Apple petition demanding emoji for gingers is backed by thousands

Apple failed to include a ginger emoji in the recent iOS update

The ginger emoji could look like this (Change.org/Ginger Parrot)

Is there someone missing from the family of Apple emoji?

Yes, according to more than 12,000 people who have signed a petition to get the technology giant to introduce a ginger emoji to their keyboards.

The change.org petition, initiated by a website Ginger Parrot, said that redheads, “in all their glorious gingerness”, have been left out, even though a recent update aimed to diversify the range of emoji.

“Despite the recent racial and sexual ‘diversification’ of Apple’s emoji to be released in the next iOS 8.3 update, there’s still an important group of people missing from the emoji family of 300 new symbols,” the petition said.

“If you say you’re going to diversify, why not add a few red-haired emoji in the mix. Natural redheads may be rare at less than 2% of the world’s population, but that is 138,000,000 iPhones waiting to happen.”

Even Olympic athlete Greg Rutherford joined in with calls for the new symbol:

Emma Kelly of Ginger Parrot said 13 per cent of the people in Scotland were redheads.

Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, she said: "Redheads go through their lives being teased quite a lot and sometimes worse, I'm not saying Apple has anything against redheads, but I was surprised when redheads weren't included in the recent emoji update."