Answers to Questions Kids Ask! - Where "Why?" Turns to "Wow!"
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September 19, 20111931 - Brook Benton
1934 - Brian Epstein
1928 - Pete Murray
1933 - David McCallum
1940 - Zandra Rhodes
1940 - Bill Medley
1945 - Kate Adie
1946 - Michael Elphick
1948 - Jeremy Irons
1949 - Twiggy
1963 - David Seaman
Yes, they can, and this actually follows the most simple rules of genetics. Blue eyes are, generally speaking, recessive to brown eyes. Say “B” is a gene for brown pigment and “b” is a gene for no pigment (default blue). Now, everyone has two genes for each trait, one from Mom and one from Dad. So people who have the gene combination BB or Bb have brown eyes, because their cells are making at least some brown pigment. Only people who have genes bb have blue eyes. (This is a simplification, but it works for our purposes.) Suppose that the two parents have:
Man = Bb
Woman = Bb
Their child receives one gene from each parent, and therefore could be BB, Bb, or bb. So you see that under these circumstances, they could easily have a blue-eyed baby!
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