6 ms·
Do orange cats act/be dumber than the rest or is it Internet legend?
by aitchnyu 2y ago
Do orange cats act/be dumber than the rest or is it Internet legend?
- goodpoint 2y agoIt's an internet legend. There is zero difference in reality but people love anecdata.
- jdck1326 2y agosource?
- williamdclt 2y agoI think the burden of proof is on the "orange cats have statistically-significant behavioural specificity" side
- TheSpiceIsLife 2y agoI mean, they are orange.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- reducesuffering 2y agoThe stereotype is that orange cats are feistier. In my personal anecdotal experience it's true
- immibis 2y agoI thought that was about people, and it turned out there was actually some gene that affects both personality and hair colour.
- waveBidder 2y agowe have 2 orange kittens, and just this morning caught one of them trying to eat pebbles. there's always some weird new hijinks that they're up to.
- n-i-m-a 2y agoMy kitten had iron-deficiency when he was doing that. Maybe worth a quick check/ask and with a little bit of dietary change or a supplement the problem could be addressed.
- saghm 2y agoIn my anecdotal experience, it's 100% true, but this also seems like it might be a bit of confirmation bias.
- UncleSlacky 2y agoWhen I was a child I had a very intelligent (female) orange tabby.
- Miraltar 2y agoReading was instead of had was very confusing to me
- willis936 2y agoYes, but it's because 70% of orange cats are male and male cats tend to be more impulsive. It's a correlation rather than a causation. https://youtu.be/wPVBGE6uUS4 https://youtu.be/wPVBGE6uUS4
- consf 2y agoBut that doesn't necessarily mean they are less intelligent
- cainxinth 2y agoStupid is as stupid does
- shagie 2y agoGenetics says that this is also true for black cats (that most black cats are male). However, less is said about them and there's less meme / awareness about female black cats being less common. I suspect this is that an intact male orange cat is much more noticeably male than an intact male black cat.
- jzb 2y agomost black cats are male Huh, I had not heard that. In my experience it's pretty evenly split -- at least, in my circle of friends and family there's eight black cats, four of each. (Most short-haired, one long-haired black cat that's female.)
- shagie 2y agoCat coat color is an X linked gene, so there's no representation of it on the Y chromosome. Let's denote this as Xo and Xb for the genes. An orange female cat is XoXo, a tortoise shell / calico cat is XoXb and a black female cat is XbXb. Male cats are either XbY or XoY - there are no tortoise shell male cats (there are cats with Klinefelter's syndrome that can be XbXoY but only mentioning this for a full coverage of the topic - and for a real example of this https://disneylandcats.com/cat-profile-francisco/ https://disneylandcats.com/cat-profile-francisco/ and it confuses things since XbXbY and XoXoY cats would be difficult to identify without a genetic test). The thing with all of this is that the genetics for XoXo or XbXb and XoY or XbY are exactly the same percentages. Doing the Punnett squares for cat coats and all the possible pairings and you get simplified Genotype Count Percent of XX or XY XoXo 3 25% XoXb 6 50% XbXb 3 25% XoY 6 50% XbY 6 50% It ends up with 2/3 of the orange cats being male and 2/3 of the black cats being male. This doesn't quite match real world situations since you could have a colony that is dominated by orange cats (or black cats ... or neither).
- hakube 2y agothey're not dumb but they're a menace. They have some interesting quirks but the same could be said about black/tuxedo cats
- empty_space 2y ago[flagged]
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoThe cat that owns our family is good-natured, affectionate, well-behaved, and dumb as a bag of hammers.
- BankHottas 2y agoThis is my favorite HN comment of all time
- WXLCKNO 2y agoLmao. I don't often laugh on hn like this.
- consf 2y ago[dead]
- dennis_jeeves2 2y agoMine is wicked, self centered, and doesn't give 2 hoots about anybody except his food.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoProbably smart as hell. I have a friend, with a little black cat that has him completely wrapped around her paw.
