This cat, whose photo was published on Reddit, suffers from a rare condition that causes muscles to grow out of all proportion
On Reddit, the photo of a cat full of muscles, a rare condition called muscle hypertrophy related to myostatin, a protein produced by the body that inhibits muscle growth.
A problem that can occur in cattle, sheep, humans and apparently cats as well. According to reports from Popular Science, which devoted an entire article to the subject, it depends on the fact that myostatin proteins do not work.
House cat suffering from Myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy – a rare condition that causes muscles to grow excessively large from Damnthatsinteresting
- To make muscles grow properly, the body uses a system of conflicting signals; some tell the cells to multiply or expand, while others inhibit that growth. Myostatin is one of the inhibitory proteins that operate inside muscle cells - explains Popular Science.
When a mutation occurs in the gene that codes for myotastin, the muscles do not receive the key signal that causes them to stop growing. This does not mean that they will increase dramatically throughout life, but that they will not fall within the standard limits of average muscle size.
As Popular Science explains, - each of us has two copies of the gene that encodes myostatin. Inheriting a mutated copy makes you heterozygous for the gene, and animals with that pattern are unusually muscular and strong without being "abnormal". It is only when you are homozygous, meaning you have two mutated copies, that you become a kind of anomaly -. As in the case of this huge kitty.
The reason these mutations remain rare is that having more muscle isn't necessarily a good thing. In fact, this anomaly can lead to problems of various entities: it has been discovered, for example, that the cattle that suffer from it are unusually thin and have more difficulty in giving birth due to excessive muscles. Myostatin-free goats and rabbits can develop huge tongues, and mortality at the time of calving tends to be higher.
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