Cat genetics

[Souriquois]

Got in a debate on ABF, because well, racists usually like to use dog breeds as a justification for why some human groups can be better or more intelligent that others. I said this cannot be true, because dog breeds were largely created by humans (via inbreeding) and hence are not naturally occurring variations, and also a good example of why eugenics is a very bad idea (purebred dogs have lots of health problems). I said, if any animal variation could be compared to that of humans, it would be domestic cat breeds, because, while yes, some cat breeds were created by selective breeding by humans, naturally occurring cat breeds still exist. Not just that, but different cat breeds are still very similar, like humans. Look different, but mostly the same behavioural traits. South Asian breeds are believed to be most intelligent, but it seems that this is based on the subjective opinions of cat owners, not any scientific research. I would safely assume selectively bred (inbred) cats would be less intelligent and indeed Persians and related breeds, among the most inbred, are at the bottom of cat intelligence rankings.

Anyway:

Bayesian clustering of cat breeds. Clustering of breeds at K=17 and K=21 as calculated with SNPs and STRs respectively. Each column represents an individual cat. The y-axis represents Q, or the proportional estimate of genetic membership to the given cluster (K). Each K cluster is indicated by a unique color.



Principal coordinate analysis of cat breeds and worldwide random bred cat populations. Colour shades indicate the population membership of the respective random bred populations as determined by Kurushima (2011). Green, European or European-derived; light blue, Eastern Mediterranean; dark blue, Egypt; purple, Iraq/Iran; light pink, Arabian Sea; dark pink, India; light orange, Southeast Asia; dark orange, East Asia; white, pedigreed breed groups. a) SNPs as calculated by Reynold’s genetic distance (Reynolds et al. 1983); b) STRs as calculated by Nei’s genetic distance.



Here is something interesting about cats: the F_st between different cat breeds appears to be lower than that between different human ethnic groups in many cases:



You can find pairwise F_st data of cat breeds here.

However, this thing about cat breeds showing a lower fixation index than different human ethnic groups, kind of throws a curve ball in my thinking about "race". Basically, the genetic distance between most breeds of domestic cats is lower than the genetic distance between a "white" person and a "black" person.

But still, like humans, cat breeds aren't all that different in characteristics besides looks:

[soul49]

Apr 7, 2018 22:32:52 GMT -4 Souriquois said:

So I've been a cat expert my whole life then.

[Souriquois]

Here is something very interesting about domestic cats, not purebreds just generic house cats, in Poland, which are actually quite genetically distinct. It seems that Polish history seems to have had an effect on the genetics of Polish kitties, people's pets, and because of this, a genetic study on Polish cats could shed more light on the complex history of Poland and its people.

MtDNA sequences from 181 random bred Polish cats were analysed.
The Polish population stands out by the unexpectedly high frequency of the rare I haplotype.
More research on European and Asian cats are necessary to complete the world-wide database.
The study underscores the necessity of creating local databases for forensic purposes.

Domestic cats from Eastern Europe have been poorly represented in studies on mitochondrial DNA diversity for forensic purposes until now. The aim of the present study was to contribute to closing this gap. The genetic structure and the origin of a cat population in Poland were examined against the background of human migrations over the centuries. One hundred and eighty-one cats from animal shelters in seven cities were genotyped. Twenty-one mtDNA haplotypes were found, with only one haplotype present in each of the populations, at an average frequency of 63.54%, and 13 haplotypes being found only in single populations. The analysis revealed the unexpectedly high frequency of haplotype PL02, in previous studies observed only in single cats. Differences in the number of the haplotypes, from four to eight, were observed among the shelters. The findings are discussed with regard to a world-wide database of feline sequences and to the complicated history of Poland. The study underscores the necessity of creating local databases of haplotypes that are of high evidentiary value to the forensic investigations conducted in a given country.

kundoc.com/pdf-a-new-view-on-the-european-feline-population-from-mtdna-analysis-in-polish-domes.html

[Deleted]

I was looking at that genetic distance chart in humans. Someone on another forum kept making a big to-do about that. But then I noticed that the San are like 9% different than the Yoruba yet they are considered the same "race." I'd have to look through his posts to find the table he posted.

