I had a big orange tabby that was a female. She lived to be 23 years old. She was a great cat. The one and only cat I'll ever own. I'm a dog person, yet she was like a dog. Most orange tabbies are male, but some are female as well.
There are some RARE situations where calicos can be males. It is if they have an extra Y gene. So their gene would be XXY instead of XX and a non calico. This is very rare. For the most part, you are correct, and calicos are female. This is a sex-linked genetic trait, that is why is only appears in females.Is it true that all calico cats are female and all orange cats are male?
Colors in cats tend to be gender-led, though NOT all red cats (also known as orange, or ginger) are males (there are several decent Maine Coon cat breeders that specialize in the reds and have both genders). The 'Red Gene' needs to be in both parents for red FEMALE kittens to show up in a litter, and this Red Gene is needed for either calicos/torties or red/orange/ginger.
Calicos/Tortoiseshells can be male, though this is rare, and the males tend to be sterile.
Most calicos are female, and as one poster quoted...it's due to chromosomes. Calico is a mutation. Calico males are supposedly sterile. I myself have never seen a male calico, and I have a feral colony at work full of calicos.
The orange cat theory is completely incorrect. While there probably are a greater percentage of orange males than females, I myself have an orange tabby female in the house, her mother was orange, my sister has an orange female, and I have seen countless numbers of them in the feral colony.
';Calico is a mix of orange, black, and white fur found on certain cats. Not all calico cats are female, but the vast majority are. Why? Like a lot of life's mysteries, it has to do with genetics.
PetPlace.com gives a surprisingly detailed explanation. Half a cat's chromosomes come from the mother, and half come from the father. The gene that determines a cat's coloring is found on the X chromosome.
Female cats have two X chromosomes, and each one can carry a different color. ';In calicos...one X has the black gene; the other X has the orange gene.'; At some point in the female cat's development, one X chromosome becomes inactive. The timing of this determines the amount of calico patches.
So calico coloring isn't that uncommon among female cats. It's just a matter of the right chromosomal combination. In males, things are more complicated because they only have one X chromosome and ';it's never inactivated.';
A male cat can be calico if it's created with ';two X chromosomes and a Y, allowing one X to be inactivated.'; This is a genetic defect known as XXY, and it's very rare. In fact, only one out of every 3,000 calicos is male.
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Male calicos and tortishells are very rare and when born they are sterile . Female oranges are less common than males. but not that rare, I don't think ( my shelter has had several lately). They are not sterile.
I bet there are lots of other animals that have correlations between gender and color, but scientists study animals a lot less than you'd think ( no funding for it, so no one to pay the scientists to do that type of work). Did you know that no one really studies common woodland animals at all? . My son wanted to go into wildlife research and found there really is almost no such thing. Amazing, when you consider their impact on our environment.
The world of feline genetics is complicated and bizarre, especially where color is concerned. White cats sometimes have a masking gene, which makes a black and white cat with it turn all white, and cats can also get vitiligo, and lose their color. I have a big red tom with this. He used to be solid dark red, but now half of one foot is very white. His color all over is fading, both fur and skin, so that the top half of his nose is now white and down near his lip it is still pink. He's developing a white lacy pattern on his tail. He also has two different lengths of long hair, with 6'; guard hairs ( so his arms look like an orangutan's). Plus his fur on his underside is curly, which isn't so uncommon, but it used to be on his head too, and his whiskers used to be so curly he chewed them off all the time. He's quite a smorgasbord of anomalies ! We never saw his relatives, because he came from an abuse situation, and was the only survivor ( when found the others were all taken to the pound and euthanized, but he slipped out of the box and was brought to the Humane Society). I've always been curious about what they looked like. Apparently he was one of a litter of 13, which is huge. He's super smart and loves water - always tries to flush the toilet, so unusual in that way too.
No it's not true with the orange cats! It's most likely that they are a male though! I Had a female orange cat and known many others.
but as for calico's it is very very VERY rare to find a male calico( I've seen one though)
so there you have it it is not true that there is only female calico and only male orange cat its just rare to have the opposite!!!!! HOPE THAT HELPS!!
A male calico or tortoiseshell cat is a mutation, XXY, and would be sterile. They are rare, but they do happen. As far as orange cats, they are predominately male, in a ratio of 3 or 4 to 1, but orange females are not all that rare, since 20-25% is not a small percentage.
The color genes are only found on the X Chromosome, which leads to the calico/torie pattern (XX being female). Conversely there's nothing preventing a female from being orange, considering they have twice the chance of getting the orange gene.
We have an orange cat and she is most definitely female.
http://www.1001cats.com/
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