Regarding a special edition, National Geographic magazine published an article that presents a rather unusual situation, and whose purpose is to demolish several myths: two twins, one is white and the other is black. How is this possible?
Marcia and Millie, protagonists of the cover of said edition, are twins, but there is something that distinguishes them: one is black and the other is white. Her mother is English and her father is of Jamaican descent. The union of races is nothing new, but in theory the girls would have the same skin color.
However, they were born with different colors and even the experts were confused.
The girls’ mother considers them a “miracle” and recalls: “When they were babies, I carried them in the stroller and people looked at them, first at one, then at the other, and then the question came: ‘But are they twins? ?'”.
And it is that, although his case is not unique in the world, it is very rare. Scientists appreciate that twins with different skin colors occur once in every million cases of twins.
If we now consider that twin pregnancies represent less than 2% of all pregnancies, we will understand how rare these cases are.
Of course the answer lies in the genes. The skin pigmentation of the parents plays an important factor in determining the skin color of the children. But the most specific explanation for this type of case is the phenomenon of twin pregnancy, that is, each twin grows and develops in its own amniotic sac.
Twin pregnancies occur when two ovules are simultaneously fertilized by two sperm. In these pregnancies, siblings may or may not look alike at all, as would two siblings born in different pregnancies. The correct term is “twins”, which can be of the same or different gender.
The “twins”, meanwhile, are extremely similar, and are always of the same gender.
In social networks there is another very famous case: it is about the twins Isabella and Gabriella, who have more than 50,000 followers on Instagram and their mother Clementina shares their photo sessions.
Now the twins Marcia and Millie are also world famous, and cases like theirs will continue to surprise us forever.