Red Hair on Death Row

By Georgina Brennan

THE future is bleak for the Irish colleen say experts this week – with the extinction of redheads in 100 years. 

Ireland’s 320,000 natural redheads are the last of a dying breed according to scientists who say in a special report this week that too few people are now carrying the red hair gene for it to survive. 

Ireland, because it has one of the highest percentage of redheads per head of population in the world, will prove to be the last place in the world to have redheads. 

Red hair, say scientists in a report by the Oxford Hair Foundation, is in retreat because a maximum of just 4% of the world’s population carry the gene. 

Because the gene is recessive, it is diluted whenever carriers of the gene have children with people who have the stronger brown hair gene. 

Dr. John Gray of the Oxford Hair Foundation said black and brown haired people are wiping out the red hair gene.

“The way things are going red hair will either be extremely rare or extinct by the end of the century,” he said.