May 11, 2010 • 38 mins
Twin siblings are common enough that most people know a pair or two, but why does twinning occur? Josh and Chuckers explain where twins (and babies) come from, discuss different types of twins and debunk some "twin myths" in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
(00:21):
Someone asked me on Facebook what the w stood forward?
You see that? And I thought, and you said, will Amina, Yeah,
it's not true, but I'm not telling I know what.
It's Dandsbard. I don't know if I know your name.
I'm not telling. Why don't I know that? I'm doubting
reality right now? Okay, all right, moving on? What's your
shut up? Buddy? Um, I don't really have a setup, Chuck. Frankly,
(00:44):
I'm getting a little sick of my own setups? Do
you have one? Okay, let's talk about Twins? That is
not a tuma. How's that? That's pretty good from the
movie Twins. Yeah, No, that's from Kindergarten Cop. It's so lame. Yeah,
I can't believe I give that. It's okay, man, you
got the you got the exit down. Perfect. Twins was
when he sang the yackac don't talk back, don't talk back,
(01:06):
don't talk back. You. Okay, So twins, Yes, we're talking
about twins obviously, um or we're talking about kindergarten cop
to toss up at this point. Actually, um, let's go
with twins, chuckers. All right. So you've known some twins,
I'm sure in your life. Yeah, I've done a few.
(01:27):
I used to know a lot more back when I
was in school. Um, I knew twins. I don't know
any now, I don't think. Yeah, I don't know actively
know any twins. You never jog with any of them. Okay,
so you are familiar then, as I'm sure most people are.
There not entirely uncommon, although there's a lot fewer of
(01:47):
them than one might imagine, especially identical twins. Right, Fraternal
twins are actually way more common. Uh, And we'll get
into how these things are made. And by these things,
I mean people who are twins to will soon be
corralled like gingers. Right, Yes, two thirds more common I
think is is the fraternal twins. Okay, Um, I guess
(02:09):
to to get to the point of how twins are made,
we should maybe talk a little bit about how babies
are made. And what we're talking about are called singletons
like you me, Jerry, Jerry, you're not a twin, are you? Okay,
Jerry says no, So we're all singletons, is what people
like us are called, very unique little snowflakes. Yeah, uh so, Chuck,
(02:32):
let's talk about how a singleton is made. Okay, I'll
get the ball rolling. We're not going to talk about
the nasty, dirty things that go into making babies. We'll
just go with the science of it all. Uh about
midway through a women's menstrual cycle, she releases an egg. Yes,
that's that's what it sounds like. Think so as it
(02:54):
travels down the fallopian tube, and then, uh, that single
egg is for eyes by a little swimmer, a little
spermy guy, right, and a bunch of them are coming
at it at once. Yeah, imagine that's rather intimidating. And
apparently I understand that um, brothers brother sperm related sperm
can recognize one another in the uterus and will tag
(03:18):
team to like get there faster. They'll draft, or they'll
they'll connect, and they'll try to like put other people
out teammates in a NASCAR race exactly. But um, when
they get to the egg gets every man for himself, right,
And so the sperm gets to the egg and fertilizes it. Yes,
and then um, what you have About a day and
a half later, it's conception, and then it's called a
(03:40):
z I got right. And then after that it divides
into the fertilized egg divides into two yeah. Uh, and
this is we're talking about single tents. Don't don't get
all crazy yet, the twins. The fertilizing divides into two.
And then right four days later it is about one
d cells keeps dividing and it's called a blast asist. Right, well,
(04:02):
you keep hogging all the great words. And then the
sixth day after that, the blast assist and plants the
uterine wall. And that's where it just states into human being.
