Eli5: My puppy and all 8 of her litter mates are jet black. Her mum and dad are brown and red respectively. How is this genetically possible?

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My understand of high school biology 15 years ago would tell me that the chance of all 8 having a recessive gene would be something like 1/56,000. What’s happened here?

In: Biology

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

High school biology acts like phenotypes and genotypes have a way simpler connection than they do. It’s very rarely only two alleles that control the way an animal or person looks, such as eye or hair color.

Anonymous 0 Comments

What color is the mail cat?

Anonymous 0 Comments

I can’t explain the exact science behind it but it all comes gown the the “color inheritance” in the case with labradors, chocolate dogs can “drop black dogs because of the dominant genes of the black color, Because black is a dominant gene (BB) where yellow is (Bb) and chocolate is (bb). The color they are doesn’t necessarily predict the color of the puppies it is the genes they carry. For that reason many “breeders” get their dogs tested and it can tell you the odds of having the different colors depending on what the other dogs genetics may be.