genetics – Pain In The Bud

Ashera Cats Do Not Exist: They Are A Scam

After 20 years people are still paying exorbitant prices for a breed of cat that does not exist. The scammers who sell them get a generous assist from pet news and information sites, which publish articles about the breed as if it’s real.

It’s been 20 years since a con artist invented a breed of cat, claimed it was hypoallergenic, and charged unsuspecting customers tens of thousands of dollars only to deliver felines of a different breed.

Yet you wouldn’t know that by all the articles, listicles and social media posts by unscrupulous news brands and pet sites that continue to spread misinformation about the so-called “Ashera cat.”

Because of the overwhelming amount of misinformation about the fabulated breed on the web, even prominent AI models, like those integrated with search engines, tell users the Ashera is legitimate or claim there’s “controversy” about it, as if the question of whether it’s real or not is still up in the air.

The sources of misinformation include a popular YouTube channel that praises the Ashera, calling it “basically a Ferrari with fur.” Cat information sites like Catster and KittyNook describe it as if it’s real, while dozens of pages on Facebook and Instagram claim to sell Ashera cats. Even articles on major platforms like MSN and Yahoo discuss the Ashera as if it’s a legitimate breed.

Spotted Ashera cat standing on a dark sofa in a living room — Catster’s editors know the Ashera is a scam, and they still run these stories.

The ubiquity of “for sale” posts proves that scammers are still benefiting from the confusion created by the media stories repeating long-debunked claims. We last wrote about the Ashera in early 2024, and the situation hasn’t improved. If anything, there are even more bad actors trying to rip people off by promising them genetically engineered miracle cats.

For the sake of being as blunt as possible so there can be no ambiguity:

The Ashera does not exist. It has never existed.

The man who “created” the Ashera, Simon Brodie, is a British national with a long criminal history. He fled and changed his name when his scam was exposed.

Not a single person who paid him received an “Ashera cat.”

Brodie launched his Ashera cat scam in the early 2000s by fooling several major media outlets into positively covering his fake business. He presented himself as a tech CEO and geneticist whose lab created the breed. The Ashera was developed, he claimed, by manipulating the DNA of existing cat breeds, removing the mechanisms that create allergens.

It’s worth noting that even now in 2026, no genetics company has done so, and geneticists still do not understand what function the relevant protein (Fel d 1) plays in feline biology. They know it produces allergens, but that’s a side effect on humans, not its purpose. Using gene-editing technology like CRISPR to snip out the relevant genetic code could have catastrophic consequences for the felines whose DNA is edited.

Yet reporters for major news outlets, including the New York Times, Time magazine, Reuters and National Geographic, didn’t question Brodie’s claims. The positive coverage in national and international publications vaulted Brodie’s scam to new heights, bringing him new customers.

It wasn’t until angry customers went to ABC News that the scam was fully exposed. DNA tests by an independent lab concluded so-called Ashera cats weren’t genetically engineered and didn’t have lower levels of allergens.

Brodie’s claims of an allergen-free cat were especially beguiling to people who’d always wanted a pet cat but found their allergies were too severe.

“I don’t think any cat is worth $4,000,” a customer named Mike Sela told Columbia Journalism review, “but this seemed like a magical opportunity, especially with parents trying to get something for kids. You never thought you could get a cat and this is your chance.”

Bengal cat with green eyes lying on a wooden surface against a dark background — So-called “Ashera cats” are usually Bengal cats drop-shipped from breeders. While Bengal kittens typically command between $1,500 and $3,000, drop-shippers charge tens of thousands for supposedly hypoallergenic “Ashera cats.”

Brodie was neither a tech CEO nor a geneticist. He had no employees and his lab didn’t exist. He ran his “high tech startup” from his apartment, charging customers up to $100,000 for Ashera cats and drop-shipping them Bengal and Savannah cats from breeders.

Despite claims to the contrary by many other breeders, hypoallergenic cats aren’t a thing. All breeds of cat have the Fel d 1 protein, which is found in saliva and skin glands. You can’t buy an “allergy free” cat, and there is no governing body that certifies a cat as allergy free or “less allergenic.”

