From CourierMail.com.au:
PETER Beattie, Nicole Kidman and Michael Voss are. So were William Shakespeare, Christopher Columbus and Queen Elizabeth the First.
But the future doesn't look bright for people with ginger hair.
According to genetic scientists redheads are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years.
The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than 2 per cent of the world's population has natural red hair - created by a mutation in northern Europe thousand of years ago.
Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and so producing little redheads of their own.
Although it takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger babies, two redheads obviously creates a much stronger possibility.
Some experts warn redheads could be gone as early 2060, but others say the gene can be dormant in the reproductive system for generations before returning.
National Geographic says the gene at first had the beneficial effect of increasing the body's ability to make vitamin D from sunlight. However, today's carriers are more prone to skin cancer and have a higher sensitivity to heat and cold-related pain.
2 comments:
I'm not sure it's true that they'll be gone soon... my uncle has black hair and his wife has light brown- and they had two pale, red-haired, freckled kids out of nowhere. And noone on either side of their families has red hair. Trust me, Gingers will be "creepin us out" for a long time! LOL- JK
My husband's niece had the same thing--- she is a natural blonde, he has dark brown/black hair. But their oldest baby is the cutest damn ginger kid you'd ever want to see!
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