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Asked by kpringles97 to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 19 Jun 2011.
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Suzi Gage answered on 16 Jun 2011:
Hi @kpringles97
Good question! Firstly, it’s not true that the ability to roll your tongue is decided by a single gene. Unfortunately this is an example often used to explain genetics, but it’s not true.It may be that the ability to do it comes from a number of different genes, in which case it’s possible that your parents and grandparents wouldn’t be able to, but you would be.
An argument against this, though, is that some people can train themselves to do it. This suggests there is at least some environment involved here.
So basically it’s much more complicated than people originally thought, and it may be genetic, but if it is it’s a very complicated relationship, not just one gene either ‘on’ or ‘off’.
Hope this helps 🙂
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Tim Fosker answered on 17 Jun 2011:
Hi @kpringles97
I think @Suzi has explained everything there. It is interesting how these science ‘myths’ come about. Some myths result from early scientific explanations of things (like tongue rolling), where scientists find out more later on, but don’t tell the rest of the world. Other myths seem to come from people trying to find explanations that make sense to them. When you’re a scientist it is important to learn that there is often more than one possible explanation for something and you often need lots of experiments before you find the right one and even then, more evidence may show something slightly different.
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Damien Hall answered on 19 Jun 2011:
My niece can make her tongue go wavy, so that if you look at it from the front it looks like
\/\/\/
She says she does it by first rolling her tongue and then doing the sides – but I don’t know anyone else who can do it that well! I don’t like to think how complicated that must be between genes and learning …
Comments
kpringles97 commented on :
thank you! I really appreciate your explanations!