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Evolution and coat colour 进化和表皮色彩 Well spotted 美丽涂鸦 The reason why some cats are plain and others arepatterned 为何有些猫科动物全无斑纹，而其他的则斑斑点点? How the leopard got his spots is, famously, the subject of one of Rudyard Kipling s Just SoStories. 美洲豹为何满身斑点?这是吉卜林大作《原来如此》中的一个著名问题。 Kipling suggested they were handprints made by the leopard s human friend. More plausibly,he had an explanation for what the spots are for: to break up the animal s shape when it ishiding in the dappled light of the forest. 吉卜林认为，那是美洲豹的人类朋友们留下的手印。他更靠谱的解释是，当美洲豹藏身在树丛的斑驳光影之中，斑点有助于让它们隐去形迹。 These days, the human-handprinttheory of the leopard s spots has fallen out of favour. 最近，美洲豹斑点的手印理论已不合口味。 Instead, a more prosaic idea has gained ground, based on what is known asreaction-diffusion pattern formation, in which chemicals that trigger the differentiation ofcells in an embryo interact with one another to produce patterns that are then reflected inthe fates of nearby cells. | 
