Explained the phenomenon of two-sided cats

There is a separate Facebook page, a video posted on YouTube that attracts more than 1 million viewers and appeared in the Today Show last week, the 3-year-old Venus is currently the most famous cat girl on the action. fine.

>>>The two-sided cat

The reason Venus attracted the attention of so many people is due to its extremely special face: half with black hair and green eyes, the other half yellow with blue eyes.

Professor Leslie Lyons, who specializes in genetic research in domestic cats at the University of California, Davis, said she had never seen a cat with a face divided into two halves with high precision like Venus. .'This is an extremely rare but perfectly explainable case , ' Lyons said.

Venus also has the other name 'Chimera' . In Greek mythology, Chimera is a monster created from a collection of parts of many different animals. Similarly, the term 'Chimera' here refers to a cat whose cells contain two types of DNA formed when two embryos are joined together.

Venus cats and faces with two completely different colors.(Photo: Today Show / NBC)

According to Lyons, in fact, this phenomenon is not small, most black-spotted cats are like that. This is a sign that they have an extra X chromosome. But with Venus, the body already has two X chromosomes so the mutation still occurs even if no X chromosomes are added.

Explaining the strange face of Venus, Lyons remarked: 'Absolutely by luck' , at the same time hypothesizing: perhaps the black hair color is randomly activated in all cells on one side of the face. of it, while the orange color is activated in the other half, then these two 'patches' meet at the center of the face.

Besides, the other special thing is a blue-eyed Venus even though other normal cats are green or yellow. Blue eyes can only be found in Siamese cats or white cats, while Venus is not in these two cases.

Overall, "Venus is still a mystery even for experts," Lyons added, to be sure, genetic testing is essential, we can get DNA markers with skin samples from each side. Venus face.

Reference: Nationalgeographic