Thursday, August 23, 2007

Look Out Ron Weasley





The latest edition of Nation Geographic is reporting that redheads (known as "gingers" in the UK and Australia) may be extinct in 100 years.

Red hair is extremely rare--less than 2% of the world's population possesses it. And it takes two parents with the redhead gene to produce a ginger child. With more and more people marrying outside their own communities, it's becoming increasingly unlikely that two people with this uncommon gene will come into contact.

The gene itself is a mutation that arose in Northern Europe thousands of years ago, and the Vikings were largely responsible for spreading it throughout Europe. Today, Scotland may be the last hope for the redheads of the world. Almost 40% of the Scots carry the gene.

Read more here.

9 comments:

International Mastermind said...

Uh oh! My friends a redhead!!! (she hates her hair, though!)

Jessica said...

Whoa, I didn't know there was so little number of red-heads in the world...

annemarie said...

Aww... that's suckes. I always wanted to have red hair.

theatre said...

NOOO!! My best friend is a red-head :(

shopahulic said...

SEROUSLY? RED WILL BE EXTINKTED?
HOW WIS THAT PLOSSIBLE?

MY FRIEND IS GOING TO FLIP WHEN I TELL HER.

Anonymous said...

O. my. gosh. That stinks! Red hair is awesome! I can't believe it. Ron, i'm terribly sorry. But i'll always love u, even if your hair falls out!
signed, kiki strike obsessive.
ps-I can't believe Fred died! Fred was my love!Ms. Rowling, why do u hurt me so? (jk lol:)

Anonymous said...

I know a bunch of people with red hair! If there are so little red heads then why do I know so many of them?

fredlover said...

i miss fred :(

CosimaCat said...

Darn it guys, red hair isn't going to fall out. It's just a recessive gene, which means that in a long time, people will all have dark hair and dark eyes, since that isn't recessive. It doesn't mean that people who are already redheads are gonna be bald or anything. Jeez!