Dancing Pet People? 

I had an e-mail a few days ago from Ancestry.Com regarding a new ‘personality trait’ they’d just released. Intrigued I logged on to have a look and ‘discovered’ that they had previously published a few more. Intrigued further I read on.... 

Now I’m not that impressed about linking too much personality to genetic drivers. I’m a fan of Free Will and, personally, don’t like the idea that my behaviour or personhood is significantly determined by the luck of the genetic lottery. Of course, I don’t think that I’m a completely Free Agent because of my life history and growing up in a particular culture but I think humanity in general is ‘plastic’ enough to modify itself – both collectively and individually – when required or desired. So, what do my genes apparently show? 

The first thing is that I’m unlikely to have a pet. Whilst this is technically true and has been for some time now since my cat died, I did have her for 16 years. Added to that is the fact that I grew up in a house overflowing with pets, from a German shepherd that I only just remember to hamsters, fish, budgies & minor birds, rabbits (LOTS of rabbits), jerboas and so on. So, on balance I’d have to say it's probably dead wrong to say that I’m not a pet person – although the website does say that having a pet is at least 2% genetic and at most 98% environmental. That’s not a lot to go on really! 

Next up is dancing. I doubt if many people have seen me dance – at least not sober! One of my ‘special powers’ is to increase my bodily density whenever anyone tries to get me onto a dancefloor. That very quickly give up before they pull a muscle or dislocate something. Interestingly, Ancestry scientists found more than 1,730 DNA markers connected to enjoying dancing and that enjoying dancing is at least 7% genetic. It would seem that I have few of those genes in my DNA! 

As before Ancestry has me down as an Extrovert – which I’m most definitely not. Sometimes I appear to be one, but this very much depends on who I’m with and where I am. I actually think that the whole extrovert/introvert dynamic is complete bullshit, so I’m not particularly surprised that they got me so wrong. It doesn’t help that only around 1% of our genes are apparently link to this behaviour characteristic – despite that being 8,000 genes! 

The website has me down as a Night person which I most definitely am. I don’t usually start feeling tired until around 11.30pm and can fairly easily stay up past midnight and still function reasonably well. Try me at 6am and you’ll see a very different person! At that time in the morning I might appear to be awake, but my brain is still in the early stages of a slow reboot. It’s interesting to see that being a morning or night person is at least 17% genetic and I can certainly accept that it has a significant genetic component that you can’t really mess with too much! 

One other thing I think was spot on was the ‘hint’ that I’m a picky eater. I am in fact a VERY picky eater. If I’m presented with something unannounced and are expected to simply eat it, then you have another thing coming. Even before becoming a veggie, I would ask, politely at first, exactly what it was. If such facts were not forthcoming whatever it is definitely goes nowhere near my mouth or my stomach. Plus, once I find a food I like I’m likely to eat/drink it for the rest of my life (ditto with things I don’t like & don’t eat). However, I can and have simply drop a particular food item from my ingestible list sometimes for reasons even I can’t understand... 

Finally, the trait that got me laughing the most – risk taking. Now no one who knows me would ever describe me as a risk-taker, indeed I am notoriously risk averse – so much so that I’ve been called boring, a wimp and much besides for not joining in with some idiocy my risk-blind friends are doing. I look at something, quickly assess any risks and if I see that it's too high (and it doesn’t need to be all that high) I become a completely immovable object on the subject. However, according to my genes I’m more likely to take risks than 60% of the population. Really? I think not! But if taking risks is at least 9% genetic I’m guessing that it's been overlayed by the other 91% of environmental factors.