UM-Bot Posted July 15, 2014 #1 Share Posted July 15, 2014 New research suggests that we have a tendancy to befriend people who have similar DNA to our own. The study, which involved comparing the DNA of unrelated friends, found that the people we tend to choose as friends can often turn out to be as genetically similar to ourselves as two people who happen to share great-great-great grandparents. Read More: http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/269275/are-your-friends-genetically-close-to-you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bubblykiss Posted July 15, 2014 #2 Share Posted July 15, 2014 Humans prefer to be with people that are similar to themselves? SHOCKING! What is actually surprising is that we select via stench. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DefenceMinisterMishkin Posted July 15, 2014 #3 Share Posted July 15, 2014 Nope, i have no friends and i like it that way.. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bubblykiss Posted July 15, 2014 #4 Share Posted July 15, 2014 Nope, i have no friends and i like it that way.. I'd be your friend, but, I don't know what you smell like. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sundew Posted July 15, 2014 #5 Share Posted July 15, 2014 So has deodorant messed up the natural order of things? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spartan max2 Posted July 15, 2014 #6 Share Posted July 15, 2014 This could explain why some people you hit it off easy with from the stat. I wonder if the similar genes thing also applies to romantic relationships? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paperdyer Posted July 15, 2014 #7 Share Posted July 15, 2014 So, if you can't stand your relatives, does this mean their DNA isn't similar enough? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michelle Posted July 15, 2014 #8 Share Posted July 15, 2014 My surrogate family and best friend are Arabs and I'm about as Irish as you can get. They always say I was an Arab in a former life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maximusnow Posted July 15, 2014 #9 Share Posted July 15, 2014 I also have no friends, and I believe it is because they remind me of my family. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BadChadB33 Posted July 15, 2014 #10 Share Posted July 15, 2014 (edited) Really? Interesting, bc my imaginary friends even hate me. Edited July 15, 2014 by BadChadB33 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calle Posted July 15, 2014 #11 Share Posted July 15, 2014 lol, this is very interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Wellington Posted July 15, 2014 #12 Share Posted July 15, 2014 This could explain why some people you hit it off easy with from the stat. I wonder if the similar genes thing also applies to romantic relationships? If the woman is on the pill she picks partners with a similar immune system and if she isn't then men with different immune systems. The ones on the pill, unknown to them, are picking poor partners because of the hormones altering who they find attractive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmccr8 Posted July 16, 2014 #13 Share Posted July 16, 2014 As people immigrate to countries they generally tend to settle in areas where there are others of the same heritage so naturally their chances of having friends with the same dna isn't unusual.Where I grew up,every town was a different nationality,and as their populations grew their was more mixing with people from other towns nearby. jmccr8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattyoghostss Posted July 16, 2014 #14 Share Posted July 16, 2014 this explains a lot.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taun Posted July 16, 2014 #15 Share Posted July 16, 2014 I sure hope they are!.. .You never know when you'll need "spare parts"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lilly Posted July 16, 2014 #16 Share Posted July 16, 2014 Uh...this hypothesis doesn't apply well to my friends. I'm ethnically English/Irish/Scottish/Dutch. My friends are as follows: Sciclian Italian German/Swiss Vietnamese/French Russian/Ukranian Northern Italian/Irish Not even close to being genetically similar to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSpoonyOne Posted July 16, 2014 #17 Share Posted July 16, 2014 (edited) Uh...this hypothesis doesn't apply well to my friends. I'm ethnically English/Irish/Scottish/Dutch. My friends are as follows: Sciclian Italian German/Swiss Vietnamese/French Russian/Ukranian Northern Italian/Irish Not even close to being genetically similar to me. Well only a few of those ethnicities are outside of Europe, so it's not that far-fetched. A German is a lot more likely to gravitate towards an Englishman, Dutchman or a Scotsman, if we're going by this study, than he/she would be with someone from South Korea or Nigeria, the fact they are different ethnic groups (although German and Dutch are essentially indistinguishable in that regard AFAIK) doesn't mean they are as distant as someone from the latter places. Although none of this is particularly news to me, one need only open their eyes at any given shopping centre to see that people from different backgrounds tend to, on average, hang around with people of a similar background, but this is undoubtedly cultural at least in part, it was the same at school where the various ethnic groups of the town I lived in all tended to gravitate towards each other rather than befriending a wide variety of students from various backgrounds, but, again, there's the cultural, and sometimes linguistic, factors that go with all of this, someone from a person's own ethnic background is also often sharing a similar culture that other groups might not share, in certain cases they might share a language others don't, they might have a history as a group that they feel connected through that others don't share, they might feel connected because their group practices a religion that others around them don't, there's all these little factors that could explain this that stem from the genetic factor in this study, genetics on their own aren't the reason, and while some of us might not think these factors are anything to determine who a person would befriend, I'm sure for a fair few people it is, although it doesn't have to be a conscious thing on their part, they gravitate based on them without realising it. Edited July 16, 2014 by TheSpoonyOne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lilly Posted July 17, 2014 #18 Share Posted July 17, 2014 The thing is in my case all of my friends are Americans. We can trace our genetic and cultural roots to the various countries mentioned, but in the final analysis we're all still Americans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlennThe14TH Posted July 17, 2014 #19 Share Posted July 17, 2014 I've never thought of it, but I suppose all my friends I've accumulated over the years are genetically similar to me. We're all human beings. I have African-American friends, Italian-American friends, Hispanic friends, a half-Japanese friend, a couple of Indian Muslim friends, several Indian Hindu friends, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaraT Posted July 17, 2014 #20 Share Posted July 17, 2014 Well I don't know if they're genetically close to me. I suppose I'm one of the few who hasn't collected DNA samples from my friends and had them analysed. PS: I think their research is rubbish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaostrom Posted July 18, 2014 #21 Share Posted July 18, 2014 *Raises hand* How about me? I have friends with whom I don't share ethnicity, nationality or religion. Half of them aren't even the same age as me. Hell, some of them I've befriended purely over the internet and have never even been in the same time zone with, let alone met. Been good friends with some of them for many years now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regeneratia Posted July 27, 2014 #22 Share Posted July 27, 2014 My best friend is Korean, here in the USA since she was 6 months old. I don't think we are genetically linked. My next best is second generation American, Hungarian Roma. I don't think we are genetically linked. But the third best may well be genetically linked since we come from the same state, with families that have been in this state for generations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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