I look exactly like my dad except I have red hair, so I know I wasn’t adopted or that my ma had an affair with the mail man.
But how did this happen? My dad had black hair, my mother and brothers & sisters have brown hair, all of my relatives on both sides have either brown or blonde hair. Nobody, but nobody in my family tree has had red hair. And my hair is really red. Not reddish brown or strawberry blonde. It’s red, almost orange. But I’m the only one. None of my 3 kids have red hair either. And there is no Irish in me. Nothing but German blood going back at least 200 years.
Now, I’m not complaining here. I just wouldn’t be the same zanny guy without my pumpkin locks. But how does nature do this? NONE of my ancestors had red hair.
Seriously, though… it is recessive, so maybe family members were ‘carriers’ of it. Also, a great many of my anscestors were German, and a great many of those had red hair. So…
I’m a redhead, and basically a walking bunch of recessive genes. Do you have a straight thumb or a hitchhiker thumb? Straight thumbs are recessive while a hitchhiker thumb (one that bends back toward the wrist) is dominant. All that animal biology lab info coming back to me…
How 'bout me? I’m three quarters Japanese, one quarter Okinawan. I have pulled from my head some very curly hairs, blond hairs, and even red hairs. (This was before I tried colouring my hair, so that can’t be it.) My mom has found similar strands.
So far as I can tell, no one on either side of the family has frolicked with anyone of any other ethnicity. However, on my Okinawan side, there are jokes about escapades with Portuguese sailors. Could there be any truth to these jokes?
so you can be easily destinguished when the apocalypse comes.
Book of Stamps chapter 12, verse 3
“And she shall smite the redheads first, for she will be in a contrary mood that day, being the start of her PMS”.
recessive genes. Or else you had a ginger milkman. nah, recessive genes.
This man has just becime a father for the first time. His lovely child has red hair. He doesn’t his wife doesn’t. He goes to the Dr. for an explanation.
“Dr. my child has red hair, Why?”
The Dr. asks the man about his sex life. Do you and your wife have sex every night?
the mans replay was an enfatic “No”
Every other night?
“No”
Three times a week?
“Not quite”
Once a week?
“Not quite”
Once a month?
“Yes ’ about once a month.”
The Dr. said thats the reason your child has red hair, your di*k is rusty!!
Hair color, like skin color and eye color, is a polygenetic trait, governed by many different gene loci. It’s a lot more complicated that is generally taught in high school biology classes. There are at least three kinds of melanin. In hair the two important ones are brown (or black) melanin and red melanin.
Someone with a lot of genes coding for brown melanin will tend to have black or brown hair regardless of whether they have genes coding for red melanin. That’s because the brown melanin tends to overpower the red melanin. Someone with little brown melanin and much red melanin will have red hair. Someone with little of either kind will have blond hair. Since there are many gene loci involved, a lot of different combination are possible: black, brown, red, auburn, dirty blond, strawberry blond.
Evidently, both your parents have lots of genes for brown melanin (which is why they have dark hair), but also lots of recessive genes at these loci that don’t make either kind of melanin. When the chromosomes divided, you (by chance) got left with very few genes that actually code for brown melanin. At least one of your parents also has genes that code for red melanin (although it’s not obvious because the brown melanin covers up the red color in your parent’s hair). By chance again, you got some of those red melanin genes.
Another possibility, mentioned above, is that you may be a mutant. I don’t have the source in front of me but I believe the chemical difference between brown and red melanin is very slight, and could be due to a single mutation. I think the above explanation is much more likely, though.