Can a cat with blood type B have a sibling with type AB?
November 21, 2020 8:31 PM   Subscribe

I have 2 cats that are supposedly littermates. We recently found out one has type B blood and the other has type AB. Type B is rare in cats, but apparently type AB is super duper rare and now I'm curious. Can 2 cats from a litter have different, rare blood types like this or were my two boys just randomly put together and called littermates?

More info: I had 2 of my cats, supposedly littermates, blood typed to see if either could donate blood to my third cat (unrelated) who has type B blood. My way of handling stress is to research weird shit, so I'm currently reading about cat blood types. I learned that both types B and AB are pretty rare, typically in exotic breeds. These two chonky boys are just your standard DSH tuxedos, although they are longer and more muscly than any other cat I've owned. So yeah, I thought it was pretty interesting that they both have rare blood types.

Most of the Google results I'm finding are academic papers or breeding info, which gets way into technical details about blood typing that I can't comprehend right now. Really, my main question is whether it's possible for a litter to contain one cat with type B and one cat with type AB?

I have had these two boys for 9 years, they are the loves of my life (j/k, spouse. kinda). I got them when they were kittens who had been adopted, given up, readopted, given up again, and then fostered before I found them. Sooo, it's possible they came from different litters but due to all of the passing-around, they just got bonded and were tagged as littermates without it being technically true.

It has no bearing on anything whether they actually are littermates; I'm just curious because it's a good distraction.

Bonus: if you have any fun facts about these two rare blood types, I'm all ears. I did learn that type AB is a universal recipient but NOT a universal donor. That's useful to know!
posted by joan_holloway to Pets & Animals (5 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
It's very possible for there to be multiple fathers for a single litter of kittens, although I've no idea what genetics determine blood type
posted by Pastor of Muppets at 9:02 PM on November 21, 2020 [11 favorites]


A quick search for info on cat blood types shows that AB is dominant to B and A is dominant to both of those. Each cat gets a blood type gene from each parent. If one cat is type B, that means both its genes are B. So each of its parents has at least one B gene. But either parent (or both of them) could also have an AB gene and if that's the case then a sibling could get an AB and a B or two ABs, and that cat would be type AB. So, yes, it's possible for one sibling to be type B and another to be type AB, even if they both have the same parents. (And as Pastor of Muppets notes, littermates can have different fathers, which opens up even more possibilities.)
posted by Redstart at 9:13 PM on November 21, 2020 [10 favorites]


Ahem. I have no cat blood type knowledge, but I believe you have forgotten the cat tax... (Pix please!)
posted by freethefeet at 9:59 PM on November 21, 2020 [19 favorites]


Sibling humans can have a limited set of varying blood types depending on parent types. I assume cats can be the same, with no expertise whatsoever.
posted by theora55 at 10:12 AM on November 22, 2020


Assuming that the information at this link is correct (AB is dominant over B, A is dominant over A and B), Redstart's answer is spot-on.

To expand a bit more...

A cat has 2 versions of each gene, one from each parent. When one gene type is dominant over another, it means that if the cat has 2 different versions, the dominant one wins. The possible versions of the blood type gene are A, B, and AB.

So a cat with blood type A could have gene versions (A, A) or (A, B) or (A, AB) because the A gene is dominant over the other two, meaning that if the cat has any copy of the A gene, it will have blood type A.

A cat with blood type AB could have gene versions (AB, AB) or (AB, B).

A cat with blood type B could only have gene versions (B, B) since if it had any other version, that version would dominate and change the blood type.

When two cats mate, each kitten in the litter gets a random combination of one gene from each parent.

So let's say the two parent cats both have blood type genes (B, AB).

One kitten could get the combination (B, B) if it got a B from both parents -> Blood type B.
Another cat could get the combination (AB, B) if it got a B from one parent and an AB from the other -> Blood type AB.

So yes, it's totally possible.

Google "punnett squares" if you want to learn more about this!
posted by mekily at 8:26 PM on November 22, 2020 [1 favorite]


« Older Gift ideas for techies   |   Thanksgiving Dinner in a Slow Cooker Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.