Animals can have the most varied and unique colors. There are pets with a monochromatic coat, and some amaze the imagination with a beautiful pattern or an unusual combination of colors.
Terminology
If you turn to the terminology, you can get some information about the scientific names of the most common colors. Animals uniformly colored with one shade have a solid color type. But the pattern on the wool is called tabby. It can represent stripes, circles, abstract stains on the pet's fur. The dominant agouti gene gives a special color to the multi-colored coat. The gene is characterized by the fact that it gives each hair a specific color, which is a transverse alternation of dark and light stripes along the entire length.
The agouti type color is found in nature in animals such as: cats, rabbits, gerbils, guinea pigs.
Genetics
The dark color of the hairs is given by a special pigment - eumelanin. It is concentrated in a greater amount in the cells of the dark stripes and, accordingly, in a smaller amount - in the light stripes. Pigment granules, which have an elongated elliptical shape, are discharged enough in the hairs, creating a soft shade.
We can say that the agouti color is such a color in which the hairs are divided into zones that differ from each other in the concentration of the pigment.
There are three different varieties of agouti coat color. These are chinchilla, tabby and shaded.
Agouti Tabby
Geneticists believe that tabby color is primary in relation to all others. Therefore, it is often called "wild color." Tebbie is agouti in the classical sense, ie. the coat is composed of hairs divided into light and dark stripes. Allocate: tabby mackerel, which creates brindle and marble tabby. It gives the animal an extraordinary look thanks to its speckled tail and wide streaks on the back, reminiscent of marble. Small specks, scattered over the entire surface of the pet's body, inform that a representative with a spotted tabby color is in front of the eyes. Abyssinian cats are vivid representatives of animals with the Abyssinian tabby color - the pattern is located only on the muzzle.
Agouti shaded and "chinchilla"
With this color, the tip of each hair has a lighter colored area than the rest of the hair. This gives the color a soft, delicate, as if "sprayed" shade. Geneticists still cannot determine which gene is responsible for the appearance of such an unusual color of pets and attribute this trait to a combination of two specific genes at once.
In the chinchilla color, the pigment is concentrated only in the upper part of the hair.
When the shade sign is combined with agouti, the colors "chinchilla" and shaded agouti appear. Chinchilla is characterized by the fact that the hair is brightly colored at the very end and rather pale along the entire length. Upon closer examination of such an animal, it may seem that its fur is sparkling. In shaded agouti, the upper half of the hair is light, and the lower half is dark. Therefore, the animal acquires a rather rich, but at the same time gentle calm shade.
