shiandow 9 hours ago||
I would make several great Igors.
dotancohen 8 hours ago||
Marry an Olga and name all your children the same.