Please Note: If you would like to copy the information on this page for use on your website, ect., please ask permission from it's author, Terra Sinclair, first. In most cases, I will be happy to let you use the information as long as you add a text credit and link to my website. Thanks! |
The "brown" bengal is the first bengal color that we are going to discuss on this site.
The brown gene is dominant. This means you only need one brown parent to get brown kittens in a litter, no matter what color the other parent is. Brown cannot be carried recessively. So you will never get any browns from two snows , for example.
Some may argue that it can be carried recessively by silver, but this is incorrect. I will explain in detail about that in the silver section. To make it short though, a "regular" silver is a brown with the added dominant "I" gene.
The brown bengal is actually a black cat. Now don't confuse the black with melanistic. Melanistic is a cat that lacks the agouti gene and which causes the entire cat to be of one color.
The brown bengal is actually a black cat that is not recessive at the agouti gene site, so you can see the pattern. The brown (black) bengal will always have a black tail tip and black paw pads.
Brown bengals comes in a huge variety of colors. They range from a very hot color cat (the hot color is called roufesing) to a very cool color cat with little to no roufesing. In the picture example below, Harley Red is a very roufesed brown bengal on your right, and Metallic Miss is a very cool color brown on your left, also referred to as a "charcoal brown" by many breeders. |
 |
| charcoal brown bengal and a roufesed brown bengal |
|
|
 |
| Harley Red is a very roufesed brown colored bengal |
|
|
Charcoal and roufesed are certainly not the only colors the brown bengals come in. They can be any color of brown and there seems to be a huge range of brown colors. Some of the terms to describe the various brown colors is tawny, mohogany, golden, sorral, roufesed, and charcoal. This page will describe and show examples of only a few of them. |
'Charcoal brown'
Below is an example of a charcoal kitten that looks much like a silver because of the dark black markings, lack of roufesing, and very light, almost white background color. As the kitten matures, the background color usually becomes more grayish or a silver grey color. Most of my charcoal browns have lots and lots of silver glitter as well.
For more information on the charcoal color, please see our Charcoal color page.
|
 |
| charcoal brown kitten |
|
|
 |
| "Seattle" is a dark charcoal brown bengal |
|
|
"Golden Bengals"
The term 'golden' is a confusing one. The term golden in other breeds is not the same as how bengal breeders use the term. In other breeds, the golden is not even a tabby cat. It is hard not to confuse golden in other breeds to the "golden" that bengal breeders use to describe some types of bengals.
Another confusing aspect to the term is that golden is not used to simply describe color in a bengal, it also means that the cat has a very clear coat, with spots that reach all the way down to the skin and background that has little to no ticking. Consenses shows that even cats that are not a 'golden' color can be golden if you are talking about a cat that is clear coated. (see picture example #1 below)
Theoretically there is a group of polygenes responsible for this phenomonon. The genes are being called 'wideband' genes. These genes supposedly push all of the ticking in the background of the coat off of the ends of the hairshaft making the ticking invisible.
|
 |
| (picture #1) Grafitti Art is an example of a golden that is not golden in color and does not have a silver parent |
|
|
 |
| (picture #2) photo courtesy of Joshua Dabbs and Bengal Companions. Rhea is a golden that has the golden coloring and the clear coat. |
|
|
|
Lots of controversy swirls around where the golden came from. Many people believe that it has something to do with the silver (inhibitor) gene and the brown gene working together somehow.
We are seeing examples of clear coated 'golden' bengals come out of parents that are not silver though. (picture #2) is an example of a cat that is golden (golden color and clear coated) that did not come from silver parents.
|
| Below are picture examples of various shades of brown (black) bengals. |
|
|
