"That we should exist to the praise of His glory..."    Ephesians 1:12 

Color Genetics in Mice

Not all that different from horses!

Many years ago, when I was in college (just after the Renaissance!), I ended up with two pet mice.  One was spotted brown and one was solid black.

In a little while the most ADORABLE babies showed up.  When they got their hair at first they looked like teeny tiny puppy miniatures.  Then they grew to look like mice.  But the most amazing thing was their colors!

We had brown spotted, black spotted, solid brown and solid black, all in that first litter!  I was hooked!

In a few months, after my dad had some cages specially made for me at his work, I had ***69*** fancy pet mice in my bedroom, all with names and phenotypes and genotypes...and had proven an old textbook wrong!

Here's what I came up with:

What I was calling "brown" was actually "agouti", a wild color of hair where it's white or cream colored nearest the root, the main shaft is brown, and the tip is black.  I hear some dun horses have some hairs like this.

Black is dominant over brown and solid is dominant over black. Albinism, which does not occur in horses, is recessive to color.

Go back to horse colors