And along the way, we all developed vestigial tails. Did
you know that? Yeah, I've heard that fall off for
most people. Yeah. And if not, what are you called
or what is it called? It's called a vestigial tail. Okay,
(04:27):
I can't know there's a name for like being born
with stuff like that, And I can't remember. We have
an article on this site. I think Clambert wrote it. Um, okay,
so chuck uh. Week nine, you've got a fetus Prior
to that, it's an embryo, and as the baby develops, um,
it's surrounded by a fluid filled amniotic sac right, that's
(04:49):
where it gets all of the food and oxygen and
all the things little little fetus needs to progress, right,
and it evacuates its bowels and its little tinkler into
the umbilical core. Right. Yeah. Uh and so today, nine
months later, approximately singleton, a little singleton, not necessarily simpleton,
(05:10):
but definitely singleton, right, right, So that's normal, regular old,
straight up, I have a new, little single baby. Right.
So what happens when you have twins? There's two types? Right, Yes,
we talked about identical infraternal. There's much more egg heading
names for those than that. Yeah, monozygotic is identical and
(05:30):
dizygotic is fraternal. So we're we'll go with can we
call him identical infraternal? Okay? Uh so starting with let's
we'll start with fraternal, right, Yeah, that's an easy one. Yeah,
they're pretty simple in fraternal. Twins, by the way, don't
have any more shared DNA than you know, Chuck and
his very handsome brother share. Yeah, I wish I shared
(05:51):
that much with my brother. Um, so what what happens
is the the mom releases two eggs rather than one
in the dad uh hits them with the sperm. Yeah,
like fifty million sperm, right, and then one gets in
and then another gets in and you have to developing. Yeah,
(06:12):
it's basically the same thing. It's like having two Singleton's
at the same time, baking two buns in the same oven. Right.
And with with the die zygotic twin, I'm sorry, a
fraternal twin, you've got three possible sets of combinations, two males,
two females, or a male and a female. And actually
male and female are the most common. They represent half
(06:32):
of all, um fraternal twins. Yeah, those are my favorites.
Mine to love it. Stephen Katie Duty. I don't know
any personally, although Scott and Stacy Freylick were my brother's age,
and um, I just always thought that was the coolest thing. Yeah,
they're all they're very close, they're they're always very sweet. Yeah,
where you're sweet. Yeah, and plus the whole you know,
(06:54):
the brother protecting the sister and the sister setting up
their brother with her friends. Yeah, it's a great It's
it's the perfect superlation and boy girl fraternal twins are
super cute. Yes, we need a T shirt that says
that not like those weirdos that look alike. Um, alright,
chuck uh. The same thing can happen with multiple births, triplets.
(07:14):
We have triplets that listen to us as we know,
tri zygotic, right and so on. Sure, Now with a
monozygotic birth, UM, you've got one egg that is fertilized
by the sperm, and it splits into two after it's
fertilized and starts developing two identical human beings. That's called
(07:39):
cool science. It really is the fact that this can happen.
I love it. And the sooner the split happens, say
within day two, the more independent the children are going
to be in utero. Right, they're they're going to have
their own amniotic sacks. They're going to have their own placenta.
As time wears on the U and the division occurs later,
(08:02):
they could have the chance of having fused placenta UM,
fused amniotic sacks. And this is not necessarily a good thing. Actually, no,
you can UM if you share a placenta. And sometimes
the twins will not develop equally because one twin is
hogging all the nourishment then the other and that's called
fetal growth restriction with just like Danny DeVitto and um
(08:26):
Arnold Schwartzen, Yes, that was that the scenario. Yeah, I
remember they said, they said, Uh, Danny DeVito was like
an accident. They weren't expecting him. He comes to realize
that he's after birth and it was really sad. It
was a sad point in the movie. That's what he said.
He's like, I'm after birth, right, it was sad slash
funny frank, Yeah, but I imagine that that's what happened.
