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If there is one thing I've always been fascinated about is genes and how unpredictable they can be. My friend looks absolutely nothing like her parents but she's their biological daughter. How often do cases like her happen? Can a gene skip so much and all of the sudden it reappears again after so long to the point you look nothing like your own parents?
Her parents are both traditional brown-skinned Mexicans with brown eyes (dominant trait obviously) and indigenous features. They got 3 children and my friend is their oldest child and the only one different from their other 2 kids. While their other kids look similar to them, she is totally different. She came out white, strawberry blonde hair and bluish-grey eyes. When she was born, both initially thought the nurses handed them the wrong baby. They requested the baby to get tested. As requested, the baby was but it came out positive. She's their biological child.
Meanwhile the mother can't remember anyone in her family being white with recessive genes, the father had a couple distant ancestors (far in the past though) that were white Europeans with light eyes. It turns out he's a carrier (Bb) of several recessive genes even though he's brown-skinned. She takes over after one of her father's ancestors who is already long dead. She looks nothing like her parents even though she's their child.
I have no idea. A classmate in second and third grade, Mary Jo, had very light skin, blue eyes, and light blonde hair. Her parents and two younger sisters all had an olive complexion and very dark eyes and hair.
It may not be related, but she died of bone cancer before the end of third grade. Her younger sisters lived at least to adulthood. I lost track of them after that.
Look can skip generations.
Sometimes children end up looking exactly like one parent, or even closely mirroring a sibling, and sometimes they don't resemble anyone in the family.
Yep, my son looks nothing like me or his father, but he does resemble one of his paternal aunts. However she is the odd one out in her immediate family, looking nothing like any of her many siblings nor her parents. Somewhere on the family tree I am sure there is an ancestor with light hair and freckles who somehow snuck his or her genes into a family that otherwise is your stereotypical dark haired, dark eyed and olive skinned southern Italian.
It's the blue eyes and fair skin that seems to confuse people. Or maybe it's that all the news lately from Cuba seems to show a sort of third-world-dark-skinned population. And yes, many Cubans are black. And Chinese. And even Jewish. We Cubans come in all sizes and flavors. =D
I found a picture of an ancestor who looked native (Apache?), which filtered down to my maternal aunt and her kids, but not us. But many people in my family probably haven't seen the picture and might be surprised if they had a baby who looked like her.
I (1st born) look like my mother and a grand parent combined, my brother (2nd born) looks exactly like a grandmother and my sister (3rd born) looks exactly like dad. It's all in the jeans, oops gene's.
And in genealogy research we all have looks like various relatives in the past 200 years.
My older brother doesn't look like anyone in the family. My sister and I look alike, and we both have similarities to both our parents. However, while my brother and I are very light-skinned, my sister has darker, olive skin. She has dark eyes and mine are blue. I'm the only blue-eyed person in the extended family. My sister's hair was brown (it's grey now) and mine has always been blonde.
When I was a little kid, I didn't look like anyone in the family. It wasn't until I reached my teen years that I started to look like my sister and my parents.
I have a friend whose daughter looks like an identical twin to her first cousin. When the two cousins are together, it's really difficult to tell them apart. Even their voices are the same. Cousins. Go figure.
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My older brother doesn't look like anyone in the family. My sister and I look alike, and we both have similarities to both our parents. However, while my brother and I are very light-skinned, my sister has darker, olive skin. She has dark eyes and mine are blue. I'm the only blue-eyed person in the extended family. My sister's hair was brown (it's grey now) and mine has always been blonde.
When I was a little kid, I didn't look like anyone in the family. It wasn't until I reached my teen years that I started to look like my sister and my parents.
I have a friend whose daughter looks like an identical twin to her first cousin. When the two cousins are together, it's really difficult to tell them apart. Even their voices are the same. Cousins. Go figure.
.
Patty Duke show's theme song is now stuck in my head
"...Because they're cousins...identical cousins!"
It's the blue eyes and fair skin that seems to confuse people. Or maybe it's that all the news lately from Cuba seems to show a sort of third-world-dark-skinned population. And yes, many Cubans are black. And Chinese. And even Jewish. We Cubans come in all sizes and flavors. =D
I found a picture of an ancestor who looked native (Apache?), which filtered down to my maternal aunt and her kids, but not us. But many people in my family probably haven't seen the picture and might be surprised if they had a baby who looked like her.
Yes they've been increasing over the past years. There are several whites with blue or green eyes in other Latin countries such as Argentina or Uruguay too.
Genes can be crazy and wild. It's like rolling the dice and that makes it so fascinating about it. They're so unpredictable, popping up any moment. The friend's father was taken by surprise that his ancestors' white genes still passed after being apparently inactive for generations.
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