This isn’t difficult information to dig up. All it requires is basic due diligence and critical thinking.

Yet both are in short supply in a world where people just copy existing news articles, shifting a few words around to fool plagiarism detectors, or tell AI to write the stories for them.

To the owners and editors of sites still treating the Ashera cat and similar scams as real: You are serving the interests of scammers who separate people from their hard-earned money in exchange for hypoallergenic cats that do not exist. You’re doing real harm out of laziness or ambivalence. Please stop.

Spotted tabby cat lying down with its front paws extended. — Savannah cats are also sold as Asheras. Credit: Pexels

To people who are considering purchasing an Ashera, please don’t! The lure of a supposedly allergen-free cat is strong, as is the idea of a unique breed that looks like a wildcat.

Unfortunately that’s not what you’ll get in exchange from your money. You’ll get a regular fourth- or fifth-generation Bengal or Savannah that you could have purchased directly from the breeder for a fraction of the price.

Why pay for a cat anyway? There are literally hundreds of thousands of cats out there right now who need homes, and contrary to what breeders claim, those cats aren’t lower quality and don’t have anything wrong with them. In fact, domestic shorthairs are healthier than so-called pedigree cats in every respect and are not predisposed to the diseases and other health problems that plague breeds. They live longer, healthier, happier lives, and they’re just as loving.

Scammers continue posting ads and maintaining fake breeder pages because the scam still works, and the scam still works because supposedly trustworthy pet news sites tell readers the Ashera is real. They need to stop. After 20 years, haven’t enough people been scammed?

Ashera cat listings found on Nov. 10, 2026. The ads for people looking to rehome Asheras may be from people who were told the cats they purchased were Asheras, or they may be another form of scam. There were more than a dozen current “Asheras” listed for sale, each for at least $10,000.

A Missing Genetic Sequence Leads To Orange Fur In Cats. Could It Be Responsible For Behavioral Differences Too?

Scientists have uncovered the elusive mechanisms behind coat color expression, opening the door to a new question: is fur pigment connected to personality?

When Professor Hiroyuki Sasaki retired, he wasn’t done with science. He just wanted to use it to better understand his cats.

The Japanese geneticist raised more than $73,000 from Japanese and international cat lovers and put together a team, including partners from the US. Then he began the hard work of scrutinizing feline DNA to find out why some cats are orange, and why most all-orange cats are male while virtually all calico and tortoiseshell cats, whose coats have splotches of orange, are female.

It turns out there’s no genetic instruction telling the fur to take on an orange pigment — it’s the absence of a segment of DNA, which governs pigment production, that does it.

In other words, ginger cats are mutants.

Most fully-orange cats are male because the mutation removes the DNA segment in the X chromosome. As males have X and Y chromosomes, they only need the mutation in the single X chromosome for their coats to express in that shade.

Lots of cat lovers swear that coat color and temperament are connected.

Females have an XX chromosomal arrangement, so they need the mutation in both chromosomes to turn tangerine. If the mutation only shows up in one chromosome, you get patches of the color instead of a consistent coat.

That explains why 80 percent of ginger cats are male, and why only one in 3,000 calicos and tortoiseshells are male. A male cat would need an extra X chromosome, XXY, to be born with a calico or tortoiseshell coat. One of the side effects, however, is sterility.

Scientists estimate only one in a thousand male calicos/tortoiseshells can reproduce and pass their unique mutations on.

It’s not just coat color either. The mutation impacts skin and eye color, which is why a ginger cat might have a pink nose compared to the terracotta shade of a void cat or a silver tabby.

Are orange cats really more friendly and silly?

So how does this relate to temperament, and the many people who attest to a particular personality associated with orange cats? Some people say ginger tabbies are more loyal, affectionate and social than cats of other coat colors, but they’re also more prone to doing boneheaded things.

The stereotypes have picked up steam online, where people often share memes depicting orange felines as earnestly derpy, but they may be on to something — or at least, it can’t be ruled out until we know more.

Ginger cats are not the sharpest claw on the paw, according to popular memes.

