Posted on 05/24/2005 2:21:35 PM PDT by pissant
She was just walking down the street with her sister, in her old neighborhood, when an elderly woman stopped her car in front of her and called out, "I love your hair! It's so beautiful!"
Caitlin Tydings was about 8 then, and caught off guard. Now a high-school senior, she has since grown accustomed to strangers commenting on her strawberry-blond locks.
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."
Red hair certainly has made the endangered list. But with 4 percent of 6.4 billion people carrying the gene, says University of Rochester Medical Center's David Pearce, it is too large a figure to be wiped out completely in the next 95 years.
"I think someone may want to check their calculator," he says. The red-hair gene "will dilute out and become rare, but there are a variety of other factors that can change hair color that are not really understood well right now."
The gene responsible for red hair was only discovered in the late 1990s. People have a good chance of being born with red hair if they have a mutation of that gene.
Red hair is found in all ethnic backgrounds but is most commonly
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
You hussy!
Red is stunning!
My wife and all four sons have red hair. We live in Utah. I'd guess 10 percent of the population here has red hair.
Hey, there were a lot to try out! Can't marry the first one. Gotta look hard.
Really? I never suspected a mormon/celt connection. Learn something every day.
Yes. Test rides are very important.
My wife and I have abundant Scottish and Irish blood in our lineages. My second oldest son has ruddy hair, freckles, is 6'2", weighs about 240 pounds, has thighs the size of telephone poles, and looks like he ought to be tossing the caber at the Highland Games. Och! Like groundskeeper Willie from the Simpsons, only not bald.
The I figgured out - heck! HE IS TALLER THAN ME!
My hair turned strawberry blonde and auburn after the birth of my 3rd child. Imagine that! =) It really looks natural on me b/c I'm freckled and have hazel eyes.
Who wants to get off the Island? Maybe the Professor likes one redhead in particular.
My thoughts EXACTLY!
I liked Laura Prepon much better as a Redhead
LOL...so I'm a mutant, then! Wonder why I didn't get any superpowers to go along with the red hair. :)
I think you are a "harlequin",,my son in law has a harlequin beard with red, brown and grey
My daughter is a red head with brown eyes,,Scottish heritage,,and she is gorgeous. My granddaughter is a strawberry blonde with blue eyes. My father, husband and husband's father were alll redheads. And my great Aunt Kat was over 6 feet tall, had flaming red hair and married her husband at the point of a gun, her gun by the way. I always wished I had known the old girl.
Hello ENC, yes you are a mutant! Did you have yer baby yet??
Little pearls about red heads,,they are usually partly color blind and have a higher incidence of Bipolar Disorder.
Dont shoot me but it is true. My husband, father and redheaded daughter are all partly red green colorblind.
Interesting. Must come part and parcel with the "sassy" gene.
Howdy to you, too, and thanks for asking. :)
Nope, no baby yet but had a close call last night. Thankfully, nothing came of it. I am considered full-term right now (a little less than four weeks to go), but I'd like him to bake a little while longer yet.
I wanna know what my superpowers are, though. I should ask my five year old...he's the in-house expert! LOL
LOL
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