Maxis agrees with Laurenke

[JenW]

My eyes change color too, though I can't do it on command like Pescado can. They range between reddish-brown to muddy green-brown.

Jen

[ZephyrZodiac]

My understanding is that to have blue, green, grey or hazel eyes, you need to have the (recessive) gene on both sides of the family, in other words, both parents have to be carrying it, but it may have never actually appeared for generations, and can make it's appearance simply because it finds a match. 

In my family, my mother had brown eyes, my father had blue, and we all got blue or blue/grey.  However, my sister's daughter has brown eyes like her father.

Also, if both sides of the family have only the blue-eyes gene, then brown eyes are an impossiblity, so if Afro-American, or Afro-British etc. parents both have blue eyes, then their children will as well.  You  need two blue-eyed genes to have blue eyes, only one brown-eyed gene for brown.

I may have this a little confused, so any biologists out there who can correct me, I stand corected.

[HRH Posie]

My understanding is that to have blue, green, grey or hazel eyes, you need to have the (recessive) gene on both sides of the family, in other words, both parents have to be carrying it, but it may have never actually appeared for generations, and can make it's appearance simply because it finds a match. 

In my family, my mother had brown eyes, my father had blue, and we all got blue or blue/grey.  However, my sister's daughter has brown eyes like her father.

Also, if both sides of the family have only the blue-eyes gene, then brown eyes are an impossiblity, so if Afro-American, or Afro-British etc. parents both have blue eyes, then their children will as well.  You  need two blue-eyed genes to have blue eyes, only one brown-eyed gene for brown.

I may have this a little confused, so any biologists out there who can correct me, I stand corected.

Unfortunately it isn't that simple and hair and eye colour do not follow the straightforward Mendelian inheritance patterns you are taught in school.  Both eye colour and hair colour are determined from 8 different alleles each expressing different amounts of melanin.  It's unlikely having both parents with blue eyes would produce brown eyed children however it can happen.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I felt I'd probably got some of it wrong (or over-simplified).  And bear in mind, it's a long time since I went to school!

[Ancient Sim]

It's amazing what weird things can happen with genetics.  I remember years ago, a white couple who lived near my fiance at the time had a dark-skinned baby.  They were both extremely puzzled (the husband may have been a little more than puzzled!), so much so that they had genetic tests done and investigated both family trees.  Turned-out that someone way back in (I think) the wife's family had married a Jamacan or something.  I don't recall their names, but they were probably called Jill & Pollination Tech#9 Smith, or something very similar.

[ElviraGoth]

My eyes can still change color, generally at will. I can make them go from brown to kind of reddish-glowy. It takes a lot of concentration and if I do it too much, I rupture a blood vessel and get an entirely red eye.

That's funny, because my ex could change his from blue to green at will!

In my family, my dad has brown eyes & my mom has blue.  All five of us kids have brown except for one brother, who has hazel.  My ex had the blue (or green) eyes, and my kids have: #1: brown, #2: blue, #3: brown.

Another interesting genetic trait is that in my family, everyone has brown hair.  My dad had a red beard when he was young, but no one inherited any red hair.  My ex had platinum blonde hair as a child, but it darkened to a mousey brown when he was about 10 and stayed brown after that.  Of my three kids, the brown-eyed ones have brown hair, and the blue-eyed one has blonde hair.  She's almost 30 now, and it is still as blonde as it was when she was little.  We kept expecting it to darken like her dad's did,  but that never happened.  And, no, she can't change the color of her eyes.  They're blue, period.  But she just had her third child, so I will be interested to see what happens with their hair and eye colors as they get older.

[gali]

Well, I've got a genetic lesson here - am I in the High School?...

Yes, Maxis prefers  blue eyes, and even blonde hair for tan/black sims. In the game, the black sims with black eyes and hair (as they should be) look very unattractive. Ophelia has brown eyes, but blond hair, and she looks more attractive this way.

For instance, If I have a sim with very black skin color, I always choose blond hair and light dress - otherwise I can't see the sim's face in the low resolution I have.

Nothing to do with genetics here (it's a game)....

I can tell you a new eye color that override (in the game) all eyes colors - green. My CAS sims are always with green eyes, and all my kids - no matter who my sim marry - are with green eyes....

So, drop the genetic - it's redundant here....

[cwieberdink]

Nothing to do with genetics here (it's a game)....

I can tell you a new eye color that override (in the game) all eyes colors - green. My CAS sims are always with green eyes, and all my kids - no matter who my sim marry - are with green eyes....

