Talk:Skaven/@comment-27997791-20170415180217/@comment-27997791-20190306203639

@Grey Knight Dante

I must have simply never checked this comment section after I made my comment, because I don't remember having seen your reply until now.

Yes, but the reason why hair and eye color rates in humans are relatively stable is because people tend to reproduce at rates that are at least comparable, and they mostly reproduce with people with similar traits. But if we had a society starting with people of mixed appearences, and we encouraged most red-heads to reproduce, and everyone else were only allowed to reproduce by earning certain rare priviliges(similar to a brown-fur making it into the stormvermin, or being otherwise priviliged), to the point where most of the reproduction was being done involving red-heads, then the percentage of red-heads would go up strongly over the course of generations.

It's the same way dog-breeding work, if you only mostly allow only the smallest dogs you have to mate, you'll ventually get smaller and smaller dogs, and that's how the chihuahua happened. Being a chihuahua is not simply a "rare gene" that just occurs occationally when you breed a pair of great danes.

It's not like the brown-furred and the black/grey/white-furred skaven are reproduing at similar rates or are from different populations, they are born together in the same relatively small number of breeding pits, and the sotm vermin, grey seer and other uper-class folk have primary access to the females there.