• Question from:eileen girling

Thank you for your reply David, much appreciated.

http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?id=8533

Yesterday we had our black and white cat at the vets and when I mentioned that he had always been nervous the vet said " There is actually some evidence that black and white cats have a genetic tendency to develop stress". So I wondered David if any of you knew what the evidence was. Eileen xx

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  • University of Bristol
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As I said there is no published data on this that I can find.

  • University of Bristol
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You can obtain differences in the basal and stress-induced neuroendocrine response to stress in mice with different agouti genotypes -e.g., see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15779332, and this has to do with the role of this protein in the hypothalamic (in particular)-pituitary-adrenal axis.

The agouti gene is one of many genes controlling coat colour in cats, so I guess it is possible that black and white cats could have different stress reactivities in some circumstances (e.g., responses may be stressor-dependent) but like David I have not seen any evidence for this.

Last edited by Steve Lolait (17th Jun 2012 09:55:54)