caravelair

i came across this article.

yet they don't give ANY reasons for this conclusion, or even state who the scientists that believe this are. quite frankly, i can't see how such a conlcusion could possibly be reached. while reading this article, i couldn't help wondering if it was just a "the onion" article in disguise. i can't believe the bbc would publish such tripe!

Arken

Just a guess, but I believe that blonde hair is a recessive trait... with the ever-increasing globalization of the world, I could see such a trait being slowly bred out of humanity. 200 years might be a little soon though.

elwoodblues

This article is bullshit.

You'd have to be assuming that people were entirely random in their choice of mate. Sorry, but at least for the forseeable future, whether it's because of biology or racism or simple locale factors, some blondes will continue to favor mating with other blondes.

The trend is fucking until everyone looks the same. But that's a far off thing, and will only be approached asymptotically, not totally.

BigJim

The article itself isn't bad, as it presents the counter view as well. Criticize the "experts in Germany", or maybe the title of the article, but not the article itself.

Claudia

I do not understand why blonde would disappear because the gene is recessive. frequency of phenotype can decrease if there are more mixed marriage, but the gene would still be there to be expressed as soon as two heterozygotes mate! after all there are quite a few genetic diseases whose genes are a lot rarer which does not seeem to disappear!

Claudia

One of my daughter's friends had bright blond haires, and she had some black ancestors (influence was visible in her mother, and even herself if you had known what to look for).

elwoodblues

Sorry, you're entirely right.

Although I don't much appreciate the writers of the article for their reporting of sensationalism and empty science.

caravelair

that is my main objection. i see nothing selecting against recessive genes in general.

NZAmoeba

quick genetics lesson...

B = Brown
b = blonde

(recessive genes are always lowercase)

to be blonde, you MUST be bb.
if you are Bb, bB, or BB, you're brown.

2 blondes have kids, because they're both bb, they can only have bb kids.
if one was brown hair with a recessive b gene, then they would have either bb, or Bb kids, with 50:50 odds between those results.
if one was a fully dominate BB and the other bb, all the kids would all be brown, with a recessive b, hence Bb

when you get a BB with a Bb though, thats when the b starts to be phased out. You only have a 1 in 4 chance that the kid will keep the b gene, in the other 3, it'll be lost forever because they'll be BB, and even then, the 1 kid will still have brown hair.

its a simplistic version, but should explain how recessive traits can EVENTUALLY be phased out... 200 years seems too short, thats only 6 generations.

Jesse

No, that doesn't explain why a recessive gene would eventually be phased out. If there is no selective advantage to having B vs. b, and the population is large and mating between people with different genes can be treated as random, then the population should reach a Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in which 64% are BB, 32% are Bb and 4% are bb.