Lots of feral cats have invaded our neighborhood, both males and females. A feral cat is a cat that lives outdoors and has had little or no human contact. One female cat has more toes than the usual five toes on her front paws like the pet cat in the picture. This condition is called polydactyl. Poly= many dactyl= finger or toe. Therefore, polydactyl means many toed.

Question

The cat with more toes than usual gave birth to 5 cats.Another pregnant cat with the usual number of toes gave birth to five cats also.other feral cats with the usual number of toes gave birth to kittens who all had the usual number of toes

mother cats and their litters
mother cats/ kittens with usual toes/kittens with more toes
mother with more toes/3/2
Mother 1 with usual toes/3/2
mother 2 with usual toes/4/0

using information provided and your knowage of genetics you can see polydactyl is a recessive trait complete the punnett square to show a possible cross that could result in a litter with 50% polydactyl kittens

Answer 1

To analyze this genetic scenario, we need to establish the genotypes for the mother cats in terms of polydactylism. Since polydactylism is mentioned as a recessive trait, we can denote the alleles as follows:

• P = allele for the normal number of toes (dominant)
• p = allele for polydactyl (recessive)

Information Given:

1. The mother with more toes (polydactyl) can be denoted as pp (homozygous recessive), since having more toes is a recessive trait.
2. The mothers with the usual number of toes could either be homozygous dominant (PP) or heterozygous (Pp), but since some of their litters had polydactyl kittens, at least one must be heterozygous.

Given that one mother with usual toes had a litter containing 3 kittens with normal toes and 2 with polydactyl (which would need 2 recessive alleles from parents), we can conclude that:

• The mother with usual toes who had 3 normal and 2 polydactyl kittens is Pp.
• The second mother with usual toes who had all normal toe kittens is likely PP.

Possible Parents:

• The polydactyl mother (pp): 2 recessive alleles
• The heterozygous mother with usual toes (Pp): 1 dominant (normal) and 1 recessive (polydactyl) allele

Punnett Square for the Cross (pp x Pp):

| | P | p | |---------|------|------| | p | Pp | pp | | p | Pp | pp |

Results:

• Pp (normal toes) - 50%
• pp (polydactyl) - 50%

This Punnett square indicates that when a polydactyl cat (pp) is crossed with a heterozygous cat (Pp), the resulting litter would have a 50% chance of being polydactyl (pp) and a 50% chance of having the normal number of toes (Pp).

Therefore, this is a valid cross that results in a litter with 50% polydactyl kittens, consistent with the information provided about the litters associated with the different mother cats in the neighborhood.