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 ...
Well I hope all goes smoothly! I expect you to post pics of the little one after arrival!
Your superpowers would be: X-ray vision, Dude-magnet, and miraculous powers to get children to obey.
That oughta be good for a start! ;o)
No scarcity, as long as Clairol is in business.
Your superpowers would be: X-ray vision, Dude-magnet, and miraculous powers to get children to obey.
Don't I wish, lol! The dude magnet part, though...hmmm. Being a redhead and a Scorpio kind of makes you think should be true, huh? LOL Well, when I don't look like a lollipop on a stick, anyway, hee hee.
LOL. Be sure to include you in the pic. Wanna see the red hair!
BTW, even pregnant gals can be dude magnets!
Oh, I meant the spotted part, like a harlequin Great Dane.
Sure you did...;)
I've been a redhead for the last, ah...2 years or so.
It works on me, and I like my hairdresser. After all these years, I'm really not too sure what my real haircolor is.
This just means their will be another Norse invasion to rape their genes into the world again.
Coincidentally, I just "Nice and Easy"-ed my hair to a nice russet color last night.
So there's one more redhead in the world today!
You have an adorable son. Where's the pictures of your little princess?
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