- fiedzia 2y agoInternet legend. All cats do the same things. Some individuals are smarter, but I doubt it has anything to do with fur color. And I don't recall hearing anything special about orange cats from people who have many cats.
- yabones 2y agoIt's largely folklore, but there is a kernel of truth to it. Orange cats have a pretty "silly" attitude, kind of like golden retriever dogs. Black/tux cats are usually docile and friendly. Female tortiseshell/tabby cats are lunatics. But there's also quite a bit of individual variation. I'd say it varies more from cat to cat than the "breed" would imply.
- EasyMark 2y agoThis describes my black cat exactly; she runs and hides at the door bell, but when it all calms down, she inevitably comes out to see who it is and within half hour is trying to climb in their lap and is begging for attention from the new person. I had an orange cat once and he pretty much thought he was the family dog. I’ve never seen a friendlier cat, didn’t matter if it was another cat, a dog, a person, or a squirrel; anyone who would play he was ready to go.
- nikole9696 2y agoMore anecdata; my orange boy also thought he was the family dog. He was rather dumb as a rock, but sweet as pie. Loved every human or animal he ever met. My current cat is a calico and white and she's...emotional. =)
- moomin 2y agoMy next door neighbour was a ginger crossed with a persian. Let's just say there was a LOT of orange. The cat was very friendly to humans, and an absolute terror to foxes and any cat they didn't consider a neighbour.
- flkiwi 2y agoWe have an almost pure-black void that screams bloody murder at everything--pick her up, screaming; walk in the room, screaming; give her food, screaming--but cuddles more aggressively than any cat I've ever heard of and purrs nonstop (when she isn't screaming). She hisses as a primary communications mechanism. I hear that cat hiss more in a day than every hiss from every other cat I've ever had combined. She also panic poops when the other cat gets within 5 feet. She is pure, hate-filled joy.
- jzb 2y agoWe have a very fluffy orange guy who is... not dumb, exactly, but I'd say he operates on a different plane than the rest of us. He often stares at things that aren't there -- or, at least, that none of us can see -- and he tends to puzzle things out more slowly and differently. For example, he didn't vocalize much at all as a kitten but has picked up sounds from other cats in the household. He didn't purr at all until very recently (he's six). He can jump like a champion, but hasn't figured out he can leap up to a spot with another cat's kibble. (Instead he sits and looks at it longingly while his sibling jumps up there and eats it if it's left unguarded...) However, some of that might be explained by the fact that he was a very, very sickly kitten who almost didn't make it, and he seems to have a mild case of cerebellar hypoplasia.
- dghughes 2y agoMy parents got a mature older orange cat who was baffled by doors. An open door was no issue but a half door open? Baffling! He sat and stared at the impossible to navigate two foot wide gap. He loved BBQ it was obvious his previous owner did a lot of BBQing. My Dad dropped some raw hamburger for him. Dad's Lay-Z-Boy chair wouldn't do down. What he didn't know was the cat was under it. The chair would slam down on his head but that was of no concern of the cat.
- ordu 2y agoThe most dumb cat I had was the siamese cat. She was not orange. She learned how to steal from a pan closed by a lid only when she spent a summer in country with my old cat, who was a street born, and he was really smart. At some point he led me for a mile, insisting that I followed him. I followed because I was curios. It turned out my cat planned an assault on some house (not on humans but on an another male cat there) and wanted me to help. But my siamese was extremely stupid. For example, it is the only cat that could be distracted. If you took a cat on your lap and it didn't feel like sitting on your lap, it would be hard to keep cat there, it would take any chance to run away. But my siamese would allow me to distract her and would forget that she wanted to run away. It could be distracted from food also. Her attention span was seconds, not like most of cats who get an idea and become obsessed with it. She had broken spine near the tail. My theory is cats hide their real brain somewhere in the back of the spine, while the thing in their heads exists to mislead humans.