(English version)
Very new color
I read the text that the judging committee plans to send to the WCF General Assembly in connection with the planned recognition of the "new" golden color. This color, golden chinchilla (ny 12), is so "new" that the standard for it was created long before the 2000s, stupidly writing it from the standard of Persian cats. The long coat of the "Persians" allows them to largely hide the pattern, so golden chinchillas in the Persian breed to this day remain genetically patterned without exception: the pattern does not prevent them from looking tipped. Do you know what the first British ny 12 chinchillas looked like? But like this:
These "ny 12" differed from n 24 (spotted brown) only in their less contrasting pattern, warmer undercoat and green eyes. But this did not prevent them from attending exhibitions, getting high marks and taking titles in ny 12 color. A close relative of the cat in the photo, Witchwoods Lionheart, with the same ny 12 color, is the WCF World Champion!
When, more recently in the 2010s, breeders managed to literally do the impossible and come close to the standard imposed on them, having received real tipped gold on short hair (as required by the rewritten Persian standard), the ny 12 color suddenly became "new" and "unrecognized". The reason for this was the lightened areas in the color of tipped cats, which seemed to some especially gifted "experts" to be indistinguishable from white spots, similar to Birman gloves. And no reasonable arguments, no detailed descriptions and genetic tests could tell these people otherwise.
At first, "non-recognition" affected only individual representatives of golden chinchillas (and only the most striking and spectacular), and then gradually spread to all modern cats in the ny 12 color. British cats of this color stopped appearing at WCF shows. Nobody stopped working with these cats. Nobody stopped buying them. No one has stopped admiring them! They simply stopped going to WCF shows with them.
I would very much like to find out for certain who from the WCF leadership is responsible for this monstrous injustice. However, for now, we are invited to simply accept the fact and beg the ignorant leaders to come down and recognize the golden chinchillas, at least in the form of some new color with some new name, new code, and God knows what else "new", if only they could return to exhibitions again, those who so easily won in the 2000s.
A few days ago, the WCF Referee Commission delivered a message for the General Assembly, a sort of hodgepodge of various proposals for a "new" color. Stumbling over every word and confusing the frontal direction with the ventral one, the authors of the text tried to give a description of the "new" color, suggest a new name for it and a new coding (they got confused again in the coding, starting with the variant "nyv" (with gold) and ending with the variant " nv" (already without gold)). And since without comprehensive, expensive genetic research, the WCF leadership is unable to even distinguish even brightened toes of golden chinchillas from "white socks", some brief information about the genetics of the "new" color, which we now have thanks to the French professor Marie Abitbol, was also added to the text.
The document was drawn up at such a time and in such a way that, I believe, it will not only not clarify the situation with golden colors, but will also confuse it even more, just as it confused its authors / compilers themselves. I'll explain why.
Extreme “Flaxen” Gold
Let's start with a new name. It was difficult to come up with a more stupid option than the proposed "flaxen golden" ("льняное золото"). Firstly, there is nothing "flaxen" in the color of modern golden chinchillas (flax, if someone does not know, is "pale yellowish gray" - if you do not believe, ask Wikipedia and the html color table). Secondly, the "golden chinchilla" color has not stood still since 2010, but has been actively developing, and today there are at least two opposite directions of working with it, related to the degree of highlighting. Some breeders are confidently moving towards gold with the effect of urajiro / counter-shading, a color reminiscent of the color of Akita Inu dogs:
Other breeders, on the contrary, do not like the urajiro effect, and they tried to get rid of it, if possible, to get fully coloured green-eyed golden cats (that is, ny 12 without any of the highlighted areas which served as the formal reason for the "unrecognized" of this color):
Cats of both types of golden chinchillas are homozygous for the newly discovered wbBSH gold allele. But neither the Persians nor the first "golden chinchillas" have this allele at all! Who knows where it came from? Perhaps from the same place where the ticking comes from?
As for the urajiro effect and all the degrees of lightening that we can observe in golden chinchillas, their genetics is currently unknown. And it is unlikely that it will be possible to study it in the near future, for one thing because there are more important and more interesting things going on. Meanwhile, in the document that is going to be sent to the Assembly, it is this clarification that plays a leading role. Why? And because those gentlemen, through whose fault our beautiful golden chinchillas are currently expelled from exhibitions, were most of all concerned about them. And it is this highlighting that they are now trying to call "flaxen" (linen, pale yellowish gray) in order to emphasize that it is not white, but is some kind of mysterious "linen colour". Here is how, for example, the color of the inner side of the legs of a golden chinchilla is described in the text, i.e. places indicated by arrows:
"The inner side of the legs is from warm flaxen to a very pale milky-creamy flaxen shade" - Let me remind you again that "linen" is "pale yellowish gray". That is, the judging panel suggests that the WCF management believe that these zones have a shade from "warm pale yellowish gray" (i.e. on the left we have "warm pale yellowish gray", right?), to "very pale milky cream pale yellowish-gray tint" (yes, this is what we allegedly have on the right). It seems?
