Brian Switek explores the coats of the sabercats over on his blog, Laelaps. By looking at the coat patterns of extant cats, he explores the possibilities.
Today’s cats wear a beautiful array of coat patterns, from plain to dense constellations of spots and stripes. These different color options are largely dictated by two genes – Taqpep and Edn3 – the first of which lays down the general pattern of spots and stripes while the second controls local color differences, like hair banding. But these patterns don’t follow family lines. Just have a look at Panthera, the genus that includes most of the classic big cat species. There are lions (spots giving way to “plain” coloration), jaguars (large, filled-in spots), leopards (large open spots), snow leopards (large open spots), and tigers (vertical stripes) all within the same genus. Something else is more important than felid family ties in determining coat colors, and, in a 2010 study, ethologist William Allen and colleagues suggested that the answer is “ecology.”
After pulling images of 35 wild cat species from the web – because what else is the Internet good for other than cat pictures? – Allen and coauthors analyzed how coat patterns related to different species’ habitat preferences and activity patterns. Cat coats, they realized, “function as a background matching camouflage.” Cats in open, well-lit environments are more likely to have relatively plain coats while those living in forested habitats or active at primarily at night typically have complex patterns of spots and horizontal stripes.
