# DO Australians have more XYY chromosomes than usual? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 10, 2017, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-australians-have-more-xyy-chromosomes-than-usual/801216 "2017-11-10T12:26:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gozonuts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e9bcb4/32.png) [@gozonuts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gozonuts)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-australians-have-more-xyy-chromosomes-than-usual/801216/1 "2017-11-10T12:26:30Z")
Assuming the premise that the criminal population generally has more cases of XYY chromosomes than the general public, would it follow that Australians would have more cases of this in their gene pool? Australia of course was a penal colony not too long ago and the gene pool is relatively small and closed off. I would assume a study would not have been done on this as it is not too flattering nor PC. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-australians-have-more-xyy-chromosomes-than-usual/801216/2 "2017-11-10T12:32:43Z")
XYY is not an inherited trait. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-australians-have-more-xyy-chromosomes-than-usual/801216/3 "2017-11-10T12:35:10Z")
Way to go with a first post! Actually, nearly half of Australians have either been born overseas or have one or both parents born overseas. So lil ol Oz would actually be one of the most outbred nations. Conversely the incidence here of having XXXX is much higher than the global average. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-australians-have-more-xyy-chromosomes-than-usual/801216/4 "2017-11-10T13:07:51Z")
> [@gozonuts](#): > > Assuming the premise that the criminal population generally has more cases of XYY chromosomes than the general public, would it follow that Australians would have more cases of this in their gene pool? No, _even if_ the first premise were true _and_ the trait were heritable, which it isn’t, your unstated second premise (“those transported were all criminals”) is not - a sizeable proportion were political transportees, so XXY would have to present a survival advantage to be retained, I think. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-australians-have-more-xyy-chromosomes-than-usual/801216/5 "2017-11-10T14:18:07Z")
Only about 20% of Australians today are descended, even to a small extent, from transported convicts: > **[Convicts in Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia)** > > Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia. > The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 18th century. When transportation ended with the start of the American Revolution, an alternative site was needed to relieve further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks. Earlier in 1770, James Cook charted and claimed possession of the east coast of Australia for Brita... You’ll note in that article that someone did some research on what British colony in America (before the American Revolution) had the most convicts transported to it. It was Maryland. So I should be the one complaining about this, not you, gozonuts. Except that I was born in Ohio. There has been far too much shuffling around of people since the last transportation (in 1868) to be able to say anything accurate about the criminal genealogy of people. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2017, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-australians-have-more-xyy-chromosomes-than-usual/801216/6 "2017-11-10T20:32:42Z")
The widely-accepted notion that XYY is seen more often in criminal populations than non-criminal is not true. It was based on badly flawed work way way back, and has repeatedly failed to be borne out by later, better run studies. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2017, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-australians-have-more-xyy-chromosomes-than-usual/801216/7 "2017-11-11T03:55:44Z")
> [@gozonuts](#): > > Australia of course was a penal colony not too long ago … Nope. There were _several_ penal colonies, and they did not cover the entire continent. > **[List of Australian penal colonies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_penal_colonies)** > > The following is a list of Australian penal colonies that existed from the establishment of European presence in the 1780s up until the nineteenth century.\[citation needed\] The term colony had referred to settlements and larger land areas at that time.