In fact, if anyone has ever had a "pale yellowish gray" underside of their legs, it is the original "golden chinchillas" derived from crossing British cats with Persians. Here it is, this side of the leg of a cat that does not have the wbBSH allele (its genotype is N/N):
By the way, lightening of the toes in such cats can also occur. It is simply less visible, because it is covered with black tipping or ticking on top and does not look "bleached", but gray:
And here is the cat ny 12 (aka Copper, homozygous for wbBSH):
And to complete the picture - a cat heterozygous for wbBSH, BRI ny 11:
I have a trick question: which of these paws is closer to the "pale yellowish gray" color?
The funny thing is that none of the chinchilla breeders need any "linen color" in the color of their cats. Because:
- Urajiro lovers are determined to move decisively towards increasing the contrast of the highlighted areas as much as possible with existing genetics (at the limit it is a bright red-white color). Their ideal has nothing to do with any "pale yellowish gray".
- Their opponents, breeders, who, on the contrary, do not want to see urajiro in their cats, want to get the most bright, the most red cats - coloured as red as possible for a genetically black color. Which one is grey, which one is yellowish? They are no less confidently moving towards red.
Marie Abitbol, a geneticist who discovered the gold gene and found that golden chinchillas of both directions are equally homozygous for it, both with and without urajio, calls this entire group of colors (медный). And it would be better if Copper remained, although this option is also a big question. Because: why on earth was the originally “precious”, “golden” color, it was worth improving it, suddenly turned into “copper”? Where did the gold go? Has it gotten worse? Has it become cheaper? Depreciated? Actually, quite the opposite! The previously dirty gray, sometimes even a little "green" and spotted "gold" finally managed to be washed clean to give real, pure gold of the highest standard! It, like real gold, can have many shades: white, yellow, red, etc. But at the same time, it cannot turn into any other, cheaper metal. Compare again "real, traditional, classical, etc." gold with the so-called "copper" and answer a simple question: which of the two options is more gold?
Siberian Sunshine
After Marie Abitbol discovered the wbBSH gold gene in a British breed and it turned out to be allelic to the wbSIB genes in Siberians, Siberian breeders became worried. On the eve of the WCF General Assembly, they had a reasonable question: will they eventually deprive their "new" color "sunshine" of both the name and encoding? Indeed, there are reasons for concern, and considerable ones.
For a long time, the WCF believed that Siberian cats, like British cats, have a golden color. Siberian and British cats used the same encoding - y - to designate this color. Only breeders of Siberians did not strive to get chinchillas - they were quite satisfied with working with patterned gold and they were not at all going to turn it into tipping.
Interestingly, the Siberians did not have any gold in other classification systems. There were only brown tabbies, n 22-24.
Just like in the British breed, silver occurred along with gold in the Siberian, and in the same way it was not always high quality and clean - sometimes silver kittens turned out to be rufous, which was considered a disadvantage. The breeders wanted to "legalize" rufoused silver and they came up with a way out: they suggested that there is such a special type of gold that very cleverly interacts with silver: it is not completely suppressed by silver to get a pure silver cat, but almost half covers it with rufism. What is this type of gold? Yes, just the brightest and highest quality gold, which is, that's all!
Why it was necessary to give this gold a separate name is still not entirely clear. On the one hand, since there was no “gold” in Siberians anywhere except for WCF, breeders had the right to call it whatever they like, “from scratch”. They may also have wanted to emphasize the difference in origin between British gold (which was obtained by crossing with the Persians) and Siberian gold, which has nothing to do with the Persians. One way or another, the bright Siberian gold was called "sunshine" and coded ‘u’, i.e. instead of ny 22-24 these Siberians became nu 22-24.
Sunshine and bimetallics
Not all breeders of Siberians understand what kind of sunshine this appeared in their breed and how it differs from gold. And since the WCF did not prohibit the golden color for the Siberian breed, kittens continue to be declared golden (especially since few people have done tests for wbSIB yet).
