by Mike Gagnon

Created on: December 15, 2006   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

Unlike most breeds of cats a Manx is a breed of cat you can usually recognize on site. The key characteristics of a Manx is their short pointed ears, short length of body, back legs that are much longer than their front legs and cause the cat to hop similar to a bunny when it runs, a thick double coat of fur whether they are long or short haired, and in most cases the complete lack of any tail or a small wiggly stub where a tail would normally be. Sometimes you can find kittens born without tails because of a birth defect, but if they do not have the other characteristics of a Manx than it is not a Manx. However, some genuine Manx can have long tails which will be explained later.

Because of its appearance there is a popular urban legend that Manx were created by interspecies breeding between cats and rabbits. This is in fact untrue. Another much older legend is that Noah accidentally cut the cat's tail off when he closed the door to the Ark during the great flood depicted in the Bible. In reality it is believed that the Manx is distantly related to other cat breeds, such as The Cymric and The Japanese Bob Tail. These are other breeds of cat with missing or abnormal tails. The current theory is that these genetic changes were caused by inbreeding of the species in the distant past.

The Manx breed was actually first discovered off the coast of Great Britain on the Isle of Mann. It is believed that several cats survived a ship wreck off the coast of Britain and were close enough to swim or wash ashore on the Isle. Living in isolation the cats would all be inter-related within a couple of generations and therefore all breeding after that would have been inbreeding. This inbreeding caused a genetic mutation and a new gene in the cats' DNA. This gene is what caused the cats to become born tailless, and is a dominant gene, therefore making most of that cats children tailless as well.

Rarely when the right combination of parents comes together a Manx cat can be born with all of the other characteristics of the breed, but without the tailless gene, therefore being born a Manx with a regular cat tail. This is important because the tailless gene will also cause other mutations and mental problems in the cats if bred over multiple generations. One generation of tailless Manx will not exhibit any of these problems, but if tailless Manx are bred together for more than three generations deformities and mental problems will begin. This is believed to be caused by the close relation

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>