I've been seeing this plastered on facebook.


Does anyone else thinks this sounds fishy?

11/20/2009 10:17:20 AM

I dont know what facebook thing you're talking about, but I do kind of feel it is inevitable

11/20/2009 10:21:01 AM

My girlfriend is a natural redhead.

11/20/2009 10:21:28 AM

holocaust?

11/20/2009 10:22:30 AM

well i mean.....

redheads have been among us since...well, people started.

why all of a sudden are we expecting it to die out?


there's no selective pressures against it.



does not compute.



ive heard this same thing about natural blondes.

[Edited on November 20, 2009 at 10:23 AM. Reason : eheheh "people started"]

11/20/2009 10:22:39 AM

Well, red hair is recessive and the amount of brown eyed, brown haired people in the world is growing faster (Asians, Africans, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean) than them. Seems possible.

They won't go extinct, per say, but they percentage of red heads will go from like 0.001% to like 0.0000000001% which is near zero.

[Edited on November 20, 2009 at 10:25 AM. Reason : -]

11/20/2009 10:23:47 AM

they look at rates and % of population redheads are and jump to theoretical evolutionary conclusions

11/20/2009 10:24:38 AM

Actually I heard a rumor that it was due to some genetic defect that some guy had in the 1600s, and that every redhead is basically one of his progeny. But I can't find any evidence for that.

11/20/2009 10:25:16 AM

wot

11/20/2009 10:25:19 AM

redheads

11/20/2009 10:25:36 AM

Hey Joie

11/20/2009 10:25:51 AM

bullshit, my sister has brown hair, green eyes, my brothe in law has black hair, brown eyes, and they had a redhead with blue eyes

11/20/2009 10:25:56 AM

then your sister is a whore

11/20/2009 10:26:57 AM

This will never happen.

11/20/2009 10:27:17 AM

probably, she doesn't look like anyone in our family anyway, and the funny thing is my niece doesn't either

11/20/2009 10:27:46 AM

^^^^what does the milk man look like??

[Edited on November 20, 2009 at 10:28 AM. Reason : s]

11/20/2009 10:27:51 AM

My father and my stepmother have four kids. He has brown hair and she has red hair.

So far, their kids have been:

1st - Red
2nd - Red
3rd - Brown
4th - Red

My dad's like.. great great grandfather or something had red hair, so the odds of him submitting a match with his wife's red hair gene are extremely rare. Getting 75% kids with full-blooded red hair is of lottery winning rarity.

[Edited on November 20, 2009 at 10:29 AM. Reason : ]

11/20/2009 10:29:09 AM

he should play the lottery

11/20/2009 10:30:25 AM

I don't think he believes in luck.

11/20/2009 10:31:54 AM

obviously not if he has four kids, or he doesn't pull out

11/20/2009 10:32:20 AM

I wouldn't believe in luck either if I had 3 ginger kids.

11/20/2009 10:35:45 AM

Quote :

"Well, red hair is recessive and the amount of brown eyed, brown haired people in the world is growing faster (Asians, Africans, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean) than them. Seems possible. They won't go extinct, per say, but they percentage of red heads will go from like 0.001% to like 0.0000000001% which is near zero."

correct me if i'm wrong here, but by this same logic we can go ahead and say that in [insert arbitrary timeline here] there will be no more blondes. nor white people. nor black people.
we will all be a mixture of dominant traits.
keep in mind that having 5 fingers is a recessive trait too.

Quote :

"Actually I heard a rumor that it was due to some genetic defect that some guy had in the 1600s, and that every redhead is basically one of his progeny. But I can't find any evidence for that. "

aren't there lots of redheads in Greek mythology?

11/20/2009 10:37:29 AM

Quote :

"RED HEADED STEP-CHILD"

11/20/2009 10:37:35 AM

If all readheads looked like this:

I could see how they would start to be excluded from the gene pool.

11/20/2009 10:38:06 AM

definitely fishy

one of my dear friends (red head) just had a baby girl...and Lil J's hair is as red as it can be

11/20/2009 10:38:46 AM

Quote :

"aren't there lots of redheads in Greek mythology?"

True, but there are also a lot of Gods and monstrous beasts, so take that for what it's worth. "Locks of fire" and whatnot could mean a lot of things. It could also just mean red hair.

And like I said, I couldn't find any reference of what I mentioned, and I'd heard it as an anecdote. It's definitely interesting, though.

11/20/2009 10:39:10 AM

Check Wikipedia. It actually has some information on the so-called extinction of red heads.

--

I thought that my son was going to have red hair as a newborn. It was very strawberry. Then it fell out and he turned blond.

