A new colour of cat has been discovered [View all]

This article is almost two years old.


A salty liquorice cat with black hairs that fade to white looks at the camera.
Photo credit: Ari Kankainen

After years of research, a Finnish team of researchers have finally worked out what’s behind the colouring of ‘salty liquorice’ cats.


By Noa Leach
Published: May 30, 2024 at 11:51 am

A rare new colour of cat known as ‘salty liquorice’ has been discovered by researchers in Finland.

Cats with the unusual coat – known as ‘salmiak cats’ (which translates as ‘salty liquorice’)– are black with flecks of white. Elsewhere on their bodies, salmiak cats wear a ‘tuxedo’ pattern: a solid white neck, chest, belly and paws.

The unusual pattern of the new coat is caused by the colour of each hair changing from root to tip – starting out black near the cats’ skin then fading to white. And, as scientists recently discovered, that’s a huge deal genetically.

That’s because cats typically come in two colours: black and orange. If you think you’ve seen any others, that’s probably because all feline coats involve some degree of these two colours fading, being combined, or both.
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https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/salty-liquorice-cat