I can't find the chart he used but he also did use this Xing figure. Although I am not a fan of Razib Khan (I think he may be racist) I actually think he did a good job of explaining the graph that Xing provided.

blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/which-population-is-most-genetically-distant-from-africans/#.Wtg50XrwbIU

"That’s also part of the puzzle. In some ways all non-Africans can be thought of as a subset of the genetic variation of Africans. Those humans who reside outside of Africa are simply a diversified branch of Africans. From what I can tell the data is converging on the likelihood that there was only one migration out of Africa which resulted in the branches of non-African humanity. That means that those of us of non-African ancestry are all equally distant from the African root."

However I don't know if he still thinks this way because this was back in 2010.

I actually found the chart!

[Deleted]

Anyone with any thoughts on my post? I hope Souri isn't mad that I posted this on her cat genetics topic. It was just something I wondered about having seen someone on another forum use it. I totally understand if you delete it. No problem.

[Hypso The Musky Rat-Kangaroo]

Delilah. Is that study purposefully trying to find a distance between non-Africans and Africans? If so, there seems to be something fishy about it. You know there's one thing that I've noticed with these "race realists" that are weird. These guys like to talk about how "Africans" are so different from "nonafricans" yet they don't bring up how different "mongoloids" are form "Caucasians". Yes I don't like bringing this whole "Caucasian vs mongoloid vs negroid" thing because it's just genetic distances that equates with phenotypic difference but I've noticed that these "race realist" weirdos like to talk about how "Africans" are so different from "Europeans". Well guess what, these "Asians" are just as different genetically from "Europeans" as "Africans" are. These guys are trying to prove that there is some "racial affinity towards intelligence" but these population charts debunk this.

[Deleted]

This guy on 23andme forums said the distance between French and Han Chinese according to that chart I posted was only 6-7% difference and that between French and African was 9%. He said in a way that was like it was such a big deal.
Yet afterwards I actually noticed that the difference between San and Yoruba was 9% and this for people considered to be the same "race."

[Hypso The Musky Rat-Kangaroo]

Apr 19, 2018 17:34:01 GMT -4 @delilah said:

This guy on 23andme forums said the distance between French and Han Chinese according to that chart I posted was only 6-7% difference and that between French and African was 9%. He said in a way that was like it was such a big deal.
Yet afterwards I actually noticed that the difference between San and Yoruba was 9% and this for people considered to be the same "race."

Yes that often times becomes conflicting. Population genetics has confused a lot of people especially "race realists". I'm not so sure how accurate that chart that he gave was, by still, there is a defined difference in terms of genetics between let's say a French person with a Chinese and a Yarubo. Even if one group is only slightly closer to the other.

Also this confusion came up with astrailian aboriginals and Papuans who are actually closer to chinese than they are to yarubos which is conflicting considering their appearance is closer to yorubas than they are to Chinese.

[Souriquois]

Apr 19, 2018 17:06:58 GMT -4 @delilah said:

Anyone with any thoughts on my post? I hope Souri isn't mad that I posted this on her cat genetics topic. It was just something I wondered about having seen someone on another forum use it. I totally understand if you delete it. No problem.

It's the same with people in the same "race" across the board, no just Yoruba and San or among African populations.

The genetic distance between a French person and a Swedish person is the same genetic distance between a French person and a Fulani person.

The French and Swedes are considered the same "race", but French and Fulanis are not.

And probably among "blacks", there is probably further genetic distances between different populations than other "races", since humans have been on Africa longer. Africa is the most genetically diverse continent. Looking at that chart, too, the French person is genetically closer to a San person than a Yoruba person is. Probably because we are talking about two separate human migrations, one group migrating out of Africa, who spread and became all the other people outside Africa, and another who migrated elsewhere in Africa (San are the oldest ethnic group, the people with the fewest genetic mutations).

Back to cats, I find it interesting that cats also have a similar continental variation as humans. For example, African breeds tend to be medium shaped with short to medium length fur and almond shaped eyes, South and Southeast Asian breeds have rounder eyes and are thin and sleek with really short fur, and Northeast and West Asian and European breeds tend to have almond-shaped eyes, big snouts, and be chubby and fluffy.

