#messybeast

Because of their resemblance to the familiar horse, there has always been great interest in taming and training zebras as riding and harness animals. In the 1760s, French naturalist Buffon belived that zebras could replace horses and there were rumours in Paris that the Dutch had already trained a team of zebras to pull a cart. Eccentric aristocrats around the world had zebr-carts at various times in the 19th Century.

Why was there such an interest in taming zebras in the late 1800s/early 1900s? There are several reasons. Britain was a colonial power and colonists tried to turn local fauna to their own use, often because imported European livestock didn’t thrive in the new conditions. Acclimation societies wanted to add new animals to the list of animals “useful to man;” the prevailing view was that the Christian god had made the animals for humans to use. Acclimation societies imported new species into European countries as potential additions to useful livestock. Circuses and showmen wanted to present something exotic to the paying public. Accomplished horsemen, eager to demonstrate their prowess in the saddle, wanted the challenge of taming and training the seemingly intractable zebra. One zebra four-in-hand was the result of a bet and took 2 years to accomplish, indicating a social class with plenty of leisure time. Aristocrats and rich eccentrics sought novelty.

Imported horses fared badly in Africa due to the climate and endemic diseases. The obvious (to colonists) solution was to domesticate native African equids. Horses had co-evolved with Europeans for thousands of years and had become domesticated, but zebras had never undergone that process and regarded humans as predators. They were also anatomically different from European horses, having stiff necks and very low withers. Nevertheless, many were successfully broken to saddle or harness. Once broken, they were tractable in harness, but their wild instincts made them easily spooked and they couild be ferocious kickers and biters. Many zebra teams included pairs of mules which had steadier temperaments. Hybrids were also bred, particularly in German East Africa where they were used for hauling gun carriages.

In the late 19th century, it was fashionable to train zebras to pull carriages. In the top photo, the three zebras are kept steady by a pony harnessed at the front. In the lower picture there are four zebras and the story of a wager. In the year 1898, in one of the many mews just off Cromwell Road, Kensington, lived Mr Hardy, who was a noted horserider and trainer, being one of the three men who had succeeded in riding the "French Rocking Horse". This was a device used by the French Cavalry. It had every possible movement of a wild horse not in the best of tempers. Leopold de Rothschild, who knew of Hardy's ability, was talking to friends of this achievement and said that he was willing to make a stake on his ability to train any animal resembling a horse. One of his friends took up this boast, and a stake was made that Hardy could not train a team of zebras to pull a coach through London. When after much trouble, the necessary beasts were obtained, Rothschild went to Hardy and told him the conditions of the wager. Hardy agreed to train them. The zebras were taken to Kensington and after 2 years hard work, Hardy informed Rothschild that his task was completed and that the team were ready for the road. At six o'clock one morning a strange sight was seen in London when, for the first time, a team of zebras were seen pulling a coach through London.

A number of colonial powers experimented with zebra-horse hybrids in Africa. It was hoped that the hybrids would be better suited to the African climate and better suited to saddle or harness. Others, such as zebra-ass hybrids, were bred by circuses or purely to give a stylish carriage mule.

A famous pair of harnessed zebras in the USA were Hans and Tanta who belonged to the Pevely Dairy Comapny. They were captured in Southwest Africa, near the city of Windhuk, and trained at the Hagenback Circus at Altona-Stellingen in Germany. In July 1929, at the age of 3 years old, they went to the Pevely Dairy Company in St Louis. Due to their early capture and training, Hans and Tanta were exceedingly gentle and well trained. In the 1930s, they became a familiar sight pulling the Peverly Dairy Co milk delivery wagon through the streets of St Louis.

The terms “pseudo-merle" or "merle effect” are only used here because there is no current term for this phenomenon in cats. I've used the terms descriptively, not genetically. I've used these terms to refer to non-dilute patches on a dilute colour, or to non-silver patches on a smoke, tipped/chinchilla or shaded silver cat.

In cats, there is no clearly identified gene and the effect it appears to be cosmetic only. Observation finds it to occur in smoke, tipped and shaded silver cats where some patches lack the silver undercoat. It appears to be most common on red-silver (chinchilla or shaded silver) cats that have non-silvered patches. It can occur in any breed... 

