White Cats Deafness Blue Eyes

Furthermore if a cat has one blue eye and one green the ear on the side of the blue eye is more likely to be deaf than the other.

White cats deafness blue eyes. If a white cat has 2 blue eyes it is 3-5 times more likely to be deaf than a cat with 2 non-blue eyes and a cat with 1 blue eye is about twice as likely to be deaf as a cat with 2 non-blue eyes. In odd-eyed white cats the ear on the blue-eyed side may be deaf but the one. While there is a clear correlation between the blue eye color and deafness in white cats why is this so.

Strangely blue eye white cats tend to be deaf even more than others. These animals are well-known to be commonly affected by a congenital hereditary deaf-ness that may affect one or both ears. Overall deaf cats with white coat colour and one or both blue eyes make up around about 1-15 of the total cat population.

Cats with white Spots. Not all of these cats are deaf see part 2 of this short article. Coat color and an aspect of the cats personality or another aspect of anatomy can be linked if the gene that dictates the cats colour and a gene which affects the way the brain develops are situated close together on the same chromosome.

Researchers found that only 17 to 22 percent of white cats with non-blue eyes are born deaf. When one or both eyes are blue anywhere from 60 to. The primary determining factor of congenital deafness in all-white cats seems to be their eye color with blue eyes being a sign of the condition.

The fact is that hereditary deafness does tend to be a serious concern in white cats. Dominant epistatic white is a masking gene that overrides all other coat colours and is symbolised with the letters W D. A cat with a gene with white spots like the tuxedo cat can have blue eyes or in some cases odd eyes.

40 percent of white cats with one blue eye were deaf. When the white spot gene affects both eyes the cat will have blue eyes. Deafness is associated only with the dominant white gene not the white spotting gene says feline geneticist Leslie A.