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Similarities of Parents to Offspring's

You may have friends who look a lot like one of their parents. They may share the same smile, eyes, type of hair, or skin color.
Many characteristics of organisms are passed down from their offsprings.
An offspring is when all plants and animals reproduce or make more of their kind.

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Traits

In many humans and animals, hair color or fur color or eye color is an inherited trait.
Inherited Traits (traits) is a characteristic that is passed down from parents to their offspring's.
Organisms gets some traits from its mom and some of their traits from its dad. So each organism receives a different combination of traits from both parents.
That’s why brothers and sisters all look a like or similar, because they get different combinations of their parents traits and genes.

Genes

Each trait is controlled by a pair of genes.
Genes contain the DNA codes for all the traits an organism inherits.
Genes are on chromosomes. The genes for a particular trait always occupy the same place on a chromosome.
Gene combinations determined if traits are seen (dominate traits) or hidden (recessive traits).

Recessive and Dominant Traits

Sometimes an offspring has a trait that it doesn’t seem to have inherited from its parents. For example, two brown-haired parents have a baby with blonde hair. How can that be?
Organisms have two kinds of traits, recessive and dominant traits.
Recessive trait is a weak trait and the parent has to have two of these traits to show in its offspring, otherwise the trait will not show.
Dominant trait is a strong trait and over takes the weak trait. Your parent only needs one dominant trait for it to show in its offspring.

Example of Dominant Traits

Brown eyed color in humans results from a gene that produces the brown color, it’s a dominant trait.
Blue eyed color results from a gene that does not produce a visible product, it’s the recessive trait.
If a child receives a brown-eyed gene from her mother and a blue-eyed gene from its father, the child will have brown eyes because the child the child has at least one gene that will successfully make the brown eye. The brown eyed gene is said to be dominant because it is seen in the child or offspring.

Crazy but true

Rolling your tongue is an inherited trait. If your parents can’t roll their tongue, neither can you.
If one of your parents can roll their tongue, you have a chance!

Behavioral Traits:

Behavioral traits can also be passed from parent to offspring.
An example is the behavior of a frog using its tongue to catch a fly for food.
The frog did not learn this behavior, but uses it instinctually, the frog did inherit this behavior from its parents.
Another example of an inherited behavior in animals, is in dogs.
Dogs instinctually know how to swim, this is a behavior they get from its parents.
However humans do not get this behavior from its parents, it must be learned or is environmental.

Genes vs. Environment

Some things are a result of the environment.
For example, say I took a bunch of seeds from the same plant. I decided to water one plant a lot but I only water the other plant a little bit, and the last plant I don’t water at all.
These plants will all grow differently because of the amount of nutrients they are getting, they are affected by their environment
This would not be their genes influencing their size or how much the plants grow but by how much water the plants are getting.

Genes that you inherit

Things you don’t inherit or things that are Environmental

Match the Parent to its Offspring

Essential Questions to Know

Two boys are twins, one has green eyes and the other one has dark brown eyes. Both parents have dark brown eyes. What caused the difference in eye color?

April is a fifth grade girl. She has short brown hair and brown eyes. She also loves to read and play volleyball. Based on these characteristics, which can most likely be concluded about April’s parents?

John observes two frogs sitting on a log in the forest. Both frogs are green with black dots on their backs. Which most likely explains why the two frogs have similar appearances?