While you certainly won’t have to say goodbye to your redheaded friends at school, at one point studies showed that gingers may become extinct in the following decades to come. You may be thinking, “Who will be the new scapegoat for the ones who have ‘no soul’?” However, I am here to tell you that THIS IS NOT TRUE! Rumors have convoluted and clogged up our minds making us believe that we will soon have to say goodbye to the fiery hair even though we do not!
The rumors started when scientists at the “Oxford Hair Foundation” let out a false rumor that our ginger friends would not make it past the year 2107. The rumor started with the idea that recessive genes could eventually die out. To me, this makes sense. When I was younger I thought that being a red head skipped a generation. I always assumed that if a ginger were to marry a brunette, the brunette would take over and the ginger would be lost. It seems that I was wrong, however. Scientists state that a recessive gene will never die out unless all of the people carrying that gene die out before they reproduce.
Another ridiculous claim was that as the climate gets warmer, gingers and their pale skin will not be able to adapt and will die out. This is complete nonsense. Even if it did get too hot outside, there are plenty of people who are just as pale and do not have red hair. I suppose that their brown hair will protect them from evaporating into thin air? This article helps to explain how warmer climate will not be the root of a massive extinction of red heads everywhere.
While I may have been rather sassy, it has come to my attention that genetic companies often use this as a stunt to attract more attention. I certainly do not want any of my ginger friends to go extinct and I’m happy to help debunk the idea that they will soon be no more. Recessive genes do not just go away and therefore neither will gingers.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/redhead-extinction.htm
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/gingergeddon-is-cancelled#2z5h8tl
If you think about it, blue eyes are also a recessive gene. It seems more unlikely that blue eyes would become rare simply because the gene they are contained in is considered a recessive gene. Although red hair is less likely than having blue eyes, I do believe that when you put it into perspective, it seems silly to think that a gene such as hair color could go extinct.
I have never heard this rumor before but it definitely seems a little far off. I would have never thought to relate hair color to an entire species becoming extinct. It is interesting that so many people bought into this that it easily and free flowingly circled the internet. It is a shame though that scientists were the ones to release the false information being that these are the people we trust in making new scientific findings.
I’ve heard this rumor before and as a redhead and I never found myself buying into it either. I wonder how the rumor of gingers not being able to adapt to the cold started and if there was ever any real scientific data backing it up. There can’t be that much physical difference between gingers and non-gingers that would cause them to perish in the cold while others survive. Maybe it is possible though that red hair becomes a trait that is rarer due to the gene becoming more recessive? Food for thought.