It is not breaking news that domestic cats come with a range of personalities. Whilst some cats are very chilled-out and wouldn’t hurt a fly, others will put the fear of God in you if you upset them in any way. Is there any correlation between coat colour and aggression? You’ve come to the right place – let’s find out in this blog.
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If you have owned or have known a number of different cats in your life, you may have noticed some trends in behaviour that seem more frequent in certain colours of cat. For instance, the term ‘naughty tortie’ may sound familiar to you. This is because it describes the alleged sassiness observed by lots of tortoiseshell cat owners. Physical appearance is something that cat-breeders will specifically try to improve and tailor for the purposes of supplying owner demand. And that makes sense: the cuter the kitten is the more likely you will sell him or her. Is it possible that by doing this over hundreds of years humans have inadvertently increased some aggressive behaviours in our domestic cats; something that is also influenced by genetics and which could accidentally have been encouraged during our coat colour selection process?
What does the research say?
One study analysed the perception of over 1,200 cat owners to determine if there were any emerging patterns between colour and behaviour. The results it came up with were that calm and cool-headed cats tend to be grey, black, white or tabby; and that tricolour females, black-and-whites and grey-and-whites tend to be more aggressively natured. To determine this a variety of settings were reviewed including normal everyday situations, owner handling and veterinary visits.
How reliable is that?
When reading any study it is useful to have a critical eye. And to think: what could be influencing the results? In this study, it is individual owners’ opinions that describe each cat’s behaviour, rather than a standardised system of comparison. So there is bound to be some degree of subjectiveness in the results. The greater the sample studied, however, the lesser any subjectiveness will impact on the overall result.
So why might that happen?
Of course it is not to be suggested that having, for example, a tortoiseshell coat causes a cat to be aggressive. But there certainly seems to be some sort of genetic basis in this relationship between coat colour and behaviour. These behavioural traits that are sometimes observed more with certain coat colours than others could be inadvertently genetically linked to those coat colours.
Whilst breeding cats and manipulating their evolution – becoming more and more selective for desirable physical traits such as specific coat colour – it is possible that we have accidentally increased the prevalence of certain genes that encode more aggressive behaviour. Whilst not necessarily an evolutionary advantage, these aggressive traits can be passed down from parent cats to kittens. We may have accidentally increased the rate of this passing-down as a by-product of being more selective for other desirable traits. (That is to say, desirable from our perspective). In evolutionary biology this phenomenon of inheriting secondary or unintended traits is known as ‘spandrels’.
Any other caveats?
It is important to note that behavioural science is a huge and complicated area with much left to be discovered. Behaviour is influenced by genetics and environment. It is difficult to narrow down specific attributes that may increase certain behaviours more than others when there are so many factors at play.
So to sum everything up; whilst some cat colours may have a generalised tendency to be more aggressive, this is not always observed. This is because the genetics behind behaviour are complex and have multiple influencing factors. For these coat colours that we may observe increased aggression in, it is possible that this is due to a phenomenon whereby we accidentally increase the prevalence of one trait by actively trying to increase the prevalence of another.
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