The genetic distance between different breeds of cats is very similar that from between different human ethnic groups. I dunno, I think this is one thing that is cool about cats, unlike other animals we keep as livestock or pets that we domesticated, they domesticated themselves (or maybe it was they who domesticated us). They followed us and evolved over time behaviour that makes humans instinctively want to take care of them and feed them, for example, their "meows" register at the same frequency as a human baby crying, which is a noise humans are incapable of tuning out (for good reason), so when they meow at us, we are instinctively going to give them what they want. Adult cats do not meow at other cats, they usually communicate with each other through body language, scents, chirps, trills, growls, hisses, etc, as well as higher pitched sounds that humans cannot hear (ever see a cat's mouth open but no sound comes out? The cat is making a sound, you just cannot hear it). The "meow" we are familiar with is only used to communicate with humans, and feral cats are actually incapable of making that sound.

Probably cats on the African continent have more genetic variation too, since they have been there longer.

BTW, this made my day when I learned it: The Ancient Egyptian word for "cat" is "mau", pronounced like "meow".

[Souriquois]

Apr 19, 2018 17:43:16 GMT -4 Hypso The Musky Rat-Kangaroo said:

Also this confusion came up with astrailian aboriginals and Papuans who are actually closer to chinese than they are to yarubos which is conflicting considering their appearance is closer to yorubas than they are to Chinese.

Well, to go by appearance is misleading, I think. Appearance is a result of climate, for the most part. Lighter skin came about as humans migrated further from the equator, because they needed to absorb vitamin D more efficiently, and curly hair protects from heat stroke (straight hair pretty much acts like a fibre optic cable, pulling sunlight to your scalp... probably something that helped with vitamin D synthesis as well). Genetic variation can be caused just by humans being isolated from each other for so long. The early ancestors of Papuans and Chinese probably broke off later than Yoruba people. Papuans live in a warmer, sunnier, climate than the Chinese, so they would have kept darker skin and curly hair.

All humans have the same skin colour, though, technically. All humans are brown, because melanin is brown. A "white" person is brown, and a "black" person is brown. All humans have the same amount of melanin as well, it is just that darker skinned people have more active melanocytes, but melanocytes can be activated in lighter skinned people to release more melanin, that's what a tan is, and we tan to protect ourselves from UV radiation. And, light-skinned people are capable of tanning as dark as an African person (mind you, it takes a long time and most of us would burn before that point and outside of the poles, the sun doesn't stay up long enough)... I have seen it when I was up on a glacier in Alaska, our guide was a white guy, but when I got off the helicopter and he was walking towards us to greet us, I thought he was a black guy because he was so dark. He was like Wesley Snipes dark so he looked black from a distance, and I didn't think anything out of the ordinary, just thought he was a regular black guy, until he was closer and I noticed his beard which was blonde stubble, and European facial features. It was just that he had been on a glacier for months, in the Arctic in the summer when the sun never goes down, so he was getting the summer sun directly on him, but also the sunlight reflecting off the glacier as well, which tanned him. You have to wear very strong sunscreen when you are up on a glacier because of this reflection, otherwise it will burn you bad, the guides also put this sunscreen on the dogs as well because even they can burn even with all that thick fur that sled dogs (malamutes) have. You cannot get this sunscreen at regular stores, I have only seen it around here at the winter sports store where I get my snowboarding gear fixed and the military surplus store. I can imagine you could also find it at places like Bass Pro, too. If you had that sunscreen and got exposed to that intense of sunlight 24/7 for months on end like that dude on the glacier, you could tan black.

There are also drugs that have a effect of stimulating melanocytes (there are a couple heart medications that have that as a side-effect, I believe). I remember watching a documentary where a white guy took large amounts of such drugs so that he would appear like a black man, and walked around the city as an experiment, to see if he was treated any differently, and he most certainly was.

