Cat suffers from a rare condition and bulks up

A bulked up cat on Reddit has gone viral. He is said to suffer from an uncommon disorder that causes muscles to become overly big.

Little choice in being ripped

One user on Reddit wrote:

I bet he purrs like an engine.

The taby was left bamboozled when he looked into the mirror and saw The Rock version of cats.

Myostatin is a protein produced in the body that stops muscle cells from growing.

Myostatin-related muscular hypertrophy is when the state of the muscles alters itself without the cat meaning to. This results in the feline bulking up.

Another user on Reddit added:

Cat gonna cuddle you into submission.

Even though it appears that the cat is all muscular and might be stronger than its competition, the reality is that the bulk can have a negative impact on the animal.

How common is muscular hypertrophy

Myostatin-related muscular hypertrophy in a domestic cat is an uncommon disorder that causes muscles to become overly big.

The International Cat Care Organisationsaid that:

This disease is most commonly reported in the domestic shorthair cat. Although rare, it is a sex-linked inherited disease that affects predominantly male cats.

When it hits the feline species, their tongues get big and their oesophagus malfunction, resulting in the cat unable to swallow its food. The condition is quite similar to 'Duchenne' muscular dystrophy in humans, and the treatment is symptomatic.

Popular Sciencesaid:

Each of us has two copies of the gene encoding myostatin. Inheriting one mutated copy makes you heterozygous for the gene, and animals with that pattern are unusually muscular and strong without being so obviously abnormal that people write case reports about it.

It's only when you're homozygous, meaning you have two mutated copies, that you become something of an anomaly.