DNA Acquisition Explained with Skittles!

DNA can be pretty confusing, most people think we get half of our Mom's DNA and half of our Dads DNA, we do, but that doesn't mean if your Mom is half Italian, that you will be 25% Italian, you could in theory, be no Italian at all.

For the sake of explaining, lets say your Mom is half Italian, we will use the green Skittles for that, so toss 50 green Skittles into a bucket. Your Mom is also 20% German, yellow Skittles, 20 of them, into the bucket. She is also 15% Pacific Islander, so 15 purples into the pot and another 15% Greek, the orange Skittles, 15 of them.

Your Dad, similarly is 60% German, 60 yellow Skittles into Dad's Skittles pot, 15% Italian, so 15 green Skittles in and 25% Greek, so 25 orange Skittles.

When and man and a woman make a baby, some magical force reaches into Moms pot of Skittles and grabs 50 of them, no particular rhyme or reason, whatever 50 she grabs first, and they go into your Skittles pot, same with your Dad's contribution of Skittles to your pot, a random handful of 50 Skittles. Congrats!!!

When you look in your pot, you have 100 random Skittles...when you count them out you find 38 yellow, 27 green, 33 orange and 2 purple. This is the random distribution of your Skittles or DNA.

If your parents decide to have another baby, the magical force reaches back into Mom and Dad's pots and take 50 more from each, so baby Franklin comes along and in his Skittles pot he has 50 yellow, 40 green and 10 purple, but no orange Skittles at all. Perfectly normal!

For every child they have after Franklin, they are given their handfuls of Skittles, and that will be different than their siblings.

When you and your siblings have children, not together of course, the same transfer of Skittles takes place, though instead of how many think it works, that you would get 25% of each Grandparents Skittles, it does not necessarily work that way, your baby gets 50 of your 100, not 25 of it's Grandmother and 25 of it's Grandfather. So just because you have purple Skittles, it doesn't mean your baby will.

BONUS FACT: Because of the way your Skittles are inherited, you only match about half of your fourth cousins via DNA.

I hope this helps!!