[Hypso The Musky Rat-Kangaroo]

Oct 6, 2018 12:29:16 GMT -4 Souriquois said:

Apr 19, 2018 17:43:16 GMT -4 Hypso The Musky Rat-Kangaroo said:

Also this confusion came up with astrailian aboriginals and Papuans who are actually closer to chinese than they are to yarubos which is conflicting considering their appearance is closer to yorubas than they are to Chinese.

Well, to go by appearance is misleading, I think. Appearance is a result of climate, for the most part. Lighter skin came about as humans migrated further from the equator, because they needed to absorb vitamin D more efficiently, and curly hair protects from heat stroke (straight hair pretty much acts like a fibre optic cable, pulling sunlight to your scalp... probably something that helped with vitamin D synthesis as well). Genetic variation can be caused just by humans being isolated from each other for so long. The early ancestors of Papuans and Chinese probably broke off later than Yoruba people. Papuans live in a warmer, sunnier, climate than the Chinese, so they would have kept darker skin and curly hair.

All humans have the same skin colour, though, technically. All humans are brown, because melanin is brown. A "white" person is brown, and a "black" person is brown. All humans have the same amount of melanin as well, it is just that darker skinned people have more active melanocytes, but melanocytes can be activated in lighter skinned people to release more melanin, that's what a tan is, and we tan to protect ourselves from UV radiation. And, light-skinned people are capable of tanning as dark as an African person (mind you, it takes a long time and most of us would burn before that point and outside of the poles, the sun doesn't stay up long enough)... I have seen it when I was up on a glacier in Alaska, our guide was a white guy, but when I got off the helicopter and he was walking towards us to greet us, I thought he was a black guy because he was so dark. He was like Wesley Snipes dark so he looked black from a distance, and I didn't think anything out of the ordinary, just thought he was a regular black guy, until he was closer and I noticed his beard which was blonde stubble, and European facial features. It was just that he had been on a glacier for months, in the Arctic in the summer when the sun never goes down, so he was getting the summer sun directly on him, but also the sunlight reflecting off the glacier as well, which tanned him. You have to wear very strong sunscreen when you are up on a glacier because of this reflection, otherwise it will burn you bad, the guides also put this sunscreen on the dogs as well because even they can burn even with all that thick fur that sled dogs (malamutes) have. You cannot get this sunscreen at regular stores, I have only seen it around here at the winter sports store where I get my snowboarding gear fixed and the military surplus store. I can imagine you could also find it at places like Bass Pro, too. If you had that sunscreen and got exposed to that intense of sunlight 24/7 for months on end like that dude on the glacier, you could tan black.

There are also drugs that have a effect of stimulating melanocytes (there are a couple heart medications that have that as a side-effect, I believe). I remember watching a documentary where a white guy took large amounts of such drugs so that he would appear like a black man, and walked around the city as an experiment, to see if he was treated any differently, and he most certainly was.

There appears to be certain laws to human skin color variation (presumably any form of life variations specifically mammals) to where it can only range from blackish skin to somewhat pasty pinkish with brownish variation in the middle (obviously humans can't have blue or green skin for instance). It appears that colder climates has something more to do with facial features rather than skin color. I'm assuming this because eskimos who live in the far north managed to retain there dark skin, but it does appear that colder climates do create "keener" features meaning thinner noses and thinner lips. It isn't sure how straight hair came to be considering that straight is the most common hair type for most ethnic groups regardless of climate. Some researchers claim that there is a correlation with warm climates and curly hair but that doesn't explain why South American Indians have straight hair and many ginger Northern Europeans have curly hair.

[Liza]

Oct 6, 2018 15:14:35 GMT -4 Hypso The Musky Rat-Kangaroo said:

Oct 6, 2018 12:29:16 GMT -4 Souriquois said:

Well, to go by appearance is misleading, I think. Appearance is a result of climate, for the most part. Lighter skin came about as humans migrated further from the equator, because they needed to absorb vitamin D more efficiently, and curly hair protects from heat stroke (straight hair pretty much acts like a fibre optic cable, pulling sunlight to your scalp... probably something that helped with vitamin D synthesis as well). Genetic variation can be caused just by humans being isolated from each other for so long. The early ancestors of Papuans and Chinese probably broke off later than Yoruba people. Papuans live in a warmer, sunnier, climate than the Chinese, so they would have kept darker skin and curly hair.

