Recently, redditor u/OmarBessa asked, "Redditors who have gotten genetic tests, what's the weirdest thing you learnt from your DNA?" People revealed the wildest things about themselves or their family members that they discovered from a DNA test, and some of them will leave you speechless. Here are some of the most shocking responses:
1. "My grandparents had a biological son they gave up for adoption before my mother was born and never told any of us about him. Turns out, some of the extended family knew my grandma had been pregnant before my mom but kept it a secret."
2. "My ancestry is exactly what I grew up being told. I have several family members who were really into genealogy, but I found out I have a first cousin we didn't know existed. Apparently, my uncle had gotten married and had a son no one knew about when he was 19 and stationed across the country whom he bailed on."
3. "The daughter I adopted and I are actually distantly related!"
4. "For 29 years, it was assumed that my dad who raised me wasn't my biological father — that I was the product of an affair my mother was having. I came out with blond hair, freckles, and blue eyes. A stark difference to my tanned, dark-featured dad. My dad chose to raise me as his own anyway, refusing paternity tests. I was never made to feel like I wasn't his. I took 23andMe simply out of curiosity and found out that he is my biological father."
"My dad has told me that he didn't want to know the results either way, but I let it slip while showing my sisters the app once at dinner. He didn't react, but I got an extra big bear hug getting on the train to leave that night. Also, because I have the best dad ever — it was assumed when my mom found out she was pregnant, that the pregnancy was the product of the affair. My features only solidified that assumption. He was already raising my mom's first daughter as his own, whom he'd met when she was 2, and told my mom he wanted to keep raising the kids together. They got married, and he adopted her a few months after I was born. She was also treated so much as his that I didn't even know he adopted her until I was a teenager. My parents stayed together for 14 years, and to this day, are still best friends."
5. "I found out that I’m missing part of a chromosome."
6. "I’m a carrier for a blood disease called hemochromatosis."
7. "My mom always thought she was French. Like, all four grandparents only spoke French, French. She got the test, and it came back, like, only 10% French and a bunch of other European and some Middle Eastern. It caused a bit of a family identity crisis. Three weeks later, she got an update that said, 'Sorry about that — you’re 99.5% French!' Phew!"
8. "Eight of my third cousin matches are from my cousin being a sperm donor. A couple of them reached out to me for information about their ancestors. So, anytime I get a third cousin match, I check and see if they are half-brother or half-sister to the ones that I know."
"He obviously had some good swimmers."
9. "Either not a single person on my dad’s side has participated in the same brand of genealogy testing as me, or both my parents are related. Also, my brother isn’t my brother; he’s actually my half-brother."
10. "When my sister took one of those at-home tests as a gift from her husband, we learned that our dad wasn't our biological father. Wish they had told us that before I was 26. Would have saved a lot of fights and reconciliation."
"Also, I learned I'll never know my bio father because he was murdered when I was in grade school."
11. "That either my grandfather or one of his brothers slept around while married, got a legit US spy pregnant just after World War II, and bailed out. She gave the baby to her sister to raise so she could keep her job. The 'baby' didn’t find this out until in his mid-40s. I found out thanks to Ancestry.com and was able to at least connect the paternity dots partially for him."
12. "My grandma got a DNA test done because she was sold as a baby and never knew her biological parents, so a family member urged her to do it so we could maybe find them. We found both sides — a half-sister from her bio mom and a half-brother from her bio dad. Although it was kinda weird to realize we have family close by (only 20 miles away in one case), it was much weirder for the bio families to discover my grandma’s existence, since neither side had anything to do with the other."
"Some more context, this happened back in the '30s (Depression Era in the US). Her bio mom and bio dad seem to have crossed paths at some point in the same city. He was a married man, and she was an older teen. Not sure if it was a one-night stand or something more nefarious, but her bio mom was pregnant as a result of that night. At some point in her pregnancy, she checked into a home/hospital for pregnant, unwed teen mothers. The bio mom was told the home would find homes for the babies, so she delivered and left. Bio mom went on to marry and have her own family, while bio dad likely never knew of the situation.
