• Question: will gingers be extinct by 2060

    Asked by eoghan123 to Aggelos, Andrew, Eileen, Naomi, Shane on 13 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Andrew Jackson

      Andrew Jackson answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      I hope not, i think the actress Isla Fisher is beautiful and the world would be worse without her red hair 🙂

      the idea behind your question is that the genes that make red hair, and even blond hair, tend to be overwritten by genes for dark hair. So, it is more likely, but not definite, that if you have two parents, one with red and one with dark hair, you are more likely to have dark hair. At the moment, there are lots of people with red and light hair colour in countries in the north of europe so i think it will be here to stay for a long time past 2060.

      However, as people move around the world more and more, i reckon that over a long enough time, we will see light hair become less common as the darker hair takes over. I for one have brown hair, but have kept my ginger hair in my beard and moustache.. which i am now growing for the month of Movember in aid of charity.

      with light hair colour also tends to come light skin colour which exposes us to damage from teh suns rays. Thankfully though, techonology comes to the rescue with suncream, and so as long as we are careful to cover pale skin and use suncream, then we should be all ok well beyond 2060 (thanks to @modemily for chatting about the skin example on the live chat)

      – andrew

    • Photo: Naomi Elster

      Naomi Elster answered on 14 Nov 2012:

      I hope not, partly because of beautiful red-haired people, as Andrew says, partly because gingers are part of the same species we are so if they go, we’ll go 🙂

      There are a few answers to this. Andrew’s already described how genes for dark hair tend to be stronger than genes for light hair (dark haired genes are called dominant genes. This means that if a dark-haired person and a light-haired person have a child, the child will probably, but not definitely, have dark hair. But we have plenty of light-haired people around to have light-haired babies, so there should be no shortage of gingers in 2060.

      Over time, our bodies change to suit our environments better. An example of this is that our appendix isn’t really useful for us anymore so over time it has gotten smaller and smaller so that some scientists think that one day, humans might no longer have an appendix. But this is unlikely to happen with ginger hair as there’s no advantage or disadvantage to having it. If we lived in the wild and were closer to the bottom than the top of the food chain we’d probably have no gingers left because they’re more likely to be noticed by predators and eaten!

      Then there is the thing that gingers have pale skin, which is more easily damaged by the sun. If global warming is true then this could have been a disadvantage – Australia has a higher rate of skin cancer than other places because its people are pale skinned for its warm climate. But thankfully we have sunscreen and air conditioned places to stay out of the sun when we need to – thanks to science!!

      Another great thing science has given us to protect gingers is hair dye 😉

    • Photo: Eileen Diskin

      Eileen Diskin answered on 14 Nov 2012:

      Haha – are you a ginger? Either way, no need to worry…we’ll have gingers around for ages! Like Andrew and Naomi have explained, there are a few reasons why scientists think gingers won’t be going extinct. And definitely not in the next 50 years…unless someone wants to make them all disappear!

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