This unusual story comes from a 23-year-old daughter who shared a post on the Ask Reddit subreddit.
“My (23F) dad (61M) has this thing where he asks everyone in the family to collect their shed hair from their wash days or combing or brushing and place it in a drawer in his room,” the author explained and added, “I wish I was making this up, but I swear I'm not.”
Turns out, the author’s dad has been afraid of strangers finding out and tracing his family’s DNA. In fact, he asked his whole family to not toss their hair out in random places but carefully collect it so he can safely discard it.
Let’s see what the author herself had to say about her dad’s quirk and what happened when she refused to do what he asked.
A 23-year-old woman shared how her dad asks the whole family to not toss their hair out, but put it safely in a drawer so nobody can trace their DNA
Image source: arkhangelovaoksana (not the actual photo)
Image source: yanishevskaanna (not the actual photo)
Image source: Formal-Ad-7094
While many people believe that human hair is a great piece of a person’s DNA, this is in fact a myth. Blame the detective and criminal investigation films that often show how the police pick up the hair sample with a pair of tweezers for DNA analysis.
Hair that is cut or shed does not, unfortunately, contain any nuclear DNA. For hair DNA testing to be successful, the hairs must have the hair follicle attached. Most serious and responsible DNA testing companies will strongly discourage using a sample of cut or shed hair for paternity testing and most other tests.
In fact, forensic scientists are only able to extract DNA from hairs if they have their roots attached. Unfortunately, most hairs do not have the root attached, so using DNA sampling to discover to whom it belonged is, in most cases, impossible.
According to Diahan Southard, the founder and CEO of Your DNA Guide, cut hair does not contain the necessary material for DNA testing. If a person has any teeth pulled, that would be a good source. However, standard genealogical testing companies do not accept non-standard samples.
And this is how people reacted to this story
