Some animals stop you mid-scroll: a cat that seems to wear a beard, a rabbit with perfect eyeliner, a pigeon that shimmers like oil on water. This collection gathers twenty such photographs shared by owners and wildlife fans, mostly between 2014 and 2019, and adds what is actually known about each animal.
It helps to keep one thing in mind while looking. Striking looks can come from very different sources. Some are the normal colours of a wild species, such as the spectacled bear or the Nicobar pigeon. Some are the product of selective breeding, as with the Dwarf Hotot rabbit or the Afghan hound. Others come from a chance combination of genes for white spotting or coat colour, and a few, like the marbled cat further down, may reflect a skin condition. A photograph alone cannot tell you which is which, so the captions below say so where the cause is uncertain.
Each picture is credited to the person who posted it, with a link to the original post where it still exists. Several of the embedded social media posts depend on the original accounts, so one or two may no longer display.
Cats with faces that look painted on
The cat with a beard
This white cat has a dark patch covering its chin and lower cheeks, so it looks as if it has grown a neat goatee. The effect comes from white spotting: genes that block pigment cells from reaching parts of the skin during development leave the rest of the coat coloured, and the dark areas can land anywhere. The photo became a hit on Reddit's r/mildlyinteresting in 2017.
Photo: thebryguy23 / Reddit
A tuxedo cat with a moustache and dragon eggs
A black-and-white cat sits on a staircase above three large, scaly green cones, which its owner compared to dragon eggs from Game of Thrones. The black patch under its nose gives it a convincing moustache. Black-and-white "tuxedo" cats are not a breed; the pattern can appear in many breeds and in ordinary domestic cats.
Photo: Debuchin / Reddit
Smoothie and those green eyes
Smoothie is a fluffy cat whose wide, vivid green eyes made the cat one of the better-known cats on Instagram. Eye colour in cats depends on how much pigment sits in the iris, and green eyes are common in many breeds. Professional lighting and photography play a part too, which is why the portraits look almost painted.
Eyes the colour of copper
This white cat's large amber-copper eyes stand out against its pale fur, and the owner said people often compliment them. Deep orange or copper eyes are a desired trait in several breeds, including some white Persians and British Shorthairs. White cats with blue eyes are more likely to be born deaf, but that link does not apply to copper-eyed cats like this one.
Photo: myhightide / Reddit
Coats that look unreal
The hound that looks like a wig
Seen from behind on a bench, this dog's long, silky coat looks more like a wig on a stand than an animal. It is almost certainly an Afghan hound, an ancient sighthound breed from the mountains of Afghanistan whose fine coat kept it warm at altitude. Keeping a coat this long and tangle-free takes hours of brushing every week.
Photo: d1psyyyy / Reddit
A contender for the fluffiest cat
Caught mid-stretch on its hind legs in a doorway, this cream long-haired cat looks like a walking cloud. Long fur in cats is caused by a recessive gene, so both parents must carry it. Coats like this need regular combing to prevent painful mats.
Photo: laurackreddit / Reddit
White sisters
Iriss and Abyss are two white cats from a Russian-speaking household whose owners post them as twins under the name sis.twins. Their snowy coats inspired the owners to ask followers whether the pair looked more like marshmallows, ice cream or snowballs. A solid white coat is usually caused by a dominant gene that masks any other colour the cat carries.
A tail longer than the cat
This grey tabby lies stretched out on a wooden floor with a huge plumed tail fanned behind it. The build and coat suggest a Maine Coon or a similar long-haired breed, which are known for heavy, bushy tails. In cold climates, a cat can wrap such a tail around its body and face like a scarf.
Photo: 295DVRKSS / Reddit
The marbled cat
Scrappy, an older cat whose owners share his photos on Facebook, has a coat broken into black and white streaks that look like polished marble. A pattern that spreads like this over the years is consistent with vitiligo, a condition in which pigment cells are lost, and which is rare in cats. Vitiligo is not painful or contagious, but any sudden change in a pet's coat is worth showing to a vet.
Photo: Scrappy / Facebook
A Bengal cat in charcoal
Most Bengals are golden with dark spots, but this one has a dark, smoky coat with golden stripes and a pale face mask. The colour is often called "charcoal" and is linked to a gene variant inherited from the Asian leopard cat, the wild ancestor used to create the breed.
