Here are the chances Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's baby will have red hair

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November 5, 2018 1:48 PM

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced on Monday that they are expecting a baby in the spring. Here are the chances the royal baby will have Harry's characteristic red hair colour.

are expecting a baby.

Babies are a perfect combination of both their parents. They have exactly half of their mother's genes and half of their father's.

Some genes are dominant, while others are recessive, which means you may be able to predict some of the characteristics a child is likely to have. But of course there is no guarantee.

Kensington Palace announced on Monday morning that Meghan Markle is pregnant, and is due to give birth to a royal baby in spring 2019.

One question many people might be asking is whether the new royal baby will have Prince Harry's characteristic ginger hair.

In order to be a redhead, a baby needs two copies of the red hair gene (a mutation of the MC1R gene) because it is recessive. This means if neither parent is ginger, they both need to carry the gene and pass it on — and even then they will have just a 25% chance of the child turning out to be a redhead. Over the generations, red hair genes may be passed down, but no redheads appear.

When a redhead baby is suddenly born, it can seem like it's out of nowhere if many generations have gone by without a single ginger hair.

If one parent is a natural redhead, and the other carries the gene, that gives them a 50% chance of their child being ginger. However, if the other parent has no ginger genes, the probability of a ginger baby falls to 0%.

For Prince Harry to have red hair, that means Princess Diana and Prince Charles both carried copies of the redhead gene. For Prince Harry's own child to have his hair, Meghan Markle will have to have a copy of it too.

She may be what's called a secret redhead, and if so there is a 50% change of another ginger royal baby. But if she has no redhead gene, it's not going to happen.

Here's a handy chart to explain it better.

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