# Genetics of lions in my story



## caters (Dec 19, 2015)

I currently have both black and white lions as well as tawny lions in my story called Pride Search

I was wondering how I should go about the black and white genes and results from the 2 of them together.

Black and white both are recessive in these lions meaning that there has to be at least 2 tawny lions that carry the white or black gene to get black lions or white lions from tawny lions.

But what if you have a lion with both the black gene and the white gene? Should the black dominate over the white making it a black lion with the white gene? Should the white dominate over the black making it a white lion with the black gene? Should they cancel out giving you a tawny lion carrying both the black gene and the white gene? Should they mix completely giving you a gray lion? Should they be in separate areas giving you a bicolor lion(bicolor in cat genetics means white fur and fur of another color like black)?

Any ideas would be nice.


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## Khama (Dec 20, 2015)

Edit: I'm an idiot, will respond later since I realized I messed up with my explanation.


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## Khama (Dec 20, 2015)

Alright, so I screwed up before. What happens when you are in your first year of learning of a topic.

Anyways, so the primary issue is this. You say that both black and white are recessive. I presume you are saying that in regards to the normal coloring of a lion. Now,  black lions are not an actual thing last I checked so this is going to be more on you.

In relation to black lions vs white lions is one allele dominate over the other or no? 

My other question is how is a tawny lion made? Either genotype wise or between what two coloring of parents?

Since I don't know much about lions and like tawny vs others it's difficult for me to give you a straight answer here. So yeah, once you answer the two above I can get you a proper answer.

Thankfully work has been a bore so I could get this response sooner.


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## ascanius (Dec 21, 2015)

Surprisingly not much work has been done on the coat color genetics of lions, leopards there is a bit more.  However you can probably make this go any way you want without anyone being the wiser.  The coat color can be effected by a lot and can be much more complex than just dominant and recessive, you have codominance, linking, x/y chromosome based, and others, it could be a combination of three or even 20 different genes.  Dominant and recessive is a simple approach but things can get complicated.  for example look at rabbits, its very complicated with 11 different genes determining coat coloring, plus genes that modify the genetic expression of the color genes.  here is a good explination on rabbits.  Rabbit Coat Color Genetics - Mosaic's Rabbitry

here is what I found after a very quick search on the genetics of lions but not really what your looking for still interesting.  https://lionalert.org/page/lion_genetics

here is another quick search for cats, which may help.  Cat Coat Color Genetics

I really need a subscription to more scientific journals.


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## Vaporo (Jan 4, 2016)

Well, you could just have black and white both show partial dominance. i.e. If a lion has a only genes for black hair (BB), it will be black. If it has only genes for white hair (WW), it will be white. However, if it has genes for both black and white hair (BW), it will be tawny. So, if a tawny lion has a child with a tawny lion, there is a 50 percent chance it will be tawny, a 25 percent chance it will be black, and a 25 percent chance it will be white.

However, I get an impression that you want the white/black lions to be rare, so the tawny gene would be dominant and white and black would be recessive. If a lion got both the genes for being white and black at the same time, it's essentially your choice what happens. There's no hard-set pattern to this kind of thing.


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## Garren Jacobsen (Jan 4, 2016)

Question: how important is this explanation to the story? Because if it isn't then I would suggest that you don't focus on this.


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## Caged Maiden (Jan 4, 2016)

Yeah, here's how I'd explain it:

"Is that a black lion?"

"Yeah. They're rare. Only see them once or twice a year."

"Huh."


While I've had to sort out similar genetics situations in my world (I had to determine how many of my human werewolves' children would also be werewolves, and I had to come up with some reason why there aren't enough of them to take over the world, but it's still a genetic trait, as in not passed on through a bite), I think you have to weigh how important the explanation is to your world.  If people aren't researching genetics as part of the story, it's probably enough for you to just have a rough idea of how many would be a normal rate of birth. Also, if you have other big predators on the plains, black lion cubs will experience a higher rate of death because they lack natural camouflage. Since lions are social animals, is their coloring something important to their society? Like, are a specific color of lions favorable as leaders of prides? With jaguars, black ones seem just as likely to mate and pass on genes as orange ones, but since they live isolated, maybe their coloration isn't important?


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