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Why Women Are Stripey

Veritasium · 10.8M views · 2014-06-04 · 5:17

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Overview

Veritasium explains X-chromosome inactivation, where different cells in a woman's body switch off different X chromosomes, giving a mosaic pattern. It uses animation from the WEHI institute and connects to calico cat coloring.

On Hacker News

Commenters point to it as the best short explanation of X inactivation and why calico cats and some human traits are mosaics.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2015–2026

Topics

Evolution & geneticsBiology & biotechnology
Search by tags
epigeneticsx-chromosomecalico catsgeneticsmosaicism

What people said

dacohenii · 2019-07 · Strong recommendation

This is only tangentially related, but Veritasium has a fantastic video that discusses the genetics behind the random color patterns of calico cats: [VIDEO]

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rndn · 2015-07 · Recommendation

The next article in this series on "Which sex is playing higher stakes reproductive game?" is also worth reading: [LINK] It reminds me of an interesting hypothesis I've read about the other day that the concept marriage plays a significant role in the success of our culture as it counteracts this difference. It allows more men to reach a social status at which they are motivated to be productive members of society. So we are possibly actively destroying a pillar of our culture as we are devaluing marriage. By the way, Veritasium has a great episode on why women are stripey: [VIDEO]

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dreamcompiler · 2026-04 · Reference

Human women have stripey skin too, but you can't see it under normal light because unlike cats, skin tone in humans is not controlled by the X chromosome. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Veritasium, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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