thermal cats

[mmcirvin]

Some cats glowing in thermal infrared.

Most of the site is pictures of running computer hardware, but the kitties are more interesting.

Comments

[jecook]

Cool.

[jecook]

No, wait, Hot. .. oh, never mind. Just go look at them already. :)

Oooh, glowing kitties

[dumplechan.livejournal.com]

Ah, glowing kitties.

I've heard that one reason for cat pigment patterns is the cell temperature. For instance: cold extremities, plus a pigment that misfolds at cold temperature -> Socks the cat.

Not sure on that, although I do know that Calico cats get their color due to variation in which X chromosome gets inactivated into a Barr body.

Now what we really need...is cats that express GFP in the skin.

Re: Oooh, glowing kitties

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

There's also the case of the cat they cloned. The new clone did not look exactly like the original, because there are some fur pattern variations that happen due to womb condition variations.

Re: Oooh, glowing kitties

[acw.livejournal.com]

This is exactly backwards from the story I heard. Some protein (not the pigment, but a trigger that affects the development of pigment-producing cells downstream) folds differently at hot and cold temperatures, but the ends of the extremities are warm, because fetal kittens mostly keep their paws and tails tucked up next to their bellies, and curl up around them. This explains why the paws and belly wind up looking the same. Also the tip of the nose.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

THERE IS NO DANA. ONLY ZUUL.