Also, many identify sunshine with "bimetallic", not understanding the fundamental difference. Although in fact, by definition, bimetallic is a combination of "sunshine + silver", and such a color should have a code in the form of ‘us’ – ‘nus’ 22 - 24. In fact, this is just silver with a strong rufism, which is not difficult to get if you mate silver with non-silver for a long time and persistently, and do not select for good quality silver. With each such mating, the original silver will become more and more "dirty", rufous, and at the same time it does not matter at all whether the cat has the wb allele (SIB, SIBe or BSH). As a person who has been "spoiling" silver in this way for a long time, I can even prove this by demonstrating the gold I obtained in my silver animals as a result of repeated matings of heterozygous silver. Here is one example:
Since the ys code does not exist, and the concept of "bimetallic" is not legalized, such animals in the British breed are now classified as silver with a significant color fault.
After analyzing a large number of samples of the brightest golden Siberians, not just one, but two "sunshine" alleles, wbSIB and wbeSIB, were identified. And now it turned out that there is also a third allele of the same gene, wbBSH, which is responsible for British gold. What happens? It turns out that allelic variants of the same gene are responsible for the two colors, which were supposed to be declared completely different and unrelated.
British Sunshine
And for complete happiness, a really new, and really strange, and really unlike any previously known color, appeared in the British breed. The most beautiful and sought-after version of this color looks like a very bright, almost white gold:
Genetic studies have shown that cats with this color, like the British golden ny 12 chinchillas, are homozygous for the wbBSH allele. But obviously they have something else, some gene or genes, non-allelic to wbBSH, which make their color not the usual ny 12, but different, and really in need of some new name. As a sin, this color so strongly resembled sunlight on the snow that when the British breeders, following the Siberian breeders, also called it sunshine, it was this name that somehow immediately stuck to it.
As a result, there arose the sort of confusion that has probably never yet been in the entire history of felinology: breeders now and then confuse golden chinchillas, sunshine and bimetallics, British and Siberian. Moreover, all this terminology is semi-official, which means that at any moment any of the established names can be replaced by some new one, pulled from the air. For example, the same "flaxen golden" or "light golden", which the MFA and ICU have already rushed to recognize to designate a group of golden colors with an urajiro (counter-shaded) effect (although breeders have long and consistently called cats with urajiro effect "Akita" and nothing else).
Because of this, incidents arise from time to time. For example, once, when an announcement about a seminar dedicated to the new color "white gold" was posted on FB, everyone who was interested in the British Sunshine rushed there to sign up. After all, who, if not the Sunshine, can be called "white gold"? Imagine the bewilderment and disappointment when it turned out that the seminar would not be about them at all, but about golden chinchillas with urajiro - those same "Akita" that the breeders had long discussed among themselves in such detail that they could well have held a seminar themselves!
Because of the British Sunshine, many did not even understand what the discovery of the wbBSH allele in the British breed meant. While the WCF is 20 years late trying to figure out the golden chinchilla color, breeders have long been busy solving a new problem: how to distinguish British Sunshine from rufous silver. It was this answer that they expected from Marie Abitbol, who at that time was engaged in the study of gold, and not at all in silver nor British sunshine. The fact that the same word "sunshine" refers to two completely different phenomena - one in the British breed, the other in the Siberian, as well as the lack of a clear definition of the concept of "bimetallic" has also contributed. Many simply do not understand who is who, and, by and large, there is no one to explain the difference to them.
Well, if not us, then who? Let's finally bring clarity to the "new" Siberian and British colors. Let's sort and organize them. Let's start with the genetic foundations we know.
We have the Wb allelic series, where 3 mutant alleles were identified: two Siberian (wbSIB and wbeSIB) and one British (wbBSH). It is not entirely correct to say that each of them is inherited recessively: rather, these alleles behave semi-dominantly in relation to the wild-type allele and have variable expression. This means that their action is not only manifested in the phenotypes of homozygotes for these alleles, but also in heterozygotes, although to varying degrees. I will illustrate by the example of two heterozygotes for wbBSH, one of which has less eumelanin on its paws, and the other has more (both, respectively, have the color ny 11):
Paws of two ny 11 - lighter and darker; in the first case, wbBSH expression is slightly higher, in the second case, slightly less. The difference can actually be even more pronounced.
Once again, please note that bleaching of the toes occurs in everyone: in homozygotes, heterozygotes and in wild-type golden cats. The difference is only in the amount of black pigment. We reduce the gray or black produced - we get a bright golden ny 12 chinchilla with its characteristic "whitened" paws. On the contrary, we increase gray of black - we get dark, gray paws ny 25 and others like him.