So, drop the genetic - it's redundant here....

Actually Gali, it may be misinformation, but I have seen in several places that there are genetics that govern appearances of offspring in the game.  Custom eyes and skin are always dominant and thus will be seen the most so if you use custom green eyes, then, yep, most of your kids'll have green eyes.  Even when they marry a Maxis townie with those infamous blue eyes. 

So, genetics is quite appropriate here if this is not misinformation.  All my sim children born from CAS sims have gorgeous brown or hazel eyes because that is the custom eye color.  I've not married a townie to a townie with different eye colors to see what happens.

Chris

[vecki]

Heh, well I guess I'm an anomoly on two counts.

Compleyely English - completely dark brown eyes, pale skin and naturally mousey brown hair.

Plus I was born with these big dark brown bug eyes of mine - which I am told is an anomoly.

My mother's family involved 8 English (with some ancestral German in there somewhere) kids, 2 brown eyes, 2 hazel, 2 green, 2 brown - still not sure how that happened.

Meanwhile I (English/Greek by genetics, Australian by location) was born with my big brown eyes - so I'm just as anomolous as you trubble.  My hair started out almost blonde, but as time has gone by I've gotten darker and darker brown.  I wouldn't be surprised if one day it goes completely black.

I'm told I also, when I was born, had a blue bottom.  Apparently it's a sign that there's some Turkish in my (probably) Dad's side.

Cripes that sounds weird!

(Edit: realised I missed a key word in one of those sentences.  First one to guess which word gets, um, a bene in the BBS?)

[Suzuna]

My eyes are.. err... odd. One is golden green, kind of "army" green I guess. The other one is that same color, but with a patch of very dark brown. My eyes are like camo!

[Darkstormyeve]

Gali,

There is genetic hierachy for sure in the game. Brown hair is dominant over blonde. Not sure about eyes as my sims always have a shade of blue. But I have neighbourhoods of mostly brown haired sims. I introduce blonde but unless two blondies have a kid, I can't get rid of the brown.

It has been very interesting to read this thread. My toddler turns 2 in a few weeks and she had blond hair and very blue eyes. My husband has mousey coloured hair and green eyes. I have blond hair and green/blue eyes. She is definitely our daughter and I can only think that she got blue eyes from her grandfather. Her eyes have been the same colour since the day she was born. I wonder if they will infact change.

Even though I have light eyes, I have olive skin and black eyebrows. Looks odd with my blond hair. I am really curious to see how my daughter will turn out. My mother had brown eyes and my dad green/blue.

[gali]

There is genetic hierachy for sure in the game. Brown hair is dominant over blonde.

Lol, I know that, I studied in college too - but it's not pure, and besides - it doesn't matter; what matters is - is the sim ugly or not.

I accept the "racist" argument about Maxis (prefers blue eyes for dark skinned sims), and I quite like it; not because I am "racist" (I am Jewish, lol), but because the blue eyes and the blond hair  make the dark-skinned sims to look prettier, even if it contradicts the genetics....

[vecki]

I bred University drop out Tosha Go (pale skin, blonde hair, green eyes, you know, THAT townie teen with the Cassandra Goth imitation hair) with Amin Sims (dark skin, brown hair, blue/grey eyes)

The result was Amy Go: dark skin, RED hair, green eyes.

I'm quite bewildered and I have a paranoid phobia about using SimPE even to look at the genetics and turn my computer into a fireball visible from space.  A modder I ain't.

[Sandilou]

Dagmar the post girl is blonde with brown eyes.  She had 6 kids with Kennedy Cox in my game; they came out with black hair (Kennedy's) and brown eyes - and THAT nose.  He also had 6 kids with adult Ivy Copur - yes, the truly evil one; and although she had blue eyes (before she died) their kids all have brown eyes and black hair.

People may hate the townies, but Ivy's offspring make excellent fighters.

[reggikko]

I'm told I also, when I was born, had a blue bottom.  Apparently it's a sign that there's some Turkish in my (probably) Dad's side.

Cripes that sounds weird!

(Edit: realised I missed a key word in one of those sentences.  First one to guess which word gets, um, a bene in the BBS?)

My guess is that you had a blue bottom *lip*.

[reggikko]

I think it's more common in the South to see people of African descent with lighter colored eyes, due to the higher level of race-mixing during slavery. Most do have brown eyes, but I've had several friends with either green or hazel. One friend's son had the most gorgeous crystal blue eyes I've ever seen.

