The World's Premier Home Paternity Testing Service

According to a June 14 online article, male patrons were offered free DNA paternity tests at two pubs in New York and Ireland in an effort to identify descendents of Niall of the Nine Hostages, a 5th-century warlord and king. Any man that was proven to be related to Niall was eligible for free drinks and a free meal.

The Oxford, England, ancestral DNA testing company (affiliated with Oxford University) that is trying to identify more of Niall’s ancestors are able to do so by studying the tested men’s Y chromosome, which can be used to identify men that share a common male lineage. Niall—who’s name eventually became the source for the common Irish name O’Neill—had 12 sons, and could have had millions of descendants. In the U.S., researchers estimate that around 2 percent of Irish-American men could be descendants of the Irish King.

The researchers hope that by offering the DNA tests at the pubs, they can make “serious genetic research… less dusty and scientific,” one scientist said.

Beta Genetics’ sister company performs DNA tests similar to this one. DNA Diagnostics Center (DDC) can test two or men to see if they share the same Y chromosome, called Y-STR testing. This test can confirm whether or not two or more men descended from the same paternal line. For more information on Y-STR testing, please visit DDC’s resource page.

Zookeepers in Basel, Switzerland, made a shocking discovery when they analyzed DNA from a young gorilla as part of data it keeps on animals born in captivity.

A DNA test showed that young Chelewa was not fathered by 17-year-old gorilla Kisoro as zookeepers assumed. Within captive gorilla tribes, it has been known by scientists and zookeepers that only male gorillas 12 years or older have the “right” to mate with females in their tribe. But in the case of Chelewa, normal mating rituals seem to have been oddly overturned. The DNA test proved that a much younger male—9-year-old Viatu—had fathered Chelewa by mating with one of the tribe’s females.

In an AFP online article, zookeepers called the situation “almost unbelieveable,” and that by mating with a female at such a young age, Viatu had “broken all the rules that apply in gorilla communities.”

It seems young Viatu certainly has shaken up this zoo’s gorilla clan with his sneaky monkey business!