Mutant alleles of the Wb series “eat away” eumelanin, starting from the root and sometimes reaching the very tip of the hair. It is not entirely clear at what stage this happens: in particular, among wbBSH-carrier kittens and homozygotes for it, there are those who are born dark and then brighten, and those who are immediately born with the finished color ny 12 or ny 11.
The Wb series alleles made a breakthrough in the development of golden colors in both the British breed and the Siberian. Thanks to these alleles, bright, spectacular, truly golden cats appeared here and there (and not gray-yellow with brick-colour noses, as they were in the 2000s). However, as for the Siberian breed, other systems, not WCF, never counted these gray-yellow breeds as gold. They were always browns there, and theoretically they could have remained browns. By the way, the comparison of gold with "warm brown" in those years was very frequent, which is not at all surprising.
So, let's try to streamline what has been said and list the colors that we have today, indicating the genotype. Let's add to them the encodings that are currently accepted.
1. British and Siberian "classic gold" - patterned, ticked, shaded, chinchillas
Phenotypically, this is the same dull, yellow-gray gold with a pronounced pattern or deep ticking, green-eyed. British cats got it from the Persians, Siberians had it from the very beginning. For British breeders, such an acquisition, in theory, should have been a big disappointment: the shorthairs turned out to be completely different from how it looked in Persians. As for how it was inherited - God only knows. It is somewhat polygenic. One kitten is warmer, another is colder; warm brown, cold brown...
I suspect that today there are no fans of this color among breeders of British, and in Siberians they are periodically converted to ordinary browns (which, in fact, they are).
- Genetic testing of these cats for wb results in N/N
Code - y (12-25).
(Yes. And BRI ny 12 in 2000 we also had only those. Although really very few people recorded them as ny 12 - basically they all went to the WCF shows as ny 11 and collected titles and bests there. Some are sure that they are on the increase now, proving their superiority over modern golden chinchillas, and will most likely be disqualified for having "white" toes).
2. Siberian sunshine
Bright golden cats in the Siberian breed were named "sunshine" (and it is necessary to clarify that this is only in Siberians). There are two types of Siberian Sunshines today, darker and lighter, they are determined by two different alleles of the same gene:
- wbSIB - regular sunshine
- wbeSIB - extreme sunshine
Code - u (21-24).
3. Siberian bimetallic
This is a Siberian Sunshine with a silver gene, the color arises as a result of a non-allelic interaction of wbSIB (wbeSIB) with the inhibitor gene (I). In fact, silver with strong rufism and always with the wbSIB or wbeSIB gene, since it is believed that only when interacting with sunshine can a bimetallic be obtained. "Classic gold" was not given a vote.
The code is: us (21-24).
4. British Golden Chinchilla
There is a minimum of eumelanin in the color, light areas are characteristic (but not obligatory).
- Homozygous for the wbBSH allele.
According to the degree of brightness this is divided into the following subtypes:
- Akita - golden chinchilla with countershaded (urajiro) effect
- Colored - golden chinchilla without countershaded effect
Each of these subtypes, in turn, can be divided into genetically ticked, genetically spotted, and genetically marbled. Pictured is a genetically spotted golden chinchilla. With countershading or not? That is the question. My answer is “no,” it is normal, "colored".
Encoding? Don't even ask. It's scary to imagine what WCF will come up with here. Initially, all of the above were coded y 12, an exception was usually made for genetically marbled golden chinchillas: they were, regardless of anything, designated as y 22. Then they were all declared "new" and "unrecognized". "Because you can't be so beautiful in this world" (c) (russian song).
5. British golden shaded
The color is brighter than in wild-type golden cats, more close to tipped, but in comparison with golden chinchillas there is more eumelanin in color and in general it is darker.
- Heterozygous for the wbBSH allele.
It is divided into the same subtypes as the British golden chinchilla (genetically ticked in the photo). In the absence of genetic test, it can be difficult to distinguish shaded gold from golden chinchilla and patterned or ticked gold. Usually breeders first check the hocks: no black - chinchilla, black - shaded.
Original code - y 11, exception for genetic marbles: y 22.
6. British sunshine
Sunshines are born from two golden cats and resemble silver to varying degrees (more or less). On this basis (similarity with silver), they can also be divided into several subtypes:
- The most popular and favorite version of the Sunshine is the uniform colour, which blossoms into pale gold with age and is the least similar to silver. Homozygous for wbBSH+ has something else that turns such a cat from a normal golden chinchilla to a sunshine.
