All hail, King Garfield the First!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
What exactly makes an orange cat… orange? Why are they gingers? Are they IRISH?
To find the answer… let’s go to JAPAN… and meet Hidehiro Toh and team at Kyushu University. They compared the DNA of eighteen cats – ten with orange fur and eight without.
They found that a single deletion in one gene – named ARHGAP36 – is likely responsible for orange coloring. This means JUST ONE orange ancestor could be the forefather of all orange cats today! So call him … Orange Julius Caesar! Or Genghis Kat!
Now we know… they all share the same genes. Makes sense. They only share one brain cell – that loves lasagna.
Reference: Hidehiro Toh, Wan Kin Au Yeung, Motoko Unoki, Yuki Matsumoto, Yuka Miki, Yumiko Matsumura, Yoshihiro Baba, Takashi Sado, Yasukazu Nakamura, Miho Matsuda, Hiroyuki Sasaki, A deletion at the X-linked ARHGAP36 gene locus is associated with the orange coloration of tortoiseshell and calico cats, Current Biology, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.03.075.