A pseudo-merle is found in the Topaz breed bred by Iryna Merzlenko (Cattery Nikita'l, Ukraine). These blue/black merle-pattern cats all have the silver gene and cannot all be chimeras due to their frequency. Although they look like a mix of smoke and solid colour, the different colours are due to the silver (inhibitor) gene working unequally in different parts of the coat giving darker and paler areas, but all with silver close to the skin. It appears to be linked to the blue-eye mutation and has occurred in a number of cats (and these are genetically related to the famous blue-eyed "Narnia" with his blue-and-black face, albeit not having the silver gene). Merle colour has been found in every litter with smoke kittens, and is often located on the belly or legs.

The underlying genetics are not yet known. No single mutation has been identified so genetic explanations are based on observation and on “what hasn’t been found.”

Many silvers seem to have some unsilvered patches, or patches where there is only a small amount of silver at the base of the hair-shaft. On those cats the expression of silver is variable, with a patchwork of light smoke and dark smoke areas. This could be due to polygene influences or even an unstable mutation that reverts during cell division i.e. a somatic mutation. For example, in e/e yellow/white dogs, these should have no black at all but often have scattered black hairs or small black patches.

Could white spotting increase the likelihood of merle effect, for example could it cause the coloured patches to clump and scatter as it does in calico cats? Or is it an optical illusion because the silver undercoat and white patches are hard for the human eye to easily distinguish? In tortie smokes, the red seems to be more affected that the black by the merle effect and this suggests that phaeomelanin deposition is more affected than eumelanin deposition (in the same way that the non-agouti gene does not completely eradicate striping in “self red” cats). Where some red appears lighter and some is darker, perhaps the theorised “chaos” and “confusion” polygenes are involved and disharmonize uniformity of hair ticking and clarity of tabby markings.

Leslie Lyons has theorized that "silver" (white undercoat) may not be an exome mutation and that the visual effect is due to clonal differences in the regulation of pigment production or pigment transport. Others suggest that silver is a bit unstable and tends to revert to wild-type. Clonal differences means a change occurs in a skin cell and when this cell divides and multiplies as the embryo or kitten grows, the daughter cells all inherit the change (the change might be subtle or might be dramatic). A single skin cell that somehow suppresses the silver gene could give rise to a distinct patch on non-silver fur. A single patch may break up and move apart as the skin surface increases, resulting in several coloured patches with the gaps filled in by the base colour.

If silver was an exome mutation, it would already have been found as the feline genome is well studied. The exome is the part of the genome formed by exons. Exons are DNA sequences which, when transcribed, remain within the mature RNA in cells of any type and not just transcribed in specific cells as part of cell specialization. Exomes account for a very small percentage of the genome, but exome mutations can have dramatic effects.

Omg, what a lovely thing to hear! Thank you so much, this makes me so happy it actually makes me a little teary eyed. ;) But you caught me with my pants down! Sadly I don’t really have much I can recommend to you. Most of my knowledge comes from stalking cat forums and breeders for years and years, collecting bits and pieces of information whenever they happen to drop in front of me. I might go on wild random research sprees, but usually it’s more patching information together by myself or asking other people with more experience in that particular field directly.

That being said! This page http://messybeast.com/colour-charts.htm is a great source of information with a pretty detailed section about cat colours. It’s worth checking out other sections as well. The messybeast is an incredible well of knowledge for all things CAT and most likely has a subsection which could direct you to articles and books for more information.

As helpful as those colour charts are, personally I never found them that satisfying because the real life colours on a cat just look a lot different and without having seen the “real” examples it can be very confusing to figure out which colour on the chart it’s supposed to be.

Another page that I really like, specializing in white cats (particularly the Foreign White) is this one: http://whitesiamese.net/

If you really really want to get into genetics, you might want to check for seminars around your area! Many breeders attend cat genetic seminars to study and learn about inheritance. The basics can be grasped pretty fast, but like with everything once you move on from the basics, things can get complicated real fast. It’s a truly fascinating topic though! 

In a perfect or near-perfect system, the prefix would be accurate enough for you to always have a reasonable idea of a cat's appearance (provided you knew what the prefix was - some of these English ones can be puzzling, such as coot- or brambling-, for example).

You're the first person I've heard of that has imagined Ferncloud or Leafpool as greenish. Most people tend to believe that the implication is green eyes, which makes sense (not really, but sort of) for Ferncloud as her eyes are canonically green. Leafpool, on the other hand, has amber-coloured eyes. 

I'm pretty against fern- and leaf- as prefixes, along with many others, simply because I am not convinced that they successfully fulfill the purpose of a prefix in the first place.