Introduction
This is a little news story about hybrid cat DNA and cat species evolution. You won’t read it anywhere else. The story comes from Kathrin Stucki, who is a well know figure in the world of cats partly because, with her husband, Martin, she owns and manages A1 Savannahs in Oklahoma. A1 Savannahs is a very high profile breeder of Savannah cats and servals. They raised the famous Scarlett’s Magic, “the world’s tallest domestic cat“.
Kathrin knows a lot about cats in general and wild cat hybrids in particular. She wrote a very interesting article for PoC some years ago called Full Moon Kittens. Here is an extract:
“Martin, my husband, has the current moon phase displayed on his cell phone because he knows the night of the full moon will bring us babies…”
Anyway, Kathrin has been working on Hybrid Cat DNA. In this instance she refers to wild cat hybrids. These are domestic cats that are a product of the mating of a wild cat species, such as the serval, and a domestic cat.
Wild Cat Hybrid DNA
I can’t do much better than to quote Kathrin verbatim:
I had the opportunity to work at A&M University, Texas, in the Laboratory of Veterinary integrative Biosciences. I wanted to share some insight and thought you would possibly be interested to hear about it.
I moved into an extended stay and worked full-time in the laboratory, under the supervision of Professor William Murphy, who is world leading in the field of hybrid feline sterility research. The time in the lab, enabled me to work with my own cat’s DNA as well as that of cats from other hybrid breeders.
In preparation for this stay, I had collected DNA samples from all our breeding cats and kittens, including the Servals. For most cats we took the DNA through a cheek-swab, but for the Servals, we preferred to draw a blood sample.
Back in the lab, I learned how to extract the DNA from the blood of the wild and hybrid cats and I was able to amplify certain genes with the help of a PCR1. By comparing the genes of different Savannah cat generations as well as those of Serval, Asian leopard and Chausie cats, I was able to see the genetic differences and similarities of each species. A discovery that matched up with the experience I had with these cats in person.
On the same stay, I thawed skin cells from an Asian Leopard which were frozen in the ’80s. With careful nurturing and incubating of the at first lifeless cells, I was able to witness the miracle of mitosis2 and with it, the growing of new leopard skin tissue, right in front of my microscope viewer.
As a longtime Savannah cat breeder I am familiar with a little bit more than the basics of how it comes to the creating of a hybrid cat. But to be able to enter the sub-microscopic world of the genes of my own cats gave me a whole new understanding of the uniqueness of the Savannah cat breed.
In the attached graph (see above) that was created by my colleges at the A&M University, one can see the evolutionary development of different cat species. The time table shows the estimated time frame when individual feline species have evolved. The table shows that the Bengal cat’s ancestors are 3 Mio years3 apart while the evolutionary difference in the Savannah cat’s ancestor is 5.3 Mio years.
It is perhaps that differing genetic pool which makes the Savannah cat so unique not just in her appearance but also in her unusual sharp intellect.
Notes:
- PCR stands for “polymerase chain reaction” as far as I am aware. It is the process of “generating thousands to millions of copies of a particular DNA sequence” (Wikipedia).
- A form of nuclear division – the word nuclear refers to the nucleus of an animal’s cells.
- MIO stands for Million
Michael – now if only the british media would not denigrate Cameron but appreciate the fact that he did what the country wanted and succeeded in allowing democracy to work. Instead they are all calling him a loser except the guardian of course. Politics is sad – it’s not realistic, it’s competitive for all the wrong reasons. He deserves applaud for doing the right thing.
Incidentally – although I wasn’t born there, my mum is from LA and I am american – I’m a dual national, french as well. But you would never believe it, thinking I am 100% english if you met me 🙂
And finally – incase the amnesia continues it should further be remembered that:
“In the late 1980s, the US and UK took no action when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iranian forces — and Iraqi Kurds in Halabja.
The US knew about, and in one case helped, Iraq’s chemical weapons attacks against Iran in the 1980’s, according to recently declassified CIA documents obtained by the US website Foreign Policy.
Its report indicated that the US secretly had evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks in 1983. The evidence, according to FP, is “tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched.”
…………………………….so it’s impossible in my mind to get my head around any of this grandstanding to begin with. The government relies on our average person’s lack of knowledge. If people bothered to dig a bit deeper they would of course be shocked and history different.
Michael – so do I but the difference is clearly that in the US the nice people have no say in what the government does whereas here we have just seen that the government does what the people wants to a great enough extent as to avoid war. The ex head of the british army talked about how our troops are citizens and that no war should be fought without the consent of the british people because the troops are british people and they need to feel like its all for a good reason.
Whereas in the US the purposefully make sure the their troops have absolutely no idea about anything – except the basic politics the government feeds them so they all just go running into war because they believe their government, not because they are the people and the people have spoken. HUGE, ENORMOUS difference in my opinion. They are actually trained to look at arabs as “dead bastards” and so on. It’s an entirely different mindset.
Yet the US is full of people who also have the right idea, but they aren’t technically speaking in a true democracy so it doesn’t work according to the people, but according to money, which diverts the government from the will of the people.