Mackerel Tabby Cat Patterns
Mackerel tabby personality grey tabby cat personality tabby cat patterns and coat colors tabbies are domestic kitties that feature a coat with distinctive stripes lines dots or swirling patterns.
Mackerel tabby cat patterns. Tabby occurs in several colours the most common are brown tabby silver and orange tabby. The 5 tabby cat patterns. It is believed to have originated from the african wild cat felis sylvestris lybica and the european wild cat felis sylvestris sylvestris. But when the breeds mix the result is a much more prominent mackerel tabby pattern.
It is believed that these two ancestors mixed producing the mackerel tabby cat pattern we see in our furry friends today. The mackerel tabby is by far the most common cat coat pattern with the brown mackerel tabby being the one you ll spot the most. The mackerel tabby pattern is the original tabby pattern. A tabby cat is not a breed.
What colour is a tabby cat. Both of these wild cats have a pale striped tabby pattern. Other patterns started coming about as the result of selective breeding as well as unintended mutations. It consists of narrow stripes that start at the dark stripe along their spines and run vertically down towards their tummies.
Sometimes called a tiger cat mackerel tabbies have one solid dark stripe along their spine with more stripes branching off. The tabby cat originally had the pattern of the modern day mackerel variety. This pattern resembles the skeleton of a fish hence the name. The background hair consists of light and dark bands intermingled with dark lines spots or swirls layered on top.
So a cat with a t m t m or t m t b genotype sets the basic pattern of thin stripes mackerel tabby that underlies the coat while a t b t b cat will express a classic tabby coat pattern with thick bands and a ring or concentric stripes on its sides. It is thought to have originated from african and european wildcat genes. The most common tabby pattern is mackerel and its t m allele at the tabby gene locus is dominant over the classic or blotched allele t b. The lines are parallel to each other evenly spaced and resemble the skeleton of a fish hence the name mackerel.
Learn the differences between tabby cat patterns right here. Most experts believe that this cat came from african and european wild cats which makes sense given their overall appearance. So a mackerel tabby cat pattern can appear on many different cat breeds and refers to the arrangement of stripes on the kitty s body specifically that the stripes run vertically down the cat off. Tabby is a coat pattern and not a breed it consists of four patterns mackerel spotted classic and ticked.