Question: @steph If an animal reproduces but the animals kid doesn't inherit any features how can you tell who's kid it is ?

anon answered on 18 Mar 2015:

Hi there 🙂

Animals are made up of lots and lots of different types of cells. Each of the cells contains a certain number of paired chromosomes, which are made up of lots and lots of DNA coiled up really really tightly. DNA is kind of like a set of instructions for what features we will have – like blue eyes/brown eyes/ tall/short etc. For example, humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes (46 chromosomes in total).

When an animal reproduces that usually involves them mating with another animal of the same type but the opposite gender.

This means that the male animal’s sperm cell, which only contains half of the male’s chromosomes (one from each pair), and the female’s egg cell, which only contains half of her chromosomes (again one from each pair) come together to make a cell with a whole set of chromosomes.

The animal that develops from this new cell will have half of their DNA from their mum and half from their dad. Because DNA gives the instructions for what features we will have, we usually end up with a mix of features that are similar to one or other or both of our parents. It is unlikely that the animals kids don’t look anything at all like it. But even if that is the case we can do DNA tests to compare the DNA of kids to the animals that could be their parents. So even if it isn’t clear who the parents are when looking at features, it will be clear when you look at a cellular level at the chromosomes and DNA 🙂