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Dominant Species Genes

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In many settings, Interspecies Romance, when it can produce offspring, usually results in kids that combine traits from both parents, but sometimes one parent's species seems to be consistently dominant. In those cases the offspring is one parent's species or the other's, rather than a hybrid of the two.

Often how One Gender Races and Horny Devils reproduce. Gender Equals Breed is a Sister Trope where the offspring inherit the species of their parent of the same sex (sons like fathers and daughters like mothers). Sub-Trope to Either/Or Offspring, where offspring only inherit one species, but neither species is consistently dominant — siblings can be of different species.

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Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Goblins from Goblin Slayer are a male-only One-Gender Race. When they rape a woman of another species, the child is always a goblin.
  • Goblins in Re:Monster are similar. Although females exist, goblin couples have a low conception rate so they find it easier to breed with captured human women. The child is always a full goblin.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Legend of Zelda fic Offspring, it's mentioned that half-Zora/half-Hylian or half-Rito/half-Hylian children always match the race of the mother.

    Film — Animation 
  • In Hotel Transylvania 2, Dracula's half-human grandson Dennis will either turn out a human or a vampire, with his fifth birthday as an apparent deadline to grow fangs if it's the latter. Ultimately he turns out to be a vampire.
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    Film — Live-Action 
  • When Aliens implant themselves into other species, the result is obviously a xenomorph (black skin, spiked tail, huge head, Nested Mouth..) but it has slightly different characteristics depending on the species that was implanted (a dog gives a four-legged version instead of the usual type, a Predator has mandibles, etc.).

    Literature 
  • In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth stories, people with mixed human and elven ancestry can, and sooner or later must, choose to be human (and therefore mortal) or elven (and immortal)note . The visible examples of this in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are Elrond Half-Elvennote  and his daughter Arwen. Elrond chose to be an elf; Arwen chose to be human so she could live out her life with Aragorn.
  • In H. P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth human and Deep One hybrids are born looking human, but gradually become fishier as they get older until they become full-blown Deep Ones.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • Vampires of the White Court breed with mortal humans, their children appear to be fully human until sometime in their early twenties, but if they fall in love before then they remain human.
    • Changelings are the progeny of humans and fairies. They make a choice between becoming fully human or fully fairy, and can make that choice at any time.
    • Goodman Grey is the son of a naagloshii and a mortal, as far as anyone can tell he is a skinwalker, but that might be the shapeshifting.
  • M.C.A. Hogarth's Paradox universe.
    • Male Chatcaava can impregnate females of other species with Chatcaavan offspring due to their shapeshifting abilities. Given that the vast majority of females of their species cannot shapeshift and the only one who can that appears in the books was sterilized, it's unknown if the inverse is possible.
    • Most of the first- and second- generation Pelted can hybridize with each other, but in the "modern" day interracial couples usually genefix their kids to express one genotype or the other.
    • The Eldritch engineered themselves to have a dominant genotype to baseline humanity.
  • In InCryptid, the finfolk are cross-fertile with humans. Children of finfolk mothers will always be finfolk, while children of human mothers may remain human, although they display the dementia in later years that is characteristic of the finfolk growth cycle.
  • In Emergence, the offspring of a mating between a homo sapiens and a homo post hominem will always be a hominem. There are humans who are aware of this and really don't like it. Unfortunately, they have access to some really nasty ways to try to wipe out the hominem population.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Doctor Who: In "Gridlock", we briefly meet a Catman and human female husband and wife, who have a litter of kitten offspring.
  • In Prey homo dominant are able to interbreed with h. sapiens and their genes are, naturally, dominant.
  • On Star Trek: Voyager, half-Klingon B'Elanna is disappointed when her and Tom's baby is shown in utero to look as Klingon as her, despite being three-fourths Human. The Doctor mentions that Klingon traits tend to be dominant.

    Tabletop Games 
  • While Dungeons & Dragons tends towards Half-Human Hybrid, there are some cases.
    • Dragon magazine had an article on Hags which stated that they mate with human men, then eat them and place their human-looking daughters with human families until they turn into Hags at puberty.
    • An online article about the Eberron setting, where Half-Elves are an established race, stated that with humans their progeny had a fifty-fifty chance of being human or Half-Elf. But if a Half-Elf married a full Elf their kids would always be Half-Elves.
    • As of Fifth Edition, if an orc mates with a non-ogre non-orc it results in either a half-orc or a full-blooded orc.
  • In Kitsune: Of Foxes and Fools Akira, Cori and April all had human fathers but they appear to be no different from the other Kitsune characters. While Sharmarali'snote  father was a dragon, and she's said to have chosen her fox side, she has the highest overall stats but due to prejudice from the Kitsune Elders she has to work harder to earn tails.
  • In Hc Svnt Dracones Vector couplings produce Random Species Offspring, but the progeny of Vector and Cog couples take after the mother. After all, one type is gestated in a biological womb and the other is built by an internal manufacturing center.

