• Question: What causes children to be taller than both their parents were?

    Asked by sampalmer16 to Elaine, Heather, Keith on 27 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Heather Eyre

      Heather Eyre answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      Well nutrition plays a big role in height, and there is an excess of food available in developed countries now so there are now growth limits caused by the lack of nutrients any more.

      The genes you inherit are a mixture of both parents, who were a mixture of their parents. So it gets a little more complicated than both my parents are tall so I will be tall! And lot of genes are involved!

      For example:

      My Mum is short (5ft0), and my Grandad but my Grandma is tall. My Dad is average (5ft11), with a Short Mum and average Dad.

      I’m short (5ft3) but my Sister is 5ft8 and my brother is 6ft2 !

    • Photo: Keith Siew

      Keith Siew answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      Height is a rather complex trait as heather pointed out! I’m 5’8″ and both my parents are shorter than me by a little… but my younger brother is probably 6’1″-6’2″… and all my male cousins on my Mom’s side are all 6’+… so I ended up being the shortest of the bunch (excluding my little cousins… but they’re just kids now so who knows how tall they’ll end up being).

      But an interesting fact about height is that we as a species have been getting gradually taller over the decades/centuries! A lot of it has to do with availability of nutrition… but rather interestingly there seems to be a correlation between the well-being of a society and the height of its people… So while variation of height within a population has mostly to do with genetics… the variation between populations has to do with environment and as a results average height of a population can be used as a rough indicator of a society’s well-being… and for the record the people of the Netherlands have the tallest average height (6’1″ for males and 5’7″ for females)

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