These are the features we're most likely to inherit from our parents (2024)

Most of us are used to hearing we have our mum's smile or our dad's eyes, but now scientists have pinpointed exactly which features we inherit from our parents – and they're a little unexpected...

In reality, the tip of your nose is the part of your face that your parents are most likely to have passed straight down to you.

The study by scientists at King's College London, published in Scientific Reports, used computer images and statistical analysis to work this out, the Mail Online reports.

They examined the faces of almost 1,000 identical and non-identical twins to do this. Using special software and 3D cameras, they calculated all the points of similarity between both the identical twins and their fraternal counterparts, who only share half their genes.

Through this, they were able to calculate which features of the face are most likely to be determined by genetics, and created 'face heritability maps' to highlight them.

As well as the tip of your nose (which is 66% likely to be passed down from a parent), the other most-inherited features were your philtrum (the area directly beneath your nose), your cheekbones, the inner corners of your eyes, and the areas both above and below your lips.

Study author Professor Giovanni Montana said: 'The notion that our genes control our face is self-evident.

'Many of us have facial traits that clearly resample those of our parents and identical twins are often indistinguishable.However, quantifying precisely which parts of the face are strongly heritable has been challenging so far.

She added: 'By combining 3D models of the face with a statistical algorithm that measures local changes in shape, we have been able to create detailed "face heritability maps".'