What is a Satin ?

I can tell you what a Satin isn’t … It’s not the Hair Gene.It has nothing to do with it. In this case “Satin” is referring to a coat colour and not a coat type.

How did the name arise?

One day back in 2004, I was showing an Adopter some of the mutated gerbils.

The first thing she said was that they looked like Satin material. I quickly adopted that name as I thought it was quite an accurate description, and have called them that ever since.  It also made it much easier for keeping records. :)

What then is a Satin Gerbil?

A “Satin” gerbil is technically a phenotype mimic.  It is a soft pastel cream shade with ruby eyes and could easily be confused with other known colours such as White Bellied creams (Ivory Cream), Self Cream (a.k.a. Red-Eyed Silver Nutmeg) and Apricot by the untrained eye.  However the big difference is in their genetics.  Even though a Satin has Ruby eyes, genetically they are P- and not pp.  This is a result of a double dose of the recessive gene that for now I shall refer to as g(x). So where the other pastel shades such as White Bellied Creams, Self Creams and Apricot are the result of a combination of diluting genes including those at the P locus, the Satin is very much a different case as it is the result of recessive genes at a single locus.  The reason for g(x) is because through breeding I believe this gene to be on the currently known G locus, and this is another mutant allele of this gene.

Gene Codes

So quite simply any combination of genes plus ‘P-’ when combined with g(x)g(x) would give us a basic Satin coat colour.  Obviously various gene combinations plus g(x)g(x) will give slightly lighter or darker shades of Satin.

A-C-DDE-gxgxP- = Satin
aaC-DDE-gxgxP- = Satin

This was proven in very simple breeding tests when satins are bred to red-eyed gerbils and black-eyed gerbils appear in the resulting litters!