All humans have the same skin colour, though, technically. All humans are brown, because melanin is brown. A "white" person is brown, and a "black" person is brown. All humans have the same amount of melanin as well, it is just that darker skinned people have more active melanocytes, but melanocytes can be activated in lighter skinned people to release more melanin, that's what a tan is, and we tan to protect ourselves from UV radiation. And, light-skinned people are capable of tanning as dark as an African person (mind you, it takes a long time and most of us would burn before that point and outside of the poles, the sun doesn't stay up long enough)... I have seen it when I was up on a glacier in Alaska, our guide was a white guy, but when I got off the helicopter and he was walking towards us to greet us, I thought he was a black guy because he was so dark. He was like Wesley Snipes dark so he looked black from a distance, and I didn't think anything out of the ordinary, just thought he was a regular black guy, until he was closer and I noticed his beard which was blonde stubble, and European facial features. It was just that he had been on a glacier for months, in the Arctic in the summer when the sun never goes down, so he was getting the summer sun directly on him, but also the sunlight reflecting off the glacier as well, which tanned him. You have to wear very strong sunscreen when you are up on a glacier because of this reflection, otherwise it will burn you bad, the guides also put this sunscreen on the dogs as well because even they can burn even with all that thick fur that sled dogs (malamutes) have. You cannot get this sunscreen at regular stores, I have only seen it around here at the winter sports store where I get my snowboarding gear fixed and the military surplus store. I can imagine you could also find it at places like Bass Pro, too. If you had that sunscreen and got exposed to that intense of sunlight 24/7 for months on end like that dude on the glacier, you could tan black.

There are also drugs that have a effect of stimulating melanocytes (there are a couple heart medications that have that as a side-effect, I believe). I remember watching a documentary where a white guy took large amounts of such drugs so that he would appear like a black man, and walked around the city as an experiment, to see if he was treated any differently, and he most certainly was.

There appears to be certain laws to human skin color variation (presumably any form of life variations specifically mammals) to where it can only range from blackish skin to somewhat pasty pinkish with brownish variation in the middle (obviously humans can't have blue or green skin for instance). It appears that colder climates has something more to do with facial features rather than skin color. I'm assuming this because eskimos who live in the far north managed to retain there dark skin, but it does appear that colder climates do create "keener" features meaning thinner noses and thinner lips. It isn't sure how straight hair came to be considering that straight is the most common hair type for most ethnic groups regardless of climate. Some researchers claim that there is a correlation with warm climates and curly hair but that doesn't explain why South American Indians have straight hair and many ginger Northern Europeans have curly hair.

Are monolids also a cold adapted trait? 

[Hypso The Musky Rat-Kangaroo]

Oct 7, 2018 10:39:04 GMT -4 Liza said:

Oct 6, 2018 15:14:35 GMT -4 Hypso The Musky Rat-Kangaroo said:

There appears to be certain laws to human skin color variation (presumably any form of life variations specifically mammals) to where it can only range from blackish skin to somewhat pasty pinkish with brownish variation in the middle (obviously humans can't have blue or green skin for instance). It appears that colder climates has something more to do with facial features rather than skin color. I'm assuming this because eskimos who live in the far north managed to retain there dark skin, but it does appear that colder climates do create "keener" features meaning thinner noses and thinner lips. It isn't sure how straight hair came to be considering that straight is the most common hair type for most ethnic groups regardless of climate. Some researchers claim that there is a correlation with warm climates and curly hair but that doesn't explain why South American Indians have straight hair and many ginger Northern Europeans have curly hair.

Are monolids also a cold adapted trait? 

Monolids are an adaptation that form in climates that force your to "squint" excessively and simultaneously. Monolids aren't exclusive to those of the Far East. The Khoisans of South Africa have also acquired this adaptation presumably from there heavy exposure to the sun. Cold climates are only one possible factor for the development of it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that cold climates will always force these adaptations.