For those of you who like the dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin combo, firefighter Dorian Miguel in Strangtown fits the bill. He's very easy on the eyes.  I had him marry a Sim with alien skin-tone. All three of their children have her skin but his brown eyes. The combination is rather nice. NOTE: my aliens have custom lavender skin. The mother's eyes are grey.

[syberspunk]

As Posie Flump mentioned, the genetics for eye color is a bit more complex than simple mendelian genetics. Here is a sample of info which I found here:

At one time scientists thought that a single gene pair, in a dominant/recessive inheritance pattern, controlled human eye color. The allele for brown eyes was considered dominant over the allele for blue eyes. The genetic basis for eye color is actually far more complex. At the present, three gene pairs controlling human eye color are known. Two of the gene pairs occur on chromosome pair 15 and one occurs on chromosome pair 19. The bey 2 gene, on chromosome 15, has a brown and a blue allele. A second gene, located on chromosome 19 (the gey gene) has a blue and a green allele. A third gene, bey 1, located on chromosome 15, is a central brown eye color gene.

Geneticists have designed a model using the bey 2 and gey gene pairs that explains the inheritance of blue, green and brown eyes. In this model the bey 2 gene has a brown and a blue allele. The brown allele is always dominant over the blue allele so even if a person is heterozygous (one brown and one blue allele) for the bey 2 gene on chromosome 15 the brown allele will be expressed. The gey gene also has two alleles, one green and one blue. The green allele is dominant to the blue allele on either chromosome but is recessive to the brown allele on chromosome 15. This means that there is a dominance order among the two gene pairs. If a person has a brown allele on chromosome 15 and all other alleles are blue or green the person will have brown eyes. If there is a green allele on chromosome 19 and the rest of the alleles are blue, eye color will be green. Blue eyes will occur only if all four alleles are for blue eyes. This model explains the inheritance of blue, brown and green eyes but cannot account for gray, hazel or multiple shades of brown, blue, green and gray eyes. It cannot explain how two blue-eyed parents can produce a brown-eyed child or how eye color can change over time. This suggests that there are other genes, yet to be discovered, that determine eye color or that modify the expression of the known eye color genes.

Obviously real life genetics is far more complex than whatever spaghetti-coded engine the game uses to determine sims genetics.

I also wanted to note that just because a trait is dominant does not necessarily and explicitly mean that it is the most commonly expressed. The age old example is polydactyly, the autosomal dominant trait of having an extra digit (finger or toe). Although this trait is dominant genetically, it is not commonly seen phenotypically (expressed visually). In other words, dominance does not necessarily translate into high frequency. There are several examples of traits that are dominant, but just not found in the general population. The association and confusion probably arises due to semantics since the word "dominant" has a connotation that seems to imply that the population should have an abundance of this trait.

To put it simply, a dominant trait, in a simple case of mendelian genetics, is the trait that will ALWAYS be expressed over the recessive trait. In a simple example, you have two allelles for a certain gene, one from your father and one from your mother. Either of these traits can be dominant or recessive. In most cases, it requires two recessive alleles in order for that trait to expressed. Dominance dictates what trait is expressed, it does not necessarily affect how frequent this trait is expressed in the population. This is when natural selection comes into play. Theoretically, if the trait is adaptively advantageous, then supposedly it would be more commonly expressed in the population, since it may supposed help in the survival of its carriers, who could then go on to produce offspring and pass along the advantageous adaptation.In some cases, certain diseases or deformities are dominant. However, because the expression of these conditions are deterimental or even fatal, these traits tend to not get passed on to further generations, and therefore that is why they are not as commonly expressed in the general population.

Here endeth the mini lesson on simple genetics. [/geek]

Hehe, I hope that made sense and I hope I didn't pass on too much misinformation. Feel free to correct me as I often talk out of my ass anyways. Plus, in the ever changing, ever growing field of biology and genetics, something new is always springing up and changing the way we think and understand how things work.

Ste

[Darkstormyeve]

There is genetic hierachy for sure in the game. Brown hair is dominant over blonde.

Lol, I know that, I studied in college too - but it's not pure, and besides - it doesn't matter; what matters is - is the sim ugly or not.

I accept the "racist" argument about Maxis (prefers blue eyes for dark skinned sims), and I quite like it; not because I am "racist" (I am Jewish, lol), but because the blue eyes and the blond hair  make the dark-skinned sims to look prettier, even if it contradicts the genetics....

