Peterbald vs Sphynx, Donskoy, Oriental Shorthair and Lykoi: Who Went Bald How

"Do Peterbald and Sphynx cats go bald the same way?" The answer is no, at the mechanism level. And it changes what a buyer should carry between breed pages: almost nothing. Four short comparisons, each on the documents and papers rather than the shared look.

vs Sphynx: opposite inheritance, separate stock

The Sphynx's hairlessness is RECESSIVE and solved: a characterised KRT71 mutation, two copies required. The Peterbald's hairlessness is DOMINANT (one copy suffices) and genetically UNSOLVED. No published paper has confirmed its gene. The one candidate study (Dierks 2013, working on the related Donskoy) ELIMINATED the obvious suspect, KRT71, by its own stated finding.

Different inheritance, different (and largely unknown) genetics, and different foundations too. The Peterbald's permitted outcross groups run to the Siamese breed group and the Donskoy; the Sphynx's run to American and domestic shorthairs. The two breeds share no foundation stock at all. Practical consequence: no Sphynx health figure (its HCM story, its ALMS1 debate, its lifespan data) transfers to the Peterbald in either direction. Any page that borrows one is guessing.

vs Donskoy: the parent, precisely stated

The Peterbald IS a Donskoy descendant. The breed began in 1990s St Petersburg by crossing the Donskoy (Russia's dominant-hairless breed) with Oriental and Siamese-type cats, and TICA's own two breed pages carry the relationship. The precision that matters: both breeds' hairlessness is dominant, and the Peterbald descends from the Donskoy. But no published study has identified the causal gene in either breed. So we say "descends from", never "shares the identified gene", because nobody has identified it. The look difference is the body. The Peterbald wears its baldness on an Oriental frame (long, tubular, big-eared), the Donskoy on a rounder, more muscular one.

vs Oriental Shorthair: the body without the coat question

Put a coat on a Peterbald and you get, roughly, an Oriental. The elegant wedge, oversized ears and whippy build come straight from the Siamese-group outcrosses, and TICA's own standards language for the two breeds converges on body type. The Peterbald's straight-coated kittens make the comparison literal: a straight Peterbald is a fully coated cat of Oriental build with Peterbald papers. What does NOT carry over: the Oriental family's amyloidosis literature belongs to that family's own pages. Nothing documents it in the Peterbald.

vs Lykoi: not even the same kind of hairless

The Lykoi is sparse-coated (hypotrichia), never fully naked, on a RECESSIVE set of Hairless-gene (HR) variants documented in its own papers, with a cycling coat that regrows and sheds. The Peterbald spectrum runs from genuinely naked to fully coated, dominant, stable per cat. They share a shelf in listicles, and nothing in genetics, husbandry rhythm or standards.

The one science footnote, with every caveat attached

One peer-reviewed paper (Rodney 2021, a whole-exome resource study) incidentally flagged LPAR6, the Cornish Rex's gene, as a candidate in ONE Peterbald, heterozygous. It carries a mismatch its own authors flag: LPAR6's known mechanism is recessive, while this breed's trait behaves dominant. It is not a confirmed cause, not a validated test, and not a reason to expect one soon. We mention it because it is the first candidate-gene lead the breed has ever had, and we mention it exactly this hedged.