Which means it's inconclusive if the gene is responsible for behavior.
But, collectively we know it may be.
Like most hair/skin coloring, it's related to melanin production, regulation, and distribution.
(With love to my blue-eyed friends in the thread)
But I don't know how well a gene knockout maps to a single tool missing (in terms of analogy); due to the intricate, complex, functional history of evolution, many genes play multiple roles (a wrench can be used as a hammer), and many phenotypes are resilient to loss of one or another tool (can't find wrench? Use this hammer instead!) Understanding those details at the molecular level and relating them to the full human phenotype has been a major interest of mine for decades, but I can't say I really understand anything about it.
Though with the weird proviso that every so often, each cell opens up its cabinet of blueprints and just 3D-prints up one of every tool it has a blueprint for, unless sees a sticky note on the blueprint telling it to skip (silence/suppress) printing one of that tool for now.
(And, if anyone is wondering, this strategy of "just always print all tools unless otherwise specified" works because these tools are mostly very flimsy, breaking/being consumed quickly after just a few uses, sometimes as little as one. So there's a constant need for new prints of most of these tools. The ones that are more durable, the cell has to be more careful to not overproduce.)
I say that "tool blueprints" is a useful model, because it makes it more intuitive that e.g. for the important stuff, the genome keeps a pile of duplicate blueprints for the same tool; and then also keeps some machinery (autosense suppressors) to add and remove notes to those blueprints on observing that there's "enough" or "not enough" of the tool floating around inside/outside the cell. Which allows "having N redundant tool blueprints" to work just like "having only one tool blueprint" does, rather than drowning you in printed tools; yet also ensures that if something scribbles over one of the blueprints, everything "just keeps working", since the machinery will just end up unsilencing the other blueprints more often. (And also, as a bonus, allows the "corrupted" duplicate blueprints to act as forks of the parent blueprint, gradually being redrawn over N generations of mutations into a working blueprint for a new tool, much more quickly than a new tool blueprint could be mutated into existence from scratch, and without losing the ability to produce the original tool in the process.)
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Oh, and to be even more pedantic, it's probably best to think of genes as tool part blueprints, since several proteins might need to come together and link up to make a functional tool; and since a single part might end up being consumed in the creation of several different tools. (But that doesn't really add much to predictive intuition, unless you're trying to predict the precise failure modes of any particular tool's production under a point mutation of a single part. You can mostly forget about it.)
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.
Impossible to follow any topic without it devolving into political flame wars.
It isn't like the relevant environment — the set of Internet forums — somehow predates human influence; it is nothing but the sum of human influence.
Cat pictures at least add joy and mirth, and are driven by real people without outside motivation.
If anything is pollution in that environment / context, is is the rise of content driven by surveillance capitalism and political corruption.
At this point (at the risk of turning a measure into a target), might we be able to gauge the natural-ness of a forum by the number of cat pics?
Scientists Find a Surprising Link Between Cats And Happiness Across 93 Countries (05 October 2026) https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-find-a-surprising-li...
> If you're looking for a boost of household happiness, then you might want to consider getting yourself a cat.
> In a new study published in PLOS One, an international team of researchers analyzed publicly available data across 93 countries to examine the relationship between happiness scores, domestic cat density, and infection rates of Toxoplasma gondii – the parasite that affects as many as 1 in 3 people and which felines are the primary host of.
> ...
> "What we found is that countries with more cats tended to report higher levels of happiness, while countries with higher exposure to Toxoplasma gondii tended to report lower levels of happiness," say the study authors in a press release.
Wealth, health, cats and Toxoplasma gondii: An ecological correlational study of subjective well-being across 93 countries (September 30, 2026) - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0357911
> Conclusion
> This ecological study provides novel insights into the magnitude and robustness of the associations between happiness, cat density, T. gondii exposure, and socioeconomic factors across 93 countries. Our main findings showed that, besides the typical associations between subjective well-being and some socioeconomic factors, national happiness was largely and positively associated with cat density and largely and negatively associated with IgM T. gondii exposure. These results underscore the need for future studies integrating both socioeconomic and biological determinants of happiness and including longitudinal and interdisciplinary approaches to elucidate the underlying mechanisms and processes.
I can assure you it was 0.000% influenced by artificial systems.
Evidently, evaluating human sentiments is outside the scope of your training.
EDIT: Oh, wait, it must have been the emdashes! Sorry, I've been using those since before LLMs were invented. Where do you think the LLMs learned to use emdashes? From competent writers who used emdashes centuries before computers were even invented. Yeah, and that "flag" is soooo 2023. Please try to keep up.
“Dog people” heavily outnumber “cat people” almost always in polls. Like 44% to 18% in this one https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/docume...
Your neurodivergence argument holds up, just not in the way you think it does.
Plus it’s probably the toxoplasmosis that brainwashes us to love those furry little things.
Elsecomment I mentioned a recent article. Scientists Find a Surprising Link Between Cats And Happiness Across 93 Countries - https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-find-a-surprising-li...
> "What we found is that countries with more cats tended to report higher levels of happiness, while countries with higher exposure to Toxoplasma gondii tended to report lower levels of happiness," say the study authors in a press release.
The paper itself is https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0357911
I similarly prefer romantic partners with their own stuff going on outside of me vs someone who devotes their entire existence to me and needs to be directed.
In the UK these are ginger cats.
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.
Turns out it's a dead tie in English books though, wow: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=orange+cat%2Cg...
Though, https://www.reddit.com/r/catsinpants/ works for both forms of English.
“Biscuit” is not a category of foods in the US, while “cookie” is absolutely a category of desert with many different kinds.
If you ask for a biscuit here, you’ll get the same thing every time. If you ask for a cookie, you’ll be asked “what kind?”
Gasoline is from gas + plus the chemical suffix "ol" short for the latin "oleum", and "ine" meaning "made of".
"Ginger" doesn't mean "red", except for hair color. And that's the interesting part.
Does that help? :)
I don't know why this is being downvoted. Does "ginger-colored" sound right to you? It doesn't quite work.
I think the association with discrimination against red haired humans is a stretch though
Compare that to tortoiseshell or calico cats, which requires two different color genes (with calico requiring the "white spotted" gene in addition to two colors). That means something unusual usually has to happen for those colors to occur in male cats, which is why less than 0.1% of calicos are male.
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.
My brain seized up trying to picture this. They didn't say vertebrum, so that's not just a wee bone but a whole other second spine! How does it even...?? I must know!
Actually, I think I got it right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebra
Have had >13 cats in my life, and they're all fucking weird.
This paper demonstrates a connection with behavior. I personally suspect gingers have smaller amygdala.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381166835_The_Skin-...
There is something different about them, and the red hair thing is a coincidence.
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.
https://www.dentistryiq.com/dentistry/article/55260898/redhe...
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.
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 ).
Wave function collapse isn't caused by an observer, but rather "does the cat care about this?"
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.
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?
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)
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.
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
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.
(and you can see it on them in bright sunshine, perfect black cats are not, they exhibit both stripes and reddishness)
Source: I have had my genome sequence. I was not dissected.
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