Because of the missing piece of genetic code, a specific gene, ARHGAP36, isn’t “expressed.” Like so many genes, scientists don’t fully understand everything ARHGAP36 impacts, or how alterations can lead to unexpected changes elsewhere.

“Many cat owners swear by the idea that different coat colours and patterns are linked with different personalities,” Sasaki told the BBC. “There’s no scientific evidence for this yet, but it’s an intriguing idea and one I’d love to explore further.”

Header image via Pexels

Were Cats Really Domesticated By The Egyptian Cult Of Bastet?

While the sensational claims have spawned headlines around the world, a closer examination raises more questions.

According to dozens of articles, a pair of new studies throws doubt on the commonly-held view that cats self-domesticated 10,000 years ago by helping themselves to rodents invading human grain stores.

The conventional wisdom for some time has been that house cats are the domesticated ancestors of felis sylvestris lybica, the African wildcat. Their genomes are nearly identical, it’s often difficult even for experts to tell the species apart, and they’re much more tolerant toward humans than the comparatively hostile felis sylvestris, the European wildcat.

But two new papers are raising eyebrows for their fantastic claims that feline domestication was actually human-driven and began about 5,000 years ago in Egypt.

Specifically, the papers claim cats were sacrificed en masse by the cult of Bastet, an Egyptian feline goddess, guiding the species toward domestication in a way that doesn’t quite make sense with what we know of evolution.

Bastet was originally depicted with the head of a lion, but the imagery around her evolved as she became a more prominent deity in the Egyptian pantheon. Later glyphs depicted her with the head of a domestic cat or African wildcat.

There are two main elements to the new claim:

The earliest grave in which a cat was buried with a human was dated to about 10,000 years ago, and was found in Europe. But an analysis of the cat’s remains indicate it had DNA somewhere between a wild cat and a domestic feline. That, the authors claim, throws into doubt the idea that cats drifted into human settlements, drawn by the presence of rodents.
If domestication was closer to 5,000 years ago, that would coincide with the rise of the cult of Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess, around 2,800 BC.

Instead of the feel-good, fortuitous sequence of events the scientific community has accepted as the likely genesis of our furry friends, the authors of the new papers claim aggressive and fearful traits were essentially murdered out of the feline population by Bastet cultists who sacrificed cats in large numbers and mummified their corpses.

Neither paper has been peer-reviewed yet, and experts on ancient Egypt, genetics and archeology have already begun pushing back.

The new timeline, they say, doesn’t quite add up, with cat mummies found throughout different periods in Egyptian history, not just during the height of Bastet’s popularity in the Egyptian pantheon. Bastet’s popularity came approximately 700 years later than the authors claim the sacrifices began, and early imagery of the felid goddess depicts her with a lion head. It wasn’t until later centuries that Bastet was represented with the features of a domestic cat.

The powerful Pharaoh Budhotep I, considered an apocryphal king by some, sent a fleet of ships to the Americas to bring back turkey, according to legend. Credit: The Royal Buddinese Archaeological Society

Separate from timeline concerns is the lack of historical evidence. Cats were revered in ancient Egypt, and while there are an abundance of cat mummies — as well as the mummified remains of many other animals — that does not mean the cats were ritually sacrificed.

Indeed, archaeological, hieroglyphic and anthropological evidence all show cats enjoyed elevated status in the Egypt of deep antiquity, long before the nation became a vassal state of the Greeks, then the Romans.

Cats were associated with magic, the divine and royalty, and cats who were the favored pets of Egyptian elites were given elaborate burials. Like Ta-miu, Prince Thutmose’s cat who is known for her grand sarcophagus decorated with images of felines and prayer glyphs meant to guide her to the afterlife.

Cats were sacred companions to the Egyptians

When cats are found buried with humans, the more common explanation is that those cats were the pets and companions of those humans. If the authors of the two new papers want to prove their claim that cats were ritually sacrificed by the tens of thousands — slaughter on a scale that would influence evolution — they’ve got a lot more work ahead of them. (And the burden of proof rests squarely with them, as the originators of the claim.)

