Chimera cat

[RedwingS]

This cat is amazing.

Wow.

So cool

I find that a bit spooky for some reason.

Nice. I love the two-tone front paws. And that blue eye is amazing!

How can it be a fraternal twin? It's a tortoiseshell cat and they're all female. A black/ginger division down the nose and odd coloured eyes are common but this one is dramatic.

Yes, I don't know if it is really a chimera like they say or if it is just an unusual patterning. It looks really cool though.

I reckon that article used the work Fraternal because it's often used to mean non-identical twin and they didn't know the word sororal!

But you're right, she's a girl. If you look at the collar she's called Venus. And if you google her, the other mentions all say she's a girl.

Chimeras aren't unheard of, and it would be relatively easy to do a DNA test and find out.

Fraternal twin simply means two separate fertiliser eggs. Occasionally the two eggs fuse and then start dividing, resulting in different parts of the body having different DNA.

What's really cool about felines though is that a female can become pregnant by several different males in one litter, so a chimera cat could potentially have two fathers!

I saw a program about Chimeras and they said you often notice the patterning or different colours along the centre of the body, as when we're* in the womb, our skin starts growing at the back and joins at the front, so differences are more noticeable when the skin joins.

That may apply to multi-coloured animals like tortoiseshells as well as chimeras though?!

She has her own Facenook page anyway!

In the program I saw about Chimera people, there was a woman in the states who almost had her DcCs taken off her because of it.

She was on welfare and had two DCs. Somehow (i forget how) the local government got hold of some DNA results which showed that she couldn't possibly be her DC's mother according to the DNA, as it was the other "twin's" DNA, not the strain her DCs had.

They thought she was doing some kind of scam and since she wouldn't "admit" it, were preparing to take her DCs off her.

They wouldn't listen to any other evidence - not even the doctor who was present at the birth of her DCs who was willing to swear that he remembered the birth and knew that these DCs were hers.

Luckily for her family, she was pregnant again at the time, and when they tested the baby it showed the same result (which might not have been the case. The baby could have had either DNA strain from her I think) so they had to accept her story.

aufaniae, that sounds like a fascinating program! Scary for the lady though.