Cats
The
blue eyes in a piebald or epistatic white cat indicates a lack of tapetum. Deafness is caused by
an absence of a cell layer in the inner ear that originates from the same stem cells as well. In
odd-eyed white cats, the ear on the blue-eyed side may be deaf, but the one on the orange-
eyed side usually has normal hearing. Not all blue-eyed whites will be deaf since there are
several different genes causing the same physical attributes (whiteness, blue-eyedness) so it
all depends on the cat's genotype (its genetic make-up) not its phenotype (its physical
appearance). Some people claim that 99% of blue-eyed white cats are deaf. This is inaccurate
because blue-eyedness and whiteness can both be caused by different genes. It all depends on
what genes the cat has inherited. These are the actual figures from scientific studies around
the world. The percentages are given in ranges because results are different in different areas,
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