If both parents passed on a ginger 'infected' hair colour chromosome, the child would be ginger. If one parent passed on a non-ginger chromosome, and the other a ginger chromsome, the child would be non-ginger, since everything other than ginger is dominant over ginger. Ginger is a recessive trait.
In order to be a redhead, a baby needs two copies of the red hair gene (a mutation of the MC1R gene) because it is recessive. This means if neither parent is ginger, they both need to carry the gene and pass it on — and even then they will have just a 25% chance of the child turning out to be a redhead.
Previous studies had shown that redheads inherit two versions of the MC1R gene that leads to red hair – one from their mum and one from their dad. Although almost everyone with red hair has two copies of the red-haired version of MC1R, not everyone carrying two red-haired versions is a redhead.
The rarest natural hair colour is red, which makes up only one to two percent of the global population. You commonly see these hair colours in western and northern areas of Europe, especially Scotland and Ireland. However, natural redheads may not exist for much longer.
Since red hair is a recessive trait, the children of two redheaded parents will almost always be redheaded as well. In contrast, if only one parent is redheaded and the other has brown hair, there is a higher chance that the children will display the dominant trait and will have brown hair.
Both parents must possess the gene for a red-haired child to be born. Redheads have fewer strands of hair on their heads. If they both just have the gene but have brown hair lets say then there is a 1 in 4 chance of having a baby with red hair.
It turns out that brown hair is dominant. That means that even if only one of your two alleles is for brown hair, your hair will be brown. The blond allele is recessive, and gets covered up. If two brunette parents have a blond child, they had to have instructions for making blond hair hidden in their DNA.
Having red hair and blue eyes is the rarest hair/eye color combination possible. The odds of a person having both of those recessive traits is around 0.17%. Instead, most redheads have brown, hazel or green eyes, according to Medical Daily.
According to an article by evolutionary biology professor Mark Elgar, PhD, of the University of Melbourne, blue-eyed redheads are the absolute rarest, with 0.17% of the population having that combination of hair and eye color.
Genes responsible for hair color come from both parents. Although the genes passed down from a child's parents determine hair color, variations can result in a child having a different hair color than both parents.
Share selection to: For every 100 people in the world, only one or two will have red hair. And when you meet a red head with blue eyes, you are looking at the rarest colour combination of all for human beings.
A ginger child can only be born if both parents carry the gene. If one parent doesn't carry the ginger gene, then your child will definitely not be ginger – both parents must carry it, whether they are redheads themselves or not.
However, redheads are not only Celts or Caucasians. Their distribution is a testament to the global movement of DNA across societies and landscapes. Although most common in Northern Europe, parts of Russia, and among European descendants in Australia, there are redheads from all ethnicities and races.
Red hair is most commonly found at the northern and western fringes of Europe; it is centred around populations in the British Isles and is particularly associated with the Celtic nations.
Your children inherit their eye colors from you and your partner. It's a combination of mom and dad's eye colors – generally, the color is determined by this mix and whether the genes are dominant or recessive. Every child carries two copies of every gene – one comes from mom, and the other comes from dad.
The only way to present blue eyes is to inherit two copies of the blue-eyed gene. However, brown-eyed parents can pass a recessive blue-eyed gene. Therefore, two brown-eyed partners can birth a blue-eyed baby.
The brown eye form of the eye color gene (or allele) is dominant, whereas the blue eye allele is recessive. If both parents have brown eyes yet carry the allele for blue eyes, a quarter of the children will have blue eyes, and three quarters will have brown eyes.
One popular myth is that hair loss in men is passed down from the mother's side of the family while hair loss in women is passed down from the father's side; however, the truth is that the genes for hair loss and hair loss itself are actually passed down from both sides of the family.
Because it's a recessive trait, red hair can easily skip a generation. It can then reappear after skipping one or more generations if both parents, no matter their hair color, carry the red hair gene.
It's the most common mistake to assume that they are the same. Ginger is a more vibrant and intense orange tone, whereas the strawberry blonde tone is also considered to be copper tones but it's much softer and lighter. Ginger hair is the sole colour that has a natural copper tone.
Less than 2 percent of the world's population has red hair, making it the rarest hair color in the world. It's the result of the mutated MC1R gene. If both parents carry that gene, their child has a 25% chance of getting lovely, red locks, even if the parents don't have red hair themselves.
Less than 2% of the world's population are natural redheads. But in addition to being relatively rare, people with red hair have unique medical concerns.
These are recessive traits. The DNA for blonde hair and red hair are about equally strong. People who have DNA for both often have strawberry blonde hair.