But isn't it amazing too that we all seem to agree that dark skin, blue eyes and blond hair looks attractive. How many shows have you seen on Discovery channel that search the reasoning behind human attraction to each other? What do we consider attractive? I have heard that its symentry of the face but alas, it seems to be other things too.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think the liking for dark skin with blond hair and blue eyes is partly due to the western desire for suntans - the deeper the tan, the healthier we think we look!

Interestingly, from what I understand from Syberspunk's post, since genetic inheritance is partly determined by external factors of what is beneficial to the community then, if the increasing global warming causes more and more cloud over  Northern Europe (as it seems to be doing!) we can expect an increase in light -coloured eyes, which let in more daylight.

Another interesting point, although the general pattern in Asia is for brown eyes, there are quite a number of people in Pakistan, mainly, I believe, Kashmiris, who have blue, grey, green or hazel eyes.  When I was teaching, we had a family of three Pakistani boys in the school, and all three of them had dark violet-blue eyes.  Some people blame this on Alexander the Great and his army, as I believe the same thing applies in Turkey and most other countries which were on his route!  Not sure I do, though.

[cwieberdink]

For those of you who like the dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin combo, firefighter Dorian Miguel in Strangtown fits the bill. He's very easy on the eyes.  I had him marry a Sim with alien skin-tone. All three of their children have her skin but his brown eyes. The combination is rather nice. NOTE: my aliens have custom lavender skin. The mother's eyes are grey.

I don't think they're related, but the Miguels in the game seem to be particularly good looking.  I have a sim married to Jason Miguel.  He has blue eyes, but still.  He's hot!

Chris

[Sandilou]

The age old example is polydactyly, the autosomal dominant trait of having an extra digit (finger or toe). Although this trait is dominant genetically, it is not commonly seen phenotypically (expressed visually). In other words, dominance does not necessarily translate into high frequency.

   
This trait runs in my father's family; the extra digits look a bit like little toes with no inherent muscles; My father has a younger brother who was born with 12 fingers (inc thumbs) and 12 toes; my father himself had 12 fingers - I'm relieved to say I was born with the usual 10 digits, but my younger son was born with 12 fingers too.  My father kept his extra digits well into adulthood - I could gross you out by saying I used to play with them!  But, due to his work (osteopathy) he eventually had them removed.  My son's extra digits were tied soon after his birth and fell off when he was less than a month old.  Both my father and son have the nodules on the sides of their little fingers where the digits were.

I've also seen a child with 12 digits who had  5 proper working fingers alongside his thumbs.  His extra digits were jointed, with proper nails which was why I'd not noticed them.  I'd taught him for over 5 months before the other children pointed this out to me.  I can still see the image in my head.  Aaaargh!

[Renatus]

I think the liking for dark skin with blond hair and blue eyes is partly due to the western desire for suntans - the deeper the tan, the healthier we think we look!

It could be, but not necessarily - it could be simple artistic principles. Dark skin and pale hair/eyes create a strong contrast, which attracts the eye. It's a rare combination in real life, especially with very dark skin and blonde hair on someone with European or Asian features, so the result on our human-looking sims is exotic.

Not everyone is fond of the exotic, though; I've seen complaints on other boards about the dark skin/light hair or eyes happening with Sims.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think it's a mistake to treat your sims as though they were human and expect them to eithr look or behave exactly like humans!  They're sims, for heaven's sake, and they mate with aliens!  So far, at least, we don't appear to be doing that, at least, not with green ones!

[bluecatvon]

It's amazing what weird things can happen with genetics. I remember years ago, a white couple who lived near my fiance at the time had a dark-skinned baby. They were both extremely puzzled (the husband may have been a little more than puzzled!), so much so that they had genetic tests done and investigated both family trees. Turned-out that someone way back in (I think) the wife's family had married a Jamacan or something. I don't recall their names, but they were probably called Jill & Pollination Tech#9 Smith, or something very similar.

haha!! oh my god!! i've finally found the answer to the puzzle!

i was surprised as to how on earth would a family of white give birth to a dark-skinned baby. even had to try to remember if the daughter (sister of Johnny, the name's Jill right?) had had an affair haha. her husband was david gibson, red hair, green eyes, just so irresistable! the baby had green eyes and red hair too, which i'm very proud

[bluecatvon]

... My son's extra digits were tied soon after his birth and fell off when he was less than a month old.  Both my father and son have the nodules on the sides of their little fingers where the digits were.

how exactly did you do that?