What has red eyes and banded fur?

[Robochelle]

Confused on this bunny... his 4 brothers are all Himalayan, his mom Himalayan and his dad half Himalayan and half otter. He has red eyes and Himalayan marking, but he's grown in a blue band in his coat... on the top and sides but not the belly. To top it off, the band is blue and so are the face marking but the tail is clearly black.

 

[ladysown]

betting there is harlequin in his background. I've gotten kits like that from my tricolours that have tort in their background

 

[Robochelle]

With red eyes though? He's got pigment in his fur but not in his eyes? I didn't think that possible...

 

[Alaska Satin]

Confused on this bunny... his 4 brothers are all Himalayan, his mom Himalayan and his dad half Himalayan and half otter. He has red eyes and Himalayan marking, but he's grown in a blue band in his coat... on the top and sides but not the belly. To top it off, the band is blue and so are the face marking but the tail is clearly black.

Looks like it may be a "frosted" himi, which seems to happen when the bunny is chilled in the nest box. I don't know why it happens to some bunnies and not others.

Here are some photos of a frosted californian Satin (now called himalayan Satin) I had last spring. You can see that her coat looked like it had ticking or banding, but the third photo is what she looked like later - she molted out into a very dark-marked himi. She still had a bit of smut on her hindquarters in this photo.

As you suspected, if the eyes are pink, the rabbit must be a red-eyed white (REW) or a himalayan. Sables and chocolates often have reddish cast to their eyes, but they're not pink.

 

[Robochelle]

Hmm, that could be the case, it is winter and we had a cold spell that froze the water bowls a week ago. Would the color only show up on the fur created when he's cold? He has a thin middle band, white on the tip and the root. Would it also be the reason for the black tail? Ie: would the color potentially be darker in a colder location?

 

[judymac]

Would the color only show up on the fur created when he's cold? He has a thin middle band, white on the tip and the root. Would it also be the reason for the black tail? Ie: would the color potentially be darker in a colder location?

According to Robinson's work on Rabbit Color Genetics (p. 241), temperatures below 6 degrees C (about 42 degrees F) could cause pigmentation in the fur, as the Himalayan gene is temperature sensitive. That's why the cooler extremities (ears, tail, nose) still produce color, while the rest of the rabbit is normally white. If the rest of the body gets chilled, it can start producing color as well, for as long as the chilling continues. Then, it goes back to normal white.

In one trial, two baby Himalayan rabbits were taken from the nestbox for just ten minutes on two consecutive days. The air temperture was sixty degrees F (16 degrees C). In another couple of days, dark fur began to emerge, which then went back to growing in white.

Normally, kits in the nestbox are uniformly warm, which is why the babies are white all-over at first, and the points don't begin showing until later. Conversely, a true genetic Himalayan could be masquerading as an albino in very warm temperatures or if it has a fever.

Just as an unlikely scenario, but something that exists, there is another recessive gene that causes pink eyes, called 'lutino', coded 'p'. It is extraordinarily rare, but it works somewhat like the chinchilla gene. There are two main forms of pigment in rabbits. pheomelanin makes yellow/orange/red colors and eumelanin the brown/black/blue/lilac shades. Chinchilla genetics turn off the yellow pheomelanin production, leaving pearl white where the yellow/orange/red would have been. In the case of lutino, the opposite happens, the dark colored eumelanin is turned off, and only the pheomelanin yellow/orange/red shades are produced. So, the rabbits only have the yellow pheomelanin tones, and the brown is stripped from the eyes, leaving pink (which can be a variety of shades of pink). I found a description online at The Lutino Gene.

Lutino wouldn't be the case with your rabbit, as it has the eumelanin gray shades, but there are indeed ways to have color on normally white rabbits.

 

[Alaska Satin]

Hmm, that could be the case, it is winter and we had a cold spell that froze the water bowls a week ago. Would the color only show up on the fur created when he's cold? He has a thin middle band, white on the tip and the root. Would it also be the reason for the black tail? Ie: would the color potentially be darker in a colder location?

