Puppy Genes
Science brain teasers require understanding of the physical or biological world and the laws that govern it.
Jessica has two hamsters, one male and one female. The male hamster is brown, the dominant trait for hamsters. His genotype is Ff. The capital F represents the dominant trait for hamsters, which is brown fur. The lowercase f represents the recessive trait for hamsters which is white fur. The female hamster has white fur, the recessive trait for hamsters.
With these parents, there is a 50% chance of offspring whose phenotype (an organism's physical appearance) is heterozygous brown, and a 50% chance of an offspring whose phenotype is homozygous white.
What is the possibility of ever, with any two genotypes, having offspring whose phenotype is heterozygous white?
Answer
0%
The results are impossible. White is a recessive trait and heterozygous means that there would have to be two different alleles. The only way to do that is with the genotype Ff, but since the dominant allele would always take over, the offspring would end up being brown.
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Comments
annvie9   
May 05, 2008
| Yay first comment!
Great teaser by the way. I actually learned something about hamsters

I got the right answer, just incorrectly. I thought 0% because if the male has brown fur and the female has white fur, the baby would have brown and white fur, but I'm not a scientist. Yet. |
uhhhh   
May 09, 2008
| This thing is just to hard for us. How would we understand that hetergeous thing and peterzorus tihng?  |
kunju   
May 16, 2008
| really hard
 |
SandUtil   
Aug 16, 2008
| Great teaser. Biology major so it was easy |
shamone21   
Oct 13, 2008
| great 1!! jut did this in biology a-level so found it quite easy-good revision lol!!  |
fedex337   
Nov 04, 2008
| So how is it possible that some people have one brown eye and one blue eye? |
Paladin   
Apr 09, 2009
| Confused about the title, but fun quiz, even if a tad simple  |
TableElbows  
Aug 14, 2009
| I really liked this teaser!!
I love genetics so this was easy for me  |
MusiK 
Dec 21, 2009
| cute, simple, and fun  |
Tabi  
Jul 19, 2010
| Great one!  |
princess2007  
Mar 08, 2011
| I thought this one was a little pointless-- those who actually know genetics (me!! me!! jk) would anyways get the answer without the background info. Those who dont know genetics will definitely not understand it from ur lil explanation, and inevitably get it wrong. But nice effort anyways! |
Candi7   
Jun 12, 2012
| I GOT ITTTTT!!!!
Can't believe it! I literally JUST read an article about this kind of thing! |
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