More hair colours

OK, now we have few hair colours. Blond, brown, black and red with various shades. How could we get more and which would they be? Would green and/or blue be possible? Or is human genome such that this can't happen? Or does environment, such as sunlight, prevent it?
 

Zirantun

Banned
I think you should join Speculative Evolution for a proper answer to this. But as far as I understand it, humans don't possess the pigments to make this possible. Other primates do though, so you'd have to look further back into the evolution of primates and come up with a point of departure sometime waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatophores

We mammals have only one type of pigmented cells: Melanocytes, which produce all skin and hair colours abvaible. We lost the other pigmented cells way early in evolution, as Zirantun said. A larger variation is possible but only in the range of mammal colours... natural greens and blues are out without genetic engineering...
 
How much more different variations us could have without Toba?

None, the Toba Bottleneck did'nt affect that since ALL Human populations were identical in terms of the specific genetics that code for hair coloration.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatophores

We mammals have only one type of pigmented cells: Melanocytes, which produce all skin and hair colours abvaible. We lost the other pigmented cells way early in evolution, as Zirantun said. A larger variation is possible but only in the range of mammal colours... natural greens and blues are out without genetic engineering...

Yeah, pretty much, you have to look into what other mammals have.


One possibillity- not hair colours but hair textures and natural styles..amongst mammals there's a lot more scope for variety there, you get all sorts of variation with dogs for instnace.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatophores

We mammals have only one type of pigmented cells: Melanocytes, which produce all skin and hair colours abvaible. We lost the other pigmented cells way early in evolution, as Zirantun said. A larger variation is possible but only in the range of mammal colours... natural greens and blues are out without genetic engineering...

So those monkey evolved the cells to these blue colors ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snub-nosed_monkey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cercopithecus_lomamiensis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrill

really don't know a lot about genetics, but if those sepcies of monkey got blue pigmentation (or if it is not due to chromatophores), it could maybe happen in humans too (even if it would change a lot of things).

Also note that all colors are not the results of chromatophore, for example frog bright colors results from nanostructuration of their skin IIRC.
 
So those monkey evolved the cells to these blue colors ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snub-nosed_monkey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cercopithecus_lomamiensis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrill

really don't know a lot about genetics, but if those sepcies of monkey got blue pigmentation (or if it is not due to chromatophores), it could maybe happen in humans too (even if it would change a lot of things).

Also note that all colors are not the results of chromatophore, for example frog bright colors results from nanostructuration of their skin IIRC.

The Snub-nosed Mokey and Lesula have their colour by melanin, like our blonde hair. And the Mandrill (from what can I gather) have their blue colour by reflections of light on their skin, like you said. Humans could plausibly develop something similar, but it seems like a very specific adaptation, and would evolve way back in our evolution (a cursory research points divergence of the Homo genus from other primates 25 MYA).
 
Well not what the OP says but you could populations brown-haired Asians. A lot of Koreans (my wife, for example) have very very dark brown hair that is definitely not black, a very small minority look like their hair was lightly bleached. Strangely this has resulted in some people having to get their natural hair color officially noted to not get in trouble with school rules against hair dye/bleach.
 
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