Yes, the coloration on himalayans is typically on the extremities because they are cooler than than body. In mine, the very first hint of color is always on the tail, next it shows up on the nose, and then on the other parts more slowly. I can usually tell if I have a REW or a himi by about a week of age, sometimes less, by looking at the tail. It can take longer to show if it is a blue himi because the color is lighter, but even very dark himis start out lighter than they'll be eventually. You can see in the photos posted above that her color was more of a pale sable before she molted into her dark black-looking sepia.

And yes, the color seems to be put on as long as the cold lasts. I think that's why it can look variously like banding, or tipping, or light frosting, in bunnies.

Incidentally, up here in the cold region we can have trouble with "smut" in our cals and himis, which is color on usable portions of the pelt; conversely, in very warm regions, cal breeders have trouble getting good dark coloration even on the extremities.

 

[Robochelle]

I'm betting it's the Himalayan getting cold. There was one escapee from the kindle box the week before we noticed his color. I have few questions, so I can get a better understanding:

Would the cold also be the explanation behind the black tail vs the light grey bands?

Does the color correspond to what the himi gene is covering up (ie: would the grey indicate that it is dilute, or if it was agouti would the brown or red show if exposed to cold at the right time) or does it only color black pigment, darker depending on how long it's exposed to the cold?

 

[Alaska Satin]

I'm betting it's the Himalayan getting cold. There was one escapee from the kindle box the week before we noticed his color. I have few questions, so I can get a better understanding:

Would the cold also be the explanation behind the black tail vs the light grey bands?

Does the color correspond to what the himi gene is covering up (ie: would the grey indicate that it is dilute, or if it was agouti would the brown or red show if exposed to cold at the right time) or does it only color black pigment, darker depending on how long it's exposed to the cold?

A proper himalayan is a self rabbit, but you can get the himi pattern in agouti, tan or even tort - the points will reflect those genetic details. Usually it shows up as nostril markings, colorless areas in the ears and on the inside of legs, and a white undertail in the agoutis or tans; it appears as shading on the points in the torts. I do have a tan-marked himi Satin bunny in the barn right now. At first she looks like a nice dark cal, until you look closer.

She's a pretty young doe, intended to be a keeper:


That is until you look closer at her nose, which has pale edging around the nostrils:


And then you notice her ears are laced with silver:


Her hind feet have the characteristic otter/agouti pattern (A), and the real tip-off, which just barely shows in this photo (taken right before my camera batteries died in the cold), is that the underside of her tail is white/silver (B):

So, no shows for this doe.

I don't actually know if the agouti banding would show up in the smut or not; I suppose it might. I have never had an agouti himi since himis are only showable in self, and I try to avoid that cross. The banded-looking kit in the photos above was a self, not an agouti. I believe its apparent bands came from cooling/warming/cooling events as the fur grew in.

Black himi kits start out with their points looking fairly pale and darkening as they grow, so unless you have both black and blue himis in the same litter it can be hard to tell at first which you have.

So to answer your questions directly: The himi gene suppresses color expression in the eyes and on the body, no matter what that color is; more (density and distribution) of whatever pigment they would have is expressed at colder temperatures. The tail being black and the banding being lighter could be due to that fact that whatever the temperature, the tail will be colder than the body, so it will be darker.

 

[Dimplz]

Remember other genes in the c locus can have partial dominance over the himi gene.

I have a chinchilla buck who has all the marking of a chinchilla, and a californian. His entire body is chinchilla colored with rings, even his ears, nose, feet and tail are all chin marked but get super dark when it is cold.

He changes shades of black with changes in temps. When it is warm, only the very tip of his nose is still dark. When the temps get cold, the darker shade spreads up his face, up his legs, up his back and across his entire body.

His bands become darker and more defined when it is cold. He is so gorgeous to me. I also believe is may be expressing the steel gene, but I am too new to color genetics to say for sure.

I do know that his lineage contains large meat rabbits that are Californians, Silver Foxes, Chinchillas and REW NZs.