11/20/2009 10:39:20 AM

11/20/2009 10:39:21 AM

Dominant white traits are the weakest in interracial offspring

Look at half black/half whites, half asian/half whites, half mexican/half whites

They all look more of the other race as opposed to white

Since red hair is a primarily white trait, it would rarely pass on to an interracial offspring

Thus it dying out as the races become more and more homogenized thru interracial fucking

11/20/2009 10:39:31 AM

Quote :

"there's no selective pressures against it."

absolutely false. Gingers get discriminated all over the world, particularly in Europe.

Personally, I L.O.V.E. redheads.

11/20/2009 10:40:35 AM

Mexicans are half white anyway.

11/20/2009 10:40:36 AM

If all readheads looked like this:

I can't see how they would start to be excluded from the gene pool.

11/20/2009 10:41:11 AM

Quote :

"Estimates on the original occurrence of the currently active gene for red hair vary from 20,000 to 100,000 years ago."

11/20/2009 10:41:30 AM

that doesnt mean the trait isnt still there...it's just not shown.
you could have a brown eye gene and a blue eye gene. you get married to someone with the same traits.
you could very well have a blue eyed child.
Hell, its more probable that your child will have at LEAST one blue eye gene.

this is so overly simplified.
but its the point across
genomics is my BABY
as a matter of fact if you take that class at NCSU i think he still uses my papers and projects as examples (ok, done tooting my own horn)

11/20/2009 10:43:00 AM

Quote :

"absolutely false. Gingers get discriminated all over the world, particularly in Europe."

really? i am unaware of this.


proof?

(i'm not saying you made this up i just like to see it for myself)

11/20/2009 10:44:01 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair#Gingerism_.28prejudice.2Fdiscrimination_towards_redheads.29

"Gingerism" LOL

11/20/2009 10:45:01 AM

Quote :

"that doesnt mean the trait isnt still there...it's just not shown. you could have a brown eye gene and a blue eye gene. you get married to someone with the same traits. you could very well have a blue eyed child. Hell, its more probable that your child will have at LEAST one blue eye gene."

Could you go into this in more detail?

Like, regarding my dad and my stepmother. Why did they have 75% red-haired children? How rare is that really?

11/20/2009 10:45:15 AM

I love girls with red hair

I just don't like girls with the pale, freckled Pippi Longstocking look that so many redheads have

11/20/2009 10:46:45 AM

1/(4^3)

Or something.

The chance w/ each pregnancy is 25%. That happening 3 times in a row is 1 out of 64 times.

[Edited on November 20, 2009 at 10:49 AM. Reason : .]

11/20/2009 10:47:14 AM

a lot of africans carry the genes for red hair. I don't think they are going to go extinct.

11/20/2009 10:49:02 AM

1.5% eh

11/20/2009 10:49:03 AM

I have an English Degree so don't take my word for it, but I think I'm right.

11/20/2009 10:51:37 AM

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43083104630

Gingerism is my new favorite term.

11/20/2009 10:52:32 AM

OK....
From what I understand Redheaded genes lie dormant in the genome for years.
admittedly i'm not expert on that in particular, but from my understanding it is.

but red hair is not much different than blonde hair.
and if i'm not mistaken red hair is more dominant than blonde...but i'd have to look in my notes for that...


but anyway,
you know basic genomics right?
it's just Mendels principle:

the pink represents that the dominant gene will show, but the recessive is present.


3 redheads are a lot, but you have to think about it with each individual child.
to have three redheads is not (1/4)*(1/4*(1/4)
i'm honestly not sure of the statistics on that....but that is not right.
it has something to do with babies being born with certain hair and eye colors that are later influenced by the environment.
i'm gonna have to go over that again.

but
so you have one child. the chances of it being a redhead are (1/4)
the next child's chance is still (1/4) regardless.
in short


the hair color of your previous child holds no baring on the hair color of your next child.

so while its still unlikely, its not impossible. at all.



[Edited on November 20, 2009 at 11:00 AM. Reason : i made a big boo boo]

11/20/2009 10:55:46 AM

I saw something about this in Nat Geo magazine some time ago

11/20/2009 10:57:57 AM

im down.

11/20/2009 10:57:57 AM

Quote :

"the hair color of your previous child holds no baring on the hair color of your next child."

Well, yes, true. But it's the same as me rolling snake eyes in a Craps game. My previous rolls have no effect on the next roll, but the odds of getting three in a row are much rarer than the odds of just rolling one.

11/20/2009 10:59:32 AM

i was never really big into redheads

11/20/2009 10:59:54 AM

^^youre right. it is much rarer,and i made a BIG boo boo in my original post, i messed up.



but think of it this way.

redheads are supposed to be more dominant than blonde.
therefore you are more likely to have a plethora of redheads in a brood than blondes.

genetics isn't about wholly dominant nor wholly recessive.
it's a WHOLE lot more complicated.


it's still rare though.


believe dat'

11/20/2009 11:03:34 AM

...no one reads the 49th post

11/20/2009 11:05:02 AM