Photo: Asaki / pikabu
Dogs and foxes
White huskies
(The Instagram post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
This spot showed a pair of pure white Siberian huskies, Kiba and Korra, whose owners ran the Instagram account huskytwins. All-white huskies are an accepted colour of the breed; the white comes from genes that limit pigment, not from albinism, so their noses and eye rims stay dark.
A black shepherd with blue eyes
A black, thick-coated dog with ice-blue eyes stares straight at the camera. Solid black is a recognised colour in German Shepherds, but blue eyes are not part of the breed standard, so a dog like this most likely has some husky in its ancestry. In Siberian huskies, blue eyes are strongly linked to a duplication near a gene called ALX4.
Photo: K3wl_ / Reddit
Domesticated foxes from a famous experiment
This post comes from the Judith A. Bassett Canid Education and Conservation Center in California, which looks after foxes descended from a long-running Soviet experiment. In Novosibirsk, Dmitry Belyaev and later Lyudmila Trut bred silver foxes for tameness alone, and within about ten generations piebald coats, floppy ears and curled tails began to appear. The project is one of the best-known studies of how domestication changes animals' looks as well as their behaviour.
Spotted companions
Shared by the pet brand Pacific Paws, this post features Lucky and Levi, two dogs whose speckled coats give the caption its game of spot-the-spots. Ticking and spotting in dogs are controlled by separate genes from the base colour, which is why the same breed can come plain or freckled.
"Lucky girl"
This embedded post comes from the Facebook page of Valewood Farms, which shared it under the caption "Lucky girl". The original description is no longer easily accessible, so we cannot say more about the animal pictured without guessing. If the embed does not load, the post may have been removed by the page owner.
Rabbits, snakes and a bear
The rabbit with eyeliner
This white rabbit has a neat black ring around each eye, the trademark of the Dwarf Hotot. The breed was developed by breeders in East and West Germany in the 1970s and reached the United States in 1980. Adults weigh no more than about 1.4 kilograms, and judges look for an eye band of even width with no breaks.
Photo: VLStetson / pikabu
A snake that shows its warning colours
The blue-grey back, orange belly with black spots and bright red tail point to a ring-necked snake, found across much of the United States and into Mexico and Canada. When threatened, it coils its tail and flips it over to flash the red underside, a bluff that mimics dangerous species. It is small, usually 25 to 38 centimetres, and is considered harmless to people.
Photo: Lipovjycvet / pikabu
A black and gold constrictor
Wrapped around a branch, this snake is almost black with fine golden flecks. The poster described it as a boa with an unusual colouring, and pet constrictors are now bred in many colour forms, known among keepers as morphs. Without more detail, the exact species and morph cannot be confirmed from the photo.
Photo: EvilRaccoon / pikabu
The spectacled bear
The spectacled or Andean bear is the only bear native to South America, living in the Andes from Venezuela to northern Argentina. Its cream-to-ginger face markings differ slightly on every bear, so researchers can tell individuals apart by them. It mostly eats plants such as bromeliads and cacti and is listed as Vulnerable, mainly because of habitat loss.
Photo: to_the_tenth_power / Reddit
A pigeon like no other
With its grey head, long metallic green and copper neck feathers and short white tail, the Nicobar pigeon hardly looks like a city pigeon. It lives on small islands from India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands east to Palau and the Solomon Islands. Some genetic studies place it among the closest living relatives of the extinct dodo, though that link is not certain. It is listed as Near Threatened because its nesting islands are being cleared and invaded by predators.
Photo: Lipovjycvet / pikabu
Why looks do not reveal genetics
It is tempting to call every unusual animal a "mutation". Strictly, all coat colours began as genetic variants at some point, but most of the animals above simply show normal variation within their species or breed. Wild species such as the Nicobar pigeon and the spectacled bear look exactly as they should. Breeds like the Dwarf Hotot were shaped deliberately by people. Only a vet or a genetic test can say whether a particular marking comes from inheritance, a condition such as vitiligo, or something else.
If you are drawn to a striking-looking pet, it is worth asking a breeder or rescue about health first. Some prized looks travel with problems, such as deafness in some blue-eyed white cats, and a healthy animal with a plain coat will always be the better companion.
The opening image shows the bearded cat posted by thebryguy23 on Reddit.
Sources: Wikipedia: Nicobar pigeon; Wikipedia: Spectacled bear; Wikipedia: Ring-necked snake; Wikipedia: Dwarf Hotot; Wikipedia: Domesticated silver fox; Photographers credited under each image (Reddit, pikabu, Facebook, Instagram).
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