As it would turn out, the home was not adopting babies, but rather selling them. Since my grandma was blonde and blue-eyed, she was bought quickly for a higher price by a woman looking to baby-trap a guy (surprisingly, it worked). My grandma didn’t know until her teens that she was sold."
13. "I've got more Neanderthal DNA than, like, 80% of users."
"I got my results before my husband, and was 80%. My husband thought it was so funny and kept bringing it up. His came in, and he was 93%."
14. "I found out I have the gene that causes lactose intolerance or something like that. Never had a problem with it my entire life. Thirty-seven years raised Italian, lived in the Netherlands and Germany, so I had plenty of cheeses and milk growing up and in my adult life with zero issues. No joke, three days after getting these results from 23andMe, I ate a bowl of cereal and five minutes later fell over from the horrible cramping and nonstop runs to the bathroom. I was diagnosed with full-on lactose intolerance a few days later."
"The main reason I took the test was that I'm adopted and found out I have a long, lost biological sister out there somewhere, but the biggest match on 23andMe and Ancestry was 4% match so far, three years later."
15. "My husband and I took those tests, and his results came back with something like, '90% British' with a side note that most British people are 75% British."
"I spent a good couple of years teasing him about being 'more British than the Brits' and asking when he would take me to have tea with the Queen. It was great, LOL."
"My paternal grandfather insisted that he was just British before taking the test. I reminded him that most people aren’t 100% anything. So, he’s likely to get at least some other ancestry in there. Well, as it turns out, there wasn’t much of anything else. He was 99.8% British with just 0.2% trace ancestry."
16. "I used my DNA to find my birth mother. I triangulated matches, collected all the common surnames and matches, and created dozens of family trees. Then, I went down line after line until one line added up with tons of common matches all around. We ended up speaking later, and I matched with her daughter (my half-sister, as expected). It turned out, my bio mom didn't want to give me up but was forced by her parents as she was a teenager at the time."
"Doing this, I had trouble with my father's side (bio mom later told me my father's name). The reason was, I found out later, that there was infidelity on his side of the family. So, what was written on paper wasn't the true story. I found my mother the same way the police find serial killers lately, and then, I found out my father's side of the family had some hinky stuff going on. I have two family trees now on ancestry, the 'DNA tree' where I figured out that one of four possible brothers cheated to create a grandparent. And I have the 'on paper' tree shared publicly.
(To add: I only spoke to her after my half-sister matched with me. She joined the site specifically to find me, so I knew then the family wanted contact.)"
17. "I did an Ancestry DNA test and found my dad's half-sister — he didn't know he had a half-sister. My dad has three brothers (four of them total), and the half-sister is in the same age range as all of them. Apparently, my grandfather had an affair in a town about three hours away from ours, fathered a child, and never came back for her. He abandoned the woman he got pregnant and his child. My grandfather died when my dad was a young teen."
18. "I found out my cousin is actually my half-sister. Growing up, everyone would comment on how similar we looked; we're also within a few months of each other age-wise. Looks like my dad got with my mom and her mom around the same time. Yeesh."
19. "My grandmother had secret babies she put up for adoption. I didn’t find out until six years after she passed away, so we’re never getting answers as to what happened. Also, I got a surprise contact by the police, as I was a high match to a John Doe who was found drowned on the shores of Lake Superior in 1991. That was a fun family tree rabbit hole to dive down."
"Turned out to be a half first cousin from my grandmother’s firstborn."
20. "As an adult, my father-in-law found out his mother was actually his grandmother and his older sister was his mom. Things were different in the late '30s."
And finally...
21. "I’m 2% Jewish, even though my family has a really large Hispanic heritage as well. Also, my mom never knew her dad, but she has a large family in Louisiana who was aware of her and her kids, never reached out, lied on record when her dad passed away to gain access to his estate, and is now being sued for it."
If you've ever taken a genetic test, what's the wildest thing you found out? Let us know in the comments below.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.