Ever wondered why so many guys with ginger beards dont actually have any red hair on their heads?

As with pretty much everything that determines the way we look, it's all down to genetics and your family tree.

Basically different pigments in your hair - eumelanin (black) and pheomelanin (red) - determine the colour of your hair.

People with dark hair have black pigment, blondes have less black pigment, and redheads have only red pigments.

Those pigments are controlled by genes, but because the hair on your head is different to the hair on your face, different genes are at play, leading to the possibility of black hair, blond eyebrows and a red beard.

Petra Haak-Bloem, specialist at the Dutch national information centre for genetics and hereditary traits, said: "Generally speaking, people inherit hair colour not only from their parents, but also from their grandparents and earlier ancestors.

"So its entirely possible that one distant ancestor had a hair colour that suddenly appears again though a certain combination of genes - and that can be quite unexpected for parents."

Petra added: More than a decade ago, researchers discovered that one gene (MC1R) on chromosome 16 plays an important part in giving people red hair.

"MC1Rs task is making a protein called melanocortin 1.

"That protein plays an important part in converting pheolmelanin (the red pigment) into eumelanin (black pigment).

When someone inherits two mutated versions of the MC1R-gene (one from each parent), less pheomelanin is converted into eumelanine.

"The pheomelanine accumulates in the pigment cells and the person ends up with red hair and fair skin.

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Read more:

This is why so many non-ginger guys have red beards - Coventry Telegraph