Not only does their research attempt to change the origin stories of kitties to an ignominious tale of human barbarity, if we take their assertions at face value, we’re talking about a case of “domestication by slaughter.”

While it may be true that the earliest evidence of companion cats outside of North Africa revealed hybrid DNA, that doesn’t cast doubt on the commonly-accepted view of feline domestication, it strengthens it. Domestication is a process that takes hundreds of years if not more, and it occurs on a species level, so it makes perfect sense that cats found in burial sites from early civilization would be hybrids of domestic and wild. Those felines were of a generation undergoing domestication, but not quite there yet.

A detail from the sarcophagus of Ta-miu, Prince Thutmose’s beloved cat.

Ta-miu, Prince Thutmose’s beloved cat, was buried in an elaborately decorated sarcophagus with glyphs and offerings meant to guide her to the afterlife. Thutmose, son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, lived in the 14th century BC.

Killing off docile cats?

Which brings us to another significant problem with the claim: if the ancient worshipers of Bastet were selecting the most docile and easiest-to-handle wildcats for their sacrifice rituals, as claimed, then they would be influencing evolution in the other direction.

In other words, they’d be killing off the cats who have a genetic predisposition toward friendliness, meaning those cats would not reproduce and would not pass their traits down. It would have the opposite effect of what the papers claim.

So despite the credulous stories circulating in the press and on social media, take the assertion with a grain of salt. Something tells me it won’t survive peer review, and this will be a footnote about a wrong turn in the search for more information on the domestication of our furry buddies.

Cats would like human civilization to return to the good old days.

After 10,000 Years, Dire Wolves Walk The Earth Again

The surprise announcement came from Colossal Biosciences, a company best known for its project to bring back the woolly mammoth.

A US biotech company shocked the world Monday when it announced the births of three dire wolf puppies, bringing back a species that hasn’t lived for more than ten millennia.

Or a version of that species, at least.

Scientists with Colossal Biosciences extracted DNA “from a 13,000 year old tooth and a 72,000 year old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies,” Colossal CEO Ben Lamm said in a statement.

Of course, it wasn’t that simple.

The dire wolf, Aenocyon dirus, was heavier, stockier and had thicker fur than modern-day gray wolves. In addition, its bite was incredibly strong, generating more force than any living species of canid.

To create the dire wolf puppies, Colossal used the genomes reconstructed from the tooth and skull, spliced them with gray wolf DNA, and made 20 gene edits in 14 genes. Healthy embryos were implanted in three surrogates — large, mixed-breed dogs — and were successfully delivered.

Romulus, one of two male dire wolf pups born late in 2024. Credit: Colossal Biosciences

Remus, who was born at the same time as Romulus. Credit: Colossal Biosciences

Whether the new puppies are officially dire wolves is up for debate and beyond the scope of this post, but just like humans and chimpanzees share 98.7 percent of their DNA, dire wolves and gray wolves share 99.5 percent of their DNA.

The species also existed concurrently with gray wolves and there was interbreeding between the populations, meaning gray wolves already have dire wolf lineage.

As a result, the puppies may be more dire wolf than some are willing to admit. Just how far a “de-extinction” project has to go for the animals to qualify as their namesakes will be debated for years, and there are innumerable questions for which we won’t have answers until the pups grow and scientists monitor their behavior in addition to their physical health.

They won’t behave precisely the way their ancestors did, since they are growing up in a captive environment with teams of specialists constantly monitoring them. The wolves are “essentially living the Ritz Carlton lifestyle of a wolf. They can’t get a splinter without us knowing about it,” Colossal’s chief science officer, Beth Shapiro, told the New York Times.

Whether bringing back dire wolves is a “good” thing is also a topic for another day, at least as far as this post goes. You may disagree, and feel free to say so in the comments, but this is a subject you could write half a library of books on, encompassing ecological, moral and philosophical questions that don’t have easy answers.

It’s made even more complex by the situation we find ourselves in, with our own behavior and relentless expansion killing off more than 70 percent of the world’s wildlife since 1970, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The company wants to use its technology to help critically endangered species, like the red fox, avoid extinction.