(08:49):
Arnold just kind of took all of the a nourishment
for himself, leaving little Danny DeVito with very little. The
stingy governatory and Josh. Another thing can happen called twin
to twin transfusion syndrome, and that is when the twins
are sharing circulation, so they can actually transfuse blood from
(09:09):
one to the other. But that can be bad because
the donor twin can you know, hog some of that
some of the blood and uh will be unusually small,
whereas the recipient twin will have too much blood and
be unusually large for their age, developing baby small baby
in the same womb at the same time fighting for
(09:31):
their stuff, right what It's something that UM I thought
was really interesting. In this article, which is written by
Catherine Near, she's one of our head editors in A
Twin and a Twin UM, she refers to herself in
first person as the author in this throughout UM. She
mentioned that, UH, twins that have UM undergone twin to
twin transfusion syndrome or t T t S for those
(09:55):
in the know, UM can actually the circulation can be
separated by laser. Do you know how much Dough, the
surgeon who who performs in utero operations charges, I imagine
where does that fit into the health care package? That's
what I want to and the accounts for like sixty
of it and that's like one surgery. Yeah, but that's
(10:17):
my calculation. I would imagine that really tricky specialized stuff.
It really is, but it can be done, and you
kind of want to do it because one twin can
come out of nemic the other can just be enormous.
Again like Arnold Swartzenegger and Danny de Vito, right, and
identical twins Josh. Obviously, UM can only be two males
or two females. Because they share identical genetic material. True
(10:41):
debt check. There's also a syndrome that's pretty that's a
lot more frequent than we once imagine, called vanishing twin syndrome,
where you start out with twins or multiples, then all
of a sudden, you're down one. And they used to
(11:01):
think that this was a very rare and frequent thing.
And actually, I imagine an old timey eras they had
no idea that this was happening. For the ultrasound, sure right, uh.
And then once yeah, once the ultrasound came around, we
could start to kind of track what was going on.
We discovered that the mother was actually absorbing one during
her pregnancy. Yeah, that's gotta feel a little odd. Well,
(11:24):
and they set of multi fetal gestations has happened. Yeah,
that's way more than I would thought. Yeah, and I
wonder if it's just nature's way of saying, like, no,
eight is too many. You know, seven that's fine, but
eight now eight is enough? Uh? And then of course, chuck,
we get to a different kind of twinning called conjoined twinning. Yeah.
(11:47):
I got to mention this, and this is awesome, uh,
in that no one really knows how this happens. But
the prevalent theory is that the the z I got right. Yeah, okay,
the zigo splits very late, like twelve days, which apparently
is late during just station uh, and it never fully
(12:09):
uh divides, It doesn't have a chance to fully divide,
And so all of a sudden you have can join twins. Yeah,
that makes that seems to be pretty logical. It definitely does. Um.
And there's a whole slew of different kinds of conjoined
twins and it's all based on where the body is fused, right. Yeah.
I won't go over all the the different categories within
(12:30):
the subcategories within the category, but I will give the
three main terrata didema. That's if you're joined at the
lower portion of your body. And I have to say
that includes an issio fagus which lakshmid Tatma, the little
Indian girl who was born with her twin, her headless twin.
She basically looked like the goddess Lakshmi. Yeah, and actually
(12:55):
I checked I checked it out and make sure she's
still going strong and uh. A January twenty eighth article
in The Daily Mail had a picture of her post
surgery going to school, wearing a little plaid skirt and
a tie and waving hute cute is a button. I
thought you said Podma Lachama from Top Chef or whatever
her last name is, and I thought she was a
(13:15):
conjoined twin. No nice work. Well, she does have that
scar on her arm, but I knew that was from
a arm. Just thought it could have been she could
have been joined at the forearm. You know a lot
about Padma. I'm a top Chef nut. Uh. So then
we have the terrata and a didema, and that is
(13:36):
with one single upper body with a double lower half,
or if you're connected by a single body part, like
connected at the head, let's say, or this also includes
kids with like a from the waist down have two
sets of legs, but everything else above is just single, right,
And then the final one is terata and a katata
(13:57):
didema and a di didema. And that's joined somewhere at
the mid section, so maybe joined at the chest. You
might share a heart, you might share some other organs
or back to back, let's say above the spine, that
kind of thing, right, and chuck, that includes umflow Pegas
and you know who is M flow Pegas can joined twins,
(14:20):
don't you Ronnie and Donnie. Ronnie and Donnie Gallian. That's right,
the world's oldest living can join twins from Ohio somewhere, right. Yeah.