    Video Games 
  • Unlike Real Life animals, gendered Pokémon species belong to one or more egg groups. That is, as long as two different Pokémon species share at least one of them, they will be able to breed regardless of their size, appearance and habitat (cf. Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action). Oddly, the resulting hatchling will inherit its mother's species and its father's learnable moves, averting any Mix-and-Match Critters expectations.
  • In the Mass Effect series asari are all "female" and reproduce by a form of parthenogenesis where they psychically link with another, preferably of another species, and rearrange half their genome to resemble their partner's. The children are always asari, of course, but they are said to have a father of a different species.
  • In the Dragon Age series, human-elf children are, for all intents and purposes, biologically human—which is a blessing for many of them, since half-elves are discriminated against by both humans (who generally view elves as a lowly species) and elves (who are heading towards extinction and thus shun any crossbreeding with humans, as it never results in elves being born). Word of God is that there is a very specific reason for this and it has more to do with elves themselves than with humans (so this trope is inverted: it's the elven genes that are universally recessive). It's heavily implied that Alistair's mother was an elf Gray Warden, who had a one-night stand with King Maric, and then gave him the human-looking baby to raise.
  • Darkstalkers: It is mentioned that an offspring of a Cat Girl and a normal human is always a cat girl.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Gerudo tribe consist entirely of women aside from the once-a-century man, so their fathers are universally Hylians. Yet there are no Gerudo who look part-Hylian in Ocarina of Time, only a small handful have lighter skin as would be expected in Breath of the Wild, and none consider themselves part-Hylian. Contrast this with Granté, who is half-Hylian, half-Sheikah and both looks and is explicitly identified as such.
  • In The Sims 3 and The Sims 4, Sims abducted by aliens and impregnated will always give birth to a 100% alien child, with alien powers and appearance. However, this is averted if and when the alien child has a child, they may or may not have alien powers and appearance. Also somewhat averted in The Sims 2, where Alien Abduction results in a Half-Human Hybrid that can have more or less alien features depending on the child (however, alien traits are still dominant).
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    Webcomics 
  • In Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures 'cubi often interbreed with non-cubi and if they're more powerful than the other parent the kids are full cubi. Rather than hybrids like half-demons.
  • In Skin Deep, offspring of interspecies couples are one species or the other (unless ill-considered shapeshifting magic is involved, in which case hybrids or Tomato in the Mirror timebombs are possible). Which species it is is random, unless one of the parents is a One-Gender Race in which case kids of the opposite gender will be the other species. The offspring of humans and medallion-disguised mythical creatures usually are born looking human, but when they touch a medallion for the appropriate species their true form is revealed (usually).
  • In Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, the child of a human and a halfling is correctly predicted as a halfling.

    Web Original 
  • In the Chakona Space universe when chakats mate with older species of "taur"; such as Terran foxtaurs, wolftaurs, and non-hermaphroditic cattaurs, the cubs are always chakats with some of their other parents' coloration. But when chakats interbreed with either of the species derived from them, skunktaurs and stellar foxtaurs, offspring take after the mother, and given that they're all Hermaphrodites that could be either parent.
  • Friendship is Witchcraft plays this for laughs.
    • Fluttershy has a dragon for a father. When asked how she looks exactly like a pony in spite of her ancestry, her only explanation is "Dragon-ness is recessive."
    • Another pony, Francis Sparkle, was a Doorstop Baby. A Freeze-Frame Bonus in a flashback reveals that his biological mother was Raincloud—who was literally a rain cloud.
  • On Dragon Cave, in most cases, the offspring of two dragons will be one of the parents' species. Only a handful of specific pairings can produce hybrids, and even with those pairings hybrids aren't guaranteed; they can still produce either one species or the other.
  • In Monster Girl Encyclopedia, monster-human pairings always produce another monster due to monsters being created by the Chief God to be inherently superior to humans.

    Western Animation 
  • In Family Guy, it's revealed that Brian (a talking dog) has a son with an ex-girlfriend; both of them are fully human.
  • In The Cleveland Show, it's mentioned in passing that Tim the Bear's mother was actually a kangaroo, though there's nothing about him to indicate this.


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