This is a question of heredity. My birth mother had straight hair. My birth father had wavy hair.?

I have kinky, tight cork screw hair. How did that happen? I am a caucasion. Somebody told me that lots of Scots have hair similar to mine......something about the invasion of the Moors. And I do have some scotish liniage. Do you suppose I have some African heritage?

This is a question of heredity. My birth mother had straight hair. My birth father had wavy hair.?

There are two kinds of moors in this world:

1. North Africans

2. Boggy highland fields

In general, when people talk about moors in Scotland, they mean the second type ... especially since North Africa has never invaded Scotland.

There are two times, however, when Moors may have been close to Scotland in some numbers. One is when the Romans held Britain - but they never conquered the Picts in what is now Scotland and actually built Hadrian's Wall to keep them separated.

The other time when Moors may have landed on Scottish territory was following the defeat of the Spanish Armada. As I understand, the Armada fled and shipwrecked on Ireland - giving rise to the 'Black Irish'. I suppose it is possible some of those Spaniards, and perhaps some Moors with them, ended up in Scotland as well, but I don't know for sure.

Either way, it seems to me that it is unlikely that you have any more African ancestry than the average white European. Also note that you would need hidden African ancestry on both sides in order for the curly hair trait to show up on you when it wasn't in your parents hair.

This leaves several possibilities for your curly hair. The most likely is probably that the genetics of curly hair are complex enough that you inherited your curly hair naturally from your parents. As per the other answerer: your Dad carried curliness, so you got a copy from him, and your Mom's hair actually had a wave you don't recall and you got another copy from her. (To get really curly hair, you need curly from both sides).

Another - not very likely - possibility is that your curly hair is the result of a mutation that restored curliness to your hair even though your Mom didn't carry the trait. Again, you got Curly from Dad, plus a mutant Curly from your Mom.

Thirdly, if your Mom really has straight hair, then it is possible that she is not your Mom. If you cannot have inherited your curly hair from her, then she can't be your Mom ... it is jarring to consider, but that is part of the danger of learning about genetics.

Well, actually, that's a bit melodramatic on my part ... one gene does not a parent make, but:

If you are brave and curious, you could start looking at other traits (blood types, attached earlobes, etc.) to see how you inherited those from your parents ... after assessing several of these, you might get a better picture. Just remember that if others of these single gene traits seem to indicate that your Mom cannot have given birth to you, then there is the distinct possibility that they came home from the hospital with the wrong baby.

An interesting sidenote: genetic studies indicate that something like 5% of kids are being raised unknowingly by men who cannot have fathered them! Also, the precision of genetics has found cases of people going home with the wrong baby ... they are pretty careful about this nowadays, but in the past it may have been more common.

Good luck!

This is a question of heredity. My birth mother had straight hair. My birth father had wavy hair.?

Check this for an explanation:

"Neither hair type nor eye color works in this simple way. There are two versions of the hair type gene, curly (C) and straight (s). Hair type is an interesting case of something called incomplete dominance. What this means is that with hair type, if you have one of each version of the gene, you get a mix of the two or wavy hair. So for hair type, CC gives curly, Cs gives wavy and ss gives straight hair. "

Check the link below for the rest of the explanation.