The reason why some cats are plain and others are patterned

So, definitely it was not "god".

Since the dark phase animals in most cases still have distinguishable and appropriate spotted patterns that are simply more subtle than the norm, I would suspect that they derive from a failure of some melanocytes to deactivate. And there need not be any selective advantage to producing this color, simply a lack of disadvantage- especially as litters are documented containing both normal and dark phase kittens with no known difference in survival rates.

"Next time perhaps you can explain why "natural selection" causes us humans to perceive the beauty of the sun setting?"

Virtually everything that is traditionally "beautiful" has survival value. Pastoral scenes are safe places with a benign climate and a likelihood of plentiful food. Curvaceous, young women are obviously vital to the perpetuation of the species, as are, to a lesser extent, strong young men, making them together far and away the most popular subjects of art of all kinds. Flowers indicate a likely site of future fruit. Other beautiful things are slightly more subtle. Good music is associated with a shared experience, either listening or dancing, which contributes to social bonding and harmony (note the double meaning of that word). Cultural norms of beauty such as preferred facial features and preferred clothing and hair styles encourage a sense of tribal identity

I am disappointed that the spammers don't allow the content of their adds to evolve to suit the story they are spamming. I'd definitely have taken a punt on a pair of leopard-spotted Nike Airs after reading all this.

My domestic cat is striped and indeed it spends much of it's time lying on a stripy blanket.

"Next time perhaps you can explain why "natural selection" causes us humans to perceive the beauty of the sun setting?"

Virtually everything that is traditionally "beautiful" has survival value. Pastoral scenes are safe places with a benign climate and a likelihood of plentiful food. Curvaceous, young women are obviously vital to the perpetuation of the species, as are, to a lesser extent, strong young men, making them together far and away the most popular subjects of art of all kinds. Flowers indicate a likely site of future fruit. Other beautiful things are slightly more subtle. Good music is associated with a shared experience, either listening or dancing, which contributes to social bonding and harmony (note the double meaning of that word). Cultural norms of beauty such as preferred facial features and preferred clothing and hair styles encourage a sense of tribal identity. Obviously some people perceive beauty in things such as mathematical equations, discordant music, or highly advanced scientific concepts, but the things that are widely held to be beautiful by most people are related in some way to survival.

As for the sunset, I think it's probably a combination of the general beauty of any peaceful scene, representing a safe time and place ("red sky at night, sailor's delight"), combined with the generally calming effect of horizontal lines in any image, which are particularly dominant in a sunset, enhanced by the fact that anything red gets our attention because red could either mean blood (vital to take note of) or fruit (good to eat).

And the cheetah? In the time to adapt as a runner did not have time to drop the spots? Interesting.

The article states: "These days, the human-handprint theory of the leopard’s spots has fallen out of favor. Instead, a more prosaic idea has gained ground, based on what is known as reaction-diffusion pattern formation"
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Wow....thanks Economist. For I while there some of us were about to think maybe there was a God who created leopards and their spots. Next time perhaps you can explain why "natural selection" causes us humans to perceive the beauty of the sun setting? Ha Ha You atheist crack me up.

I wonder if the researchers speculating about this factor in the visual range or color-blindness of many of the species these cats would interact with.

Dear Sir
As the great Galileo Galilei pointed out 5 centuries ago : " Il Libro della natura e scrito in lingua matematica !"- a free rough translation from Italian to English could be :"The Book of the Natural World is written on mathematical language-(The great Leonardo da Vinci also told this before in his drawns on turbulence ).Now one see this on wild great cats !.Beatiful ,isn't ?.In South america great cats called Jaguars may become totally black (as the black panters in Equatorial Africa Forestes!)
Non linear diffussion (including randomness) have become a hot research topic in Applied Sciences , especially on geology , climate sciences and Drugs administration,etc (see chapter 4 of my text book -LCLB -Applied Differential Equations of Mathematical Physics-World scientific-2008 for mathematical aspects of that!).

Simply put it's all about survival of the fittest & natural selection. Facinating & intriguing, never the less.

what about the pink panther?

and: Go science!

The article says:

"The reaction-diffusion process can be mimicked by a computer, and the program’s parameters manipulated to produce patterns matching those of cat coats."

I wonder, what is the source of the program and, most importantly, information which is embedded into the cats genes and triggers the reaction-diffusion process - not "mimicked", but the actual one?

Isn't it a common understanding now that information on the level of DNA, and the living cell in general, cannot evolve by itself, randomly? (See, for instance, Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyers, HarperOne, 2009)

Is the writer serious about black cats having "more success hunting because their prey are not keeping an eye out for predators that look like them" being an obvious explanation for melanism? They can hide in the shadows in jungle-type areas where light levels are low!

@Kaburgua:

The simplest explanation is that:

1) These Leopard subspecies spend at least some of their time under the forest canopy, or:

2) That the environments in which these animals live have changed faster than the rate at which they can adapt (makes sense given the rate of evolution--very slow, and the rate of environmental change--often very fast).

So from a natural selection standpoint these leopard subspecies are trying to survive in environments they have not yet--and may not--adapt to.

It is worth remembering that natural selection is not a binary process; an either-or sorting of traits that *only* persist when they are useful. It is a graded process that allows for multiple degrees of suitability. More importantly, traits that do not impact survival positively or negatively can and do persist well past their point of usefulness. At any point in time it may be possible to identify traits that were once useful but no longer serve a purpose yet haven't been selected against because they don't hamper survival. The same applies to natural variation that serves no real purpose at that time but is "tolerated" and endures for the same neutral reason.

Not every trait has to serve a purpose all the time.
Plenty of examples of this can be found within the genus homo: freckle patterns, for one.

And, when it comes to traits that are allowed to outlive their usefulness, we human males should be happy our females don't dispose of us once we've served our evolutionary role the way praying mantises do :D

Niccolo: nuh uh, these environments changed at least 1,500 years ago, these subspecies should´ve died long ago. On the other hand spotless pumas have thrived in tropical forest settings, again natural selection explanations fail.

...and what about leopard subspecies that wander in open spaces???? (northern jaguar subspecies also tend to live in open spaces) what´s the explanation according to natural selection???

For the cheetah, we are assuming forest cats can't run fast? Or that the adaptation was more than simply the ability to run fast vs. the ability to run really fast?

It may be that although the spots evolved as an adaptation for forest life, they are also coincidentally adaptive in savannah environments (for example as analogous to the zebra's stripes). Evolutionary cooptation, if you will.

D Sherman:

"Cultural norms of beauty such as preferred facial features and preferred clothing and hair styles encourage a sense of tribal identity" - and everything which precedes this gloriously vulgar harangue.

Excellent parody, Dr!