Colouring
While some pet rats retain the "agouti" colouring of the wild brown rat (three tones on the same hair), others may be black based colours (a single colour on each hair). Agouti based colours include agouti, cinnamon, and fawn. Black based colours include black, beige, and chocolate. Additionally, eye-colour is considered a subset of colouring, and coat-colour definitions often include standards for the eyes as many genes which control eye colour will also affect the coat colour. The American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association (AFRMA), a United States-based club, lists black, pink, ruby, and odd-eyed (two different coloured eyes) as possible eye-colours depending on the variety of rat shown. Ruby refers to eyes which at a glance appear black; but which are on closer observation, a deep, dark red. Colour names can vary for more vague varieties, like lilac and fawn, while the interpretations of standards can fluctuate between (and even within) different countries or clubs.
Famous quotes containing the word colouring:
“The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“Every philosophy is tinged with the colouring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.”
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)