If Your Kids Somehow Look Like Your Ex, Research Says It May Be For This Odd Reason
guruXOX / ShutterstockMoving on after a breakup is hard enough, but the memories of your ex may linger. And, as it turns out, your kids with someone else may even somehow look like your ex.
Apparently, your ex's DNA can actually hang around, and you might see some of his features in your kids. Sure, you packed up or torched his things, tore down the pictures of your first vacation together as a couple in Miami that were hanging above your bed, unfriended him on all social networks (even LinkedIn), and when you meet people with the same name as his, you instantly hate them. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean he's not lingering.
Your ex's DNA may not be entirely gone, even if he is.
According to a 2014 study from the University of New South Wales, even after you've moved on and found your actual soulmate, your horrible ex may not actually be gone. Turns out, his sperm is still hanging around after all these years.
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Yes, that's right. Your future children may end up looking exactly like the man you never, ever wanted to see again. Thanks to fruit flies, there's some freaky research showing how exes can continue to haunt you ... and your children.
Scientists at the University of New South Wales discovered that, for these buzzing little flies, the physical traits of previous partners are actually passed down to their future children. In the study, the offspring's traits matched up to those of the first male the mother had mated with, and not their biological father. This study sounds like a "Maury" episode just waiting to happen.
Researchers think that the lurking DNA from the first partner (AKA the evil ex) might be absorbed by the female's eggs. So, not even fruit flies can seem to get away from their exes! And now, they have an everyday reminder of them. It kind of makes you feel bad for all those fruit flies you battled in the kitchen this morning.
That means your kids could actually receive some genes from your ex.
The study's author, Dr. Angela Crean, said, "We know that features that run in families are not just influenced by the genes that are passed down from parents to their children. Various non-genetic inheritance mechanisms make it possible for maternal or paternal environmental factors to influence characteristics of a child."
"Our new findings take this to a whole new level — showing a male can also transmit some of his acquired features to offspring sired by other males," she explained. "But we don't know yet whether this applies to other species."
Telegony, the notion that a male can leave a mark on his partner's body and influence her offspring with a different male, is actually nothing new. In fact, it comes from Aristotle but was dismissed as incompatible with genetic science in the early 1900s. If nothing else, this idea of exes lingering for far too long and leaving their mark is frightening. Add this study to the list of one of the many reasons to always wear a condom.
Genetics isn't the only thing that could cause certain traits to be passed down to offspring.
According to Dr. Crean, other things can potentially lead to certain traits being inherited. Epigenetics is the idea that behavioral and environmental factors can affect which genes are given to offspring, and scientists are currently investigating the role it plays in human reproduction.
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She said, "This could be seen as a maternal effect [such as diet or drinking] where the mother’s environment are her previous mating partners. We have to realize that it’s not just DNA that gets passed on. It opens up the opportunity for all these other pathways that we had excluded."
Michelle Toglia is an Executive Editor at Elite Daily and Bustle with over 15 years of media experience. Her work has appeared in publications like Huffington Post, Yahoo, and Thought Catalog, among others.
