How would a child of a human and alien inherit abilities?

Imagine a child of mixed race, one parent is human and one is an alien who has some ability humans do not have, for the sake of argument telepathy. I'm assuming there is some advanced medical assistance to allow the mother to conceive at all.

I'm interested in what would happen to the ability only one parent has. The closest earth example I can think of is a quagga (half zebra and half horse). In this case the stripes do not cover the entire body of the offspring. This indicates to me that the genetic trait would only be partially passed on.

Which of the four options are most likely (or have I missed one?)

• The child would not inherit the parent's ability
• The child would inherit the parent's ability
• The child would partially inherit the trait resulting in a scaled down version (empathy instead of telepathy)
• The doctor who aided the parents conceive would decide which traits would be passed on and which wouldn't.

posted almost 10 years ago

Liath‭

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