image: In the king cheetah, the spots coalesce into larger, less well-organized blotches and stripes develop on the dorsal body surface. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the September 21, 2012, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by Christopher Kaelin at HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Ala., and colleagues was titled, "Specifying and Sustaining Pigmentation Patterns in Domestic and Wild Cats." view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Greg Barsh, from the Ann van Dyk cheetah preserve