- Sunshine that is phenotypically indistinguishable from silver, with or without rufism. A couple of samples from these cats (which looked like ns 11 and ns 25) were tested for wbBSH and the result was N/N. Not enough information to draw any conclusions.
- Sunshine that is similar to ticked silver, but has a fundamental difference from it - a black basal stripe. We are waiting for samples for research.
It is extremely interesting that among the British Sunshine, which phenotypically looks like silver, this "silver" is never "ns 12". All kittens born from two British sunshine cats are either “pseudo-silver” with a red glow, which can eventually even blossom into gold, albeit a pale gold, or phenotypic silver - shaded and ticked (but never chinchilla). This will need to be considered very seriously.
There is no encoding. However, there is no clarity with the color itself: which variant should be assigned the encoding? And what if Sunshine is still a modified silver color, and not gold at all?
7. British bimetallic
British silver cat with strong rufism. Presumably, this may differ from the British sunshine in its inability to blossom into pale gold: the ratio of silvery zones to rufous ones in bimetallic is practically unchanged with age, remaining constant.
All of my heavily rufoused silver cats are N/N (do not carry the wbBSH allele). Therefore, the hypothesis of Siberian breeders about a certain "new sunshine color", which, unlike ordinary gold, is not suppressed by silver, but breaks through it, cannot be confirmed from my own experience. My rufous cats, both before and now, don't give a damn what gold to mix with silver - "new" or "old". If desired, rufism can also be added using an orange-eyed warm brown.
There is no code.
Urajiro (Counter-shading)
This is not an independent color, but is a colour pattern. It was due to counter-shading - dorsoventral lightening, especially pronounced in golden colors, that the history of "unrecognized" golden chinchillas began. For some reason, this did not affect other breeds and colors.
The counter-shading effect is characteristic of many breeds, not only British and Siberian. How it is inherited is unknown. Which gene is responsible for it is unknown. It is not clear from what moment the "coloured" ends and the "counter-shading" begins. There are no encodings for it in WCF, although there are already attempts to allocate codes to other similar effects. For example, to karpati and roan (roan color) in Lykoi - these are assigned codes 28 and 29, respectively. Of the available encodings of this type, only the number 27 remained free. In this case, it would make sense to think this is free for counter-shading? Although "27" will look very strange next to 22-25, the codes for tabby pattern and ticking.
The Russian WFA system officially recognized the urajiro/counter-shading effect for all types of golden colors. But it hurried to give it the code ‘u’ - the same code that denotes Siberian sunshine. The Urajiro gold chinchilla is now coded as nyu 12 in the WFA system. Urajiro - counter-shading).
Conclusion
So, at the WCF General Assembly, the first thing to do would be to decide not only which letter to choose, but on what to denote with this letter. Need to find out:
1. What kind of colors are determined by the alleles of the Wb series - golden, sunshine or something else?
If golden, then what should be considered Persian gold, in which these alleles are not present? If sunshine, then what do we call the former gold in Siberians and British? If it is something new, how is it different from gold and sunshine?
My suggestion is to consider all these colors golden and not unnecessarily spawn new entities. The breeders were given the gold color standard - they began to move in that direction and achieved success: instead of gray-brown-green, they got the purest tipped gold, confirming the hypothesis of the existence of the "gold-forming" Wide band gene and achieved the development of a test for this gene. What's wrong with this? Why all these renames?
2. Does it make sense to enter a separate code for the urajiro/counter-shading effect?
If so, for which colors and breeds?
My suggestion - yes, first introduce it for the British golden chinchillas, and all the rest can wait (and none are disqualified at the shows for urajiro). And do not agonize for too long over the choice of letters. Any will do. It is better if the encoding structurally coincides with the variant of the "nyl" type already recognized by several systems.
3. Is it necessary to recognize bimetallics (rufous silver) and in what breeds? If so, how do you tell them apart from the British Sunshine?
So far, only breeders of Siberians have expressed interest in such recognition. British breeders are interested in the first type of sunshine, but they are not at all interested in ordinary silver with rufism, which has traditionally been viewed negatively and is still viewed that way.
As a breeder of British, I'm more concerned not with the acceptance of bimetallics, but with their differentiation from British sunshines. And let the breeders of Siberians decide for themselves whether their breed needs such a color and how it should look.
4. Should British Sunshine Type be recognized?
This peculiar color promises to become very popular. Its genetics is still unknown, but the idea of an ideal phenotype has almost taken shape.
Prior recognition would not hurt. I would like to see these cats at exhibitions - not only in photographs, but also "live". In their case, this is a very important point: the golden color is difficult to photograph as it really is, and the sunshine is almost impossible.
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