The four subspecies of Geoffroy’s cat vary considerably in colour variation and size. Unlike most other wild cat species (all other wild cat species, perhaps) black Geofroy’s cats are common. These are called melanistic Geoffroy’s cats. It is due to a dominant autosomal allele. Their normal colour is shown the photograph below being typical of many small wild cat species.
‘Autosomal’ means not a sex chromosome. ‘Dominant’ in this context means an allele with produces the same phenotype (appearance) whether it is paired with an identical allele or not. You can see that some hair strands have white tips. This reminds me of what cat breeders call a ‘grizzled’ coat – silver tips on a melanistic black coat on an F1 Chausie, a jungle cat/domestic cat wildcat hybrid (click to see this cat).
SOME MORE ARTICLES ON THIS SMALL WILD CAT SPECIES:
