
Features like eye color, skin tone, height, and hair color are called traits. What traits do you think children inherit, or receive, from their parents?
Drag the parent over to the Parent 1 space and press Reproduce. Fill in the Offspring traits on the table above. What traits appear to be inherited from the parent?

Form a hypothesis: Which traits do you think are passed down from alien parents to their offspring, and which traits are not? Explain.
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Analyze: Compare the offspring traits to the parent traits.
Which traits were passed from parents to offspring? ____________________________
Which traits were not passed down? ____________________________________
Traits that are not passed down (not inherited) are called acquired traits.

Predict: What do you think the offspring of a green alien and pink alien will look like?
Experiment: Test your prediction with the Gizmo. What did you find?
When offspring show a mixture of parent traits, the traits are called codominant traits.
Predict: What do you think will happen when you breed two green-and-pink spotted aliens?

Johnny and Isabelle are a young couple expecting their first child. Both have blue eyes, tattoos, and green hair. Which features do you think their child is most likely to have?
Offspring | Body type | Skin Color | Antenna shape | Tattoo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Offspring 1 | ||||
Offspring 2 |
Investigate further: Create offspring with a few different levels of Food supply. How does food supply affect the body type of offspring?
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Think and discuss: Suppose a human child had a mother with dyed-pink hair and a father who was missing a finger (lost in an accident). Would the child inherit these traits? Explain.
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Experiment: Follow the steps below. (You may have already done the first step or two.)
Place a green alien and a pink alien in the locations for Parent 1 and Parent 2.
Breed these parents twice. Drag both offspring to the spaces below the Nest.
Drag the two green-and-pink offspring up to become the new Parent 1 and Parent 2.
Breed these aliens 10 times. Record how many times each skin color occurred in their offspring. (For example, if there were 2 green offspring, write “2” below “green.”)
Skin color | Green | Green and pink | Pink |
|---|---|---|---|
Number of offspring |
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|
Think and discuss: For a codominant trait, do the offspring of identical parents always look like the parents? Explain your answer.
Predict: What do you think will happen when you breed an alien with straight antenna to an alien with curly antenna?
Experiment: Test your prediction using the Gizmo. Create at least 5 offspring. What did you notice?
Analyze: Sometimes when two traits are combined, one is a dominant trait and the other is a recessive trait. If both traits are present, only the dominant trait is seen in the offspring. Which trait is dominant, straight antenna or curly?
Which trait is recessive?
Investigate further: Take two of the straight-antenna offspring and breed them together to produce 10 new offspring. Record the antenna type of each offspring. What happened?
Did the recessive trait disappear?
How can a trait skip a generation?
Draw conclusions: For a dominant/recessive trait, do the offspring of identical parents always look like the parents? Explain.
Compare: How do the offspring of two parents that reproduce sexually differ from the offspring of a single parent that reproduces asexually?