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The Monk-Daddy:
It all sprang from the skull of an Austrian monk who had serious inclinations towards reproduction (and science of course!). Rumor has it, Gregor Mendel wanted to breed mice and study their traits, but his fellow monks didn't approve of mass mammalian breeding in the cloister. So Mendel settled for the tasty, less carnal, pea pod.
Mendel separated the tall pods from the short ones, the smooth
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from the wrinkly, the meek from the mighty and so forth. Then he conducted breeding experiments. He bred the talls with the
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talls, the shorts with the shorts, and even the talls with the shorts. And soon he saw patterns (and pea pods) popping up all over the place.
If you want the full-on results, you can read his
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paper at MendelWeb. But basically, he figured out the fundamental laws of trait inheritance, and set down the groundwork for the entire science of Genetics. Unfortunately, he didn't know it. Mendel's paper was pretty much ignored for 30 years, until people realized just how sweet his pea pods were.
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