5 to 6 feet what does that mean to you well you might think it's the height of a baby giraffe or a bit more likely it's about how tall people are but why are we all different and yet so similar where does height come from there are many factors involved in how tall you will be it all comes down to genetics and environment the average height for men is 5'8 and for women 5'3 the best way to show and understand height is actually through a bell curve a bell curve shows the distribution of heights with the average at the Peak at the top up there and tapers off towards the edges the genetics of height is extremely complicated and we still don't understand it fully but let's try to go through it a little bit some traits can be described as either on or off one of the main contributors to this understanding of genetics is Gregor mendle he was a pretty awesome guy he worked on plants for years studying how these traits worked for the time they were fairly difficult to understand but thanks to his work now they're pretty simple each parent has alals and a is basically an option a gene has for example tall or short each parent has two alals and gives one Al at random to The Offspring a parent can have a dominant or recessive Al for example dominant Big T recessive Little T at least one dominant alil is needed to show the trait two dominants still dominant one dominant one recessive it's still dominant on the other hand if there are two recessive alals then it does not show the trait this is fairly simple and this is the way many traits in PE Plants work as well as a few traits in humans on the other hand human genetics is usually much more complicated even though it it's not fully understood height is controlled by up to hundreds of loai on several different chromosomes that's why there's so many different Heights among people even from parents to children If the child randomly gets more tall leels compared to sh leels he'll be taller it's mainly up to the parents genes but it's also a bit up to chance environment can play a role in height as well but it's a lot simpler really when it comes down to it it depends on if you eat food or not if you eat good healthy food you'll reach your full potential and height if you don't get the right nutrients your growth will be stunted so who is the person who got lucky enough to get all the right genes from their parents as well as eating really well it's kind of a trick question because the tallest man who ever lived had a genetic disorder Robert wlo was a man from the United States in Illinois he had a pituitary gland disorder in which he had an abnormally high level of human growth hormone his entire life sadly he only lived to be 22 years old but when he died he was a staggering 8' 11 in and wore a size 37 shoe most of the tallest people in the world have a pituitary gland disorder and this is known as G antism and they end up not being very healthy at all and end up usually dying at an early age another genetic disorder that's quite common is dwarfism and it's usually caused by basically the same issue as gigantism pituitary gland issues not all cases of dwarfisms are problem with the pituitary but most are there are no ways to cure or even prevent dwarfism but most live just fine the shortest man in the world is Shandra from Nepal with the height of only 1 10 in that means that the tallest man in the world was more than five times as tall as the shortest now that you know a bit about how your height will be determined how do you feel about your height I'm 5' 10 in and I feel pretty normal how tall would you like to be let us know in the comments and of course have a great day [Music] [Applause]