Smoky black is a hair coat color of horses in which the coat is either black or a few shades lighter than true black. Smoky black is produced by the action of a heterozygous (single copy) cream gene on an underlying black coat color. Therefore, smoky black is a member of the cream family of coat color dilutions, and found in horse populations that have other cream gene-based colors such as palomino, buckskin, perlino and cremello. All smoky blacks must have at least one parent with the cream gene, and a smoky black can be verified through DNA testing. Smoky black has been mistaken for faded black, dark bay or brown, grullo or even liver chestnut.
A smoky black horse usually appears to be a black horse and the dilution gene dilution factor is not visible. However, the coat may be somewhat more prone to fade to a brown shade if weathered or sun-bleached. Conversely, just because a black horse may fade in the sun does not necessarily prove or disprove that it is a smoky black.
Two copies of the cream gene on a black base coat produce a smoky cream, a cream-colored horse which is visually difficult to distinguish from a perlino or cremello, but can be identified through DNA testing.
Read more about Smoky Black: Identification, Smoky Black Mimics, Genetic Identification
Famous quotes containing the words smoky and/or black:
“Justice shines in very smoky homes, and honors the righteous; but the gold-spangled mansions where the hands are unclean she leaves with eyes averted.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)
“Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing ... then it will be done, but not until then.”
—Spike Lee (b. 1956)