Colossal has partnered with leaders in the fields of genetics and bioethics, as well as organizations that specialize in animal welfare. The puppies are in a sizable, custom-built facility in an undisclosed location, secured by “zoo grade” barriers, and the company enlisted the help of the SPCA to create an environment appropriate for them. Colossal says their care regimen will include socialization and the development of pack dynamics.

A newborn dire wolf pup. Credit: Colossal Biosciences

The company has well-publicized projects to bring back woolly mammoths and the dodo, and ultimately, its founders say they want to restore balance in places where apex predators have been brought to extinction by human activity.

“This project demonstrates the awesome potential for advances in genetic engineering and reproductive technologies to recreate lost diversity,” Andrew Pask, a Colossal board member and professor of biosciences at the University of Melbourne, said in a statement. “Apex predators are critical to stabilizing entire ecosystems and their loss from the landscape can have profound impacts on biodiversity.”

The pups are named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi. That last name is in homage to the character Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) from the book series A Song of Ice and Fire, and Game of Thrones, the television adaptation. Dire wolves play a major part in the narrative, and the series is credited with bringing the long-extinct animals back into the popular imagination.

Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) discovers an orphaned dire wolf pup in the first season of Game of Thrones. The pup, who grows into a fierce and massive adult wolf named Ghost, plays a pivotal role in many major events in the series. Credit: HBO

Khaleesi, a female dire wolf, named after the character Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. Credit: Colossal Biosciences

Buddy — Er, Budhotep — Is Apparently Descended From Royal Pharaonic Felines

Sheba and a geneticist who specializes in cats are looking for felines descended from ancient Egypt’s royal buddies.

“You may call me Budtum Ra Budhotep Bhufu Amun Buddeses, human. Now serve me!”

Bud’s already enormous ego just got a little bigger after I used Sheba’s Pharaoh Cat Finder to analyze his pharaohness.

The online tool says he’s up to 75 percent pharaoh:

I didn’t do it entirely out of altruism to give the little guy an ego boost. The winner of the Pharaoh Cat contest gets a lifetime supply of Sheba, and Bud’s been eating Sheba for 10 years. We’ve never endorsed any particular cat food here on PITB, partly because every cat is different, some have special nutritional needs and what works for one furry overlord may not work for another.

But as food motivated as he is, Buddy cannot scarf down more than half a can of wet food at a time, and he’s an enormous pain in the Bud when it comes to leftovers, so Sheba’s Perfect Portions saves me from wasting food.

While the online Pharaoh Cat Finder tool looks like it may be RNG combined with clever marketing, there’s a genetic basis for the search. The company is working with Dr. Leslie A. Lyons, a geneticist who specializes in the DNA of our furry little friends at the University of Missouri’s Feline Genetics and Comparative Medicine Lab.

The legendary funerary mask of pharaonic feline Buddankhamun Budstet Ra Budshepsut, Buddy’s royal Egyptian ancestor. Credit: The Grand Museum of Magnificent Feline Stuff

Lyons was part of a research team that extracted DNA from mummified cats buried in ancient Egyptian tombs and sequenced their genetic code.

While the project verified that the Egyptians domesticated cats long before they began mummifying them and affording them revered status, Lyons says a DNA sequence from the ancient felines “has only been found in cats in Egypt and the U.S., unlocking even more questions to be explored.”

“We are looking at mitochondrial DNA only found in these pharaoh cats and a few cats in the U.S. So it’s really hard to find these cats, hence this hunt with Sheba pet food,” she said. “We’re on that quest to find the cats that went from Egypt into the U.S. and are the divine cats of the pharaohs. They should be worshiped like they were.”

The Temple of Amun Bud is guarded by gold statues of domestic cats instead of sphynxes. Credit: National Gallery of Buddesian Artifacts

I don’t think there’s any doubt that the aptly named Dr. Lyons is on team cat.

So here’s to hoping Bud gets a lifetime supply of Sheba, and Dr. Lyons is successful in her quest to find the elusive pharaoh cat lineage. In the meantime, we should probably start work on an impressive new pyramid here in the US, lest we disappoint our new feline pharaoh.