Apparently, I’m a Dying Breed
February 17, 2007 by Kristen King
Filed under Women's Health
I heard on the news the other day that new findings suggest that redheads will be gone from the population before the end of this century. As you can clearly see from my picture at left, I’m appalled by this.
And I had a heck of a time tracking down the research to back up this claim. The best I could do was this article, which was published almost two years ago (which leads me to believe that my local news is reeeeeeally slow on the uptake):
If predictions by the Oxford Hair Foundation come to pass, the number of natural redheads everywhere will continue to dwindle until there are none left by the year 2100.
The reason, according to scientists at the independent institute in England, which studies all sorts of hair problems, is that just 4 percent of the world’s population carries the red-hair gene. The gene is recessive and therefore diluted when carriers produce children with people who have the dominant brown-hair gene.
Dr. John Gray’s explanation of his foundation’s findings: “The way things are going, red hair will either be extremely rare or extinct by the end of the century.”
Okay, so if you have red hair and you’re not reproducing yet, go find another carrot top and get busy! The future of your people depends on it.
Contents © Copyright 2007 Kristen King
That’s odd. My SIL has brown hair and 3 out of her 4 kids have red hair…as does their father. My neice is getting married this summer and I expect all of her kids to have red hair too.
My grandmother is a red head but her girls were both brownheaded…however, my one brother has redish hair.
Genetics is funny that way.
Oh, sorry, but that made me laugh.
Renee, red hair is recessive, so she has a recessive red hair gene that was covered by her dominant brown hair gene, but when it met up with the two recessive genes her redheaded husband has, three kids ended up with two recessives and one has one of each. That means than any of her kids could have redheaded kids if they match up with someone who has at least one recessive red hair gene.
Mmm, genetics!
Dev, the post or the photo? :]
I subscribe to “Google alerts” and recently came across your blog post about redheads. I thought I would contact you about an event my redhead friends and I host each year – called the Redhead Luncheon. We are a fun, energetic group of mostly women (and a few good men) who just love being redheads and thought this of interest to your readers: http://www.wecai.org/redhead_cruise.htm
Wishing you a terrific day… and then some.
Heidi
Heidi Richards, Founder & CEO
I heard that, too, and I’m certainly disappointed, but I’ve never really been attracted to redheaded men. There are so few of them it seems almost incestuous for me to date one (looks too much like my brother), so I’ve always been drawn to dark haired men. I think that feeling is pretty common. My first impulse when I heard that was to go forth and propagate our race, but really, finding a redheaded mate is much harder than finding someone who’s Jewish, or in banking, or vegan, or whatever other requirement women create for themselves.
Heh heh…
But Susan, their rarity makes them all the more valuable! ;]
kk
True, Kristen, but my Chinese engineer boyfriend is pretty special, even if, demographically speaking, he’s a bit of a cliche. I’m proud of my non-Irish redheaded heritage, but I don’t expect to find another of my breed to mate with (when my family lived in New Mexico, my brother and I were the minority in a sea of Hispanic students!). I think I feel a humor piece coming on…
Ooo, ooo, let me see it when you’re done!
kk
I too am a natural redhead and was a little disturbed by this news. However my son who is half hispanic is also a redhead (believe it or not)who tans. I am wondering if maybe I should look into donating my eggs to create future redheads.
This is totally unfair….I am slowly losing my red curly locks..(old age)
I cant even find light red hair dye..all of the stores are only carrying dark colors….Its terrible
good blog.
Your local news isn’t “slow on the uptake.” They are, however, incredibly gullible. Alas, they’re not alone.
This story is completely bogus. It gets picked up every few months by some gullible journalist (or should I say “journalist”), who credulously “reports” the content of an Oxford Hair Foundation press release (often almost verbatim).
I did the research and found examples of this “study” — always passed off as a “new” finding — in media reports from January 2007, November 2006, March 2006, May 2005, August 2004, March 2004 and November 2003.
As a USC Journalism graduate, I’m ashamed and somewhat stunned at how easy it is to fool gullible reporters. Don’t these people have Google?
The explosion of this subject is driving me batty!!! OK people here we go… A couple of years ago this urban myth/rumor was making it’s way around the net and even some “respected publications” repeated it. There was one minor difference … it was/is blondes that were/are going extinct.
Yes, red hair is a recessive treat, BUT, it like most things involving the expression of genetic treats it is NOT that simple. Hair color, along with eye color and a myriad of other human/mammalian treats is presented as a simple “2 gene” genetic model. It’s not! It’s actually more involved than that. It entails pigment receptors, incomplete dominance relating to allele variants, and probably other genes on different chromosomes. The juries still out on how all the mechanics works in the first place!
While it maybe true that only 2-4% of the total human population carries the requisite recessive gene(s), if you split the difference, 3% means that nearly 200,000,000 people are carriers. ALSO the 2-4% is a population average as a whole. It doesn’t apply to those of Celtic (and to a lesser extent) Teutonic descent. In Scotland 13% of the population has red hair and approx. 45% carries the gene(s). Ireland ranks 2nd with about 10% of the population redheads and 35% carriers. And the “Vikings” Norsemen have been known to have a ginger head/beard or 2.
I personally think my niece is much more like to be the future of redheads. My golden blond, battleship gray eyed 3/4 Celtic, 1/4 German sister, and my African/American brother-in-law produced a creamy cafe au lait skinned, light amber eyed little girl with a head of long, thick, wavy, rich auburn hair. I know I’m biased, but I have watched, from a distanced, how strangers respond to her. Almost every person that sees her does a double take and them smiles. People will go out of their way to tell her or who ever is with her, how absolutely striking she is.
Your hair looks blonde in that picture. Not red. Not even strawberry blonde. More like dirty blonde.