Question: why am i ginger and no one in my family is

Sophie Cox answered on 10 Mar 2017:

Hi Callum,

I found this great answer to your question online – couldn’t put it better myself! 🙂

When a child is born, they get two sets of genes – one from each parent. These genes can be dominant (as in if you have only one copy it will be expressed) or recessive (as in it is not expressed unless you have two copies)

Red hair is a recessive trait, so you have to have both copies of the red hair gene to have red hair.

Let’s say that someone had two redhaired grandparents, one on their mother’s side and the other on their father’s side, and that the gene for red hair was “r”. The other two grandparents had brown hair, and that gene is represented by “B”.

Mother’s parents: BB (brown hair) + rr (red hair)
Mother: Br (brown hair)

Father’s parents: BB (brown hair) + rr (red hair)
Father: Br (brown hair)

Mother and father: Br + Br
The children can have the genes BB (brown hair), Br (brown hair), or rr (red hair) when you randomly combine the parent’s genes.
As the rr child has red hair, it is possible to have a red haired child if neither parent has red hair.

I hope that makes sense 🙂