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Very often the appropriate lens for genetic expression isn’t traits, it’s tools - a gene knockout isn’t “blue eyes now”, it’s “socket #6 is missing from the kit,” which is why you’ll see blue eyes and a bunch of other unrelated stuff.

(With love to my blue-eyed friends in the thread)

Yeah but there's good reason for an investigation here, in particular:

  Arhgap36 is known to cause developmental problems in other animals when it is over- or under-functioning.

Do you think it’s always been that way?

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.

I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of all subreddits are cat related.

Get rid of the other 20%.

I've been blocking subs in RES for years now, it's over 7000 last I checked and most I see on /r/all now is cat content. It's GLORIOUS

fyi: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd6EjvCDRRWlkHjEYvSfOkA

I never understood the extreme love for cats. I considered getting one for my daughter but the toxoplasmosis alone makes cat ownership an immediate nope and that’s before the cat piss/poop you can immediately smell in a house with cats in them.

It might just be because he loves you. Of course, it could also be:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scent_rubbing#Domestic_cat

pretty sure its a sex thing - makes sense for females to lift up their rear and I guess there isn't any evolutionary pressure for that sensitivity to not exist in males as well.

Ever have someone bang on your lower back that way? It feels good :)

[dead]

South Park really spread "ginger" as the term in the US. Since that episode, everyone I know uses ginger instead of redhead, whereas I only learned the word ginger from that episode.

No, they've been orange since long before that. Cause, y'know... that's their color!

Turns out it's a dead tie in English books though, wow: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=orange+cat%2Cg...

It's because they have no soul!

Cookie and biscuit are two different things. Which two depends on country, but still two different things

FWIW, I believe petroleum is a synonym for crude oil. If you put it in your cars fuel tank, you'll have a bad time. Gasoline is made from petrolium.

But doesn't roux/rouge just mean "red"?

"Ginger" doesn't mean "red", except for hair color. And that's the interesting part.

The redhead, ginger, color link comes from early season ginger, which has reddish pink tips around the leaves right above the fresh root.

People will still refer to redheads as "ginger" but only some of the time

If you would then please explain the "kick a ginger day" from SouthPark

In UK English ginger isn't exactly a color either. It's not like yellow or orange. It's a state of being.

I don't know why this is being downvoted. Does "ginger-colored" sound right to you? It doesn't quite work.

Most likely this is because orange cats are almost always male, and (neutered) male cats tend to be goofier than females.

I think the association with discrimination against red haired humans is a stretch though

I had couple of cats (orange male and tortoiseshell female) that lived 20 years after I picked them off the street. The female had only one kidney and the male had an extra vertebra but these things only became a problem in their last year.

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.

I agree but I don't think it's related to prejudice against redheaded humans, wrt the cats I think it's some sort of confirmation bias.

Have had >13 cats in my life, and they're all fucking weird.

I was just thinking how behavioral differences of red haired foxes, cats, and humans from their closest relatives are explained by the same sort of proopiomelanocortin and other substantia nigra differences from weak MC1R activity.

Tangential and sample size n = 1, but the two orange cats in my life were spankers/lovers of cat bongos whereas all other coloured cats were not.

There is something different about them, and the red hair thing is a coincidence.

Hey, some of us love and appreciate that red hair too!

Did you know people with blue eyes are more likely to have bipolar disorder? This of course doesn’t mean everyone blue eyes has bipolar disorder but it makes it more likely. I think the issue may be playing out in orange cats as well. It’s certainly not going to give me every orange is weird, but it increases the likelihood and I think that’s why we see the stereotype play out.

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.

Racism towards...orange cats? Is that your contention?

That's true. They seem to be more sensitive to pain in general, though. And I've wondered if that might in some people lead to a heightened degree of something called Misanthropic Person Memory: https://oscarybarra.lsa.umich.edu/Main_Site/Publications_fil...

That could be why my cat, age 6, still hasn't figured out that that tentacle thing that always follows him is his own tail. He thinks it's another quantum Obie.

This implies that the act of observing a cat doesn't collapse their wavefunction. This could have big implications for quantum computing!

Depressing that some would call you a kook. Creativity is where new science happens.

I have often been called a kook myself. I feel my Schizoaffevctive disorder is expressed because the quantum state most people express is not the same as mine.

My cat desperately meowed at me this morning to go outside to hang out with her enemies, which I denied her request. She brought a very much alive and unharmed chipmunk home the other day which was booking it around our great room until we corralled him outside with a broom. The live bird incident was even more dramatic. It’s like having a mischievious goblin living in your house. But she does keep the mice from coming in during the winter!

Another anecdata - my cat growing up was orange, and he was plenty smart. He was very relaxed/chill but would come when called and was an excellent hunter of the house mice.

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.

So did my orange. He learned to open doors so he can maybe get some food.

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

They did hurt some cats. You cannot do RNA sequencing without looking at tissue samples:

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

Dissected cats indeed make for terrible jeans. Very kitsch.

You would make a terrible Igor