Then they turned fifty eight last October. Yeah. Yeah, we
did a bit on them on the webcast and they
there as you would expect, kind of cantanker us with
each other, but also like love and hug on each other.
I think it's Donnie who is uh, he gets he's
(14:42):
afraid of the dark, so Ronnie like cuddles him. Yeah,
it's really sweet. If you haven't ever seen any footage
of Ronnie and Donnie Galleon right hanging out, you should
look it up. They also punch each other in the
face when they're watching TV when well, they have two TVs, right,
and then they'll be watching them obviously at the same time,
and one will turn the volume up and the other
(15:02):
trains his volume up and it keeps going and then
somebody gets punched in the face. It's kind of funny. Yeah,
it is uh that moves us on. Josh to another
form of conjoined twin called parasitic twining, and this is
when one conjoined twin is a lot smaller and maybe
not as fully formed. And sometimes this is when you
(15:23):
can get like a limb and an odd part of
your body, like an arm growing out of your back
or something like that. Right, And a subset even rarer
than this is uh parasitic twinning. And by the way,
Andy Garcia was born with the parasitic twin. Didn't know
that until I read this. I didn't either. But a
very rare form of um parasitic twinning is fetus and feetsu,
(15:44):
which is where the twin, the unformed or underdeveloped twin,
is found in the body of the living twin, the
surviving twin UH, and often in it in the form
of a taratoma. You'll find teeth, hair, um, spinal bones, segments, bones,
(16:04):
uh and these are all just called teratomas. What makes
it a fetus and feet you, is when there's a
recognizable trunk and limbs. Imagine finding that in your abdomen,
which is commonly where it grows. It's really it's really sad,
is what it is. It was about to say creepy,
but but I mean imagine it's it's just a tragedy.
(16:26):
Imagine if you and your parents never had any idea
that you were part of a twin and then all
of a sudden it's like, oh, here he is. Well
that's where he got to, you know, and you got
would be kind of shaking. That happens a little more
often than my I'm comfortable with it, said one and
every five hundred thousand. Oh, I thought you were about
to reveal your own story. No, no, no, no no.
But I just saw one in every five hundred thousand.
(16:47):
My first thought was, oh, wow, that's really rare. Then
I thought, there's a lot of people on the earth,
and that's not as rare as I would like it
to be. Yeah, And with conjoint twins, actually they're rarer
than I thought. Um. Apparently, by Catherine Near's estimate, there's
only about fifty un conjoined conjoined twins unconnected conjoined twins
(17:07):
uh in the world today, he said, I think one
and every forty verse but only one in every two
hundred thousand live births because of conjoined twins are still
born or die you know, a day or two after birth,
which is really sad. Right, So about of conjoined twins
don't make it past the day. So the ones that do, Yeah,
(17:30):
and then that that five percent. Probably most of them
are going to be disconnected at some point yea if possible. Um.
Of course there have been some famous ones, right Ronnie
and Donnie. Uh, yeah, who who are the Guinness guys?
Hang and Chang bunker Archie their brother Hang and Chang.
(17:50):
We're born in eighteen eleven and Siam which we call
Thailand now uh. And pretty early on they realized like, hey,
we can make a lot of money off of ourselves,
so they started touring the world. Um, and they did
make a pretty respectable sum for themselves, and they actually
um retired. They think Wilkesboro, North Carolina, didn't get married
(18:12):
to They married sisters Sally and Adelaide Yates and the
couples together uh had to combine twenty one children and
they were never separated. That's the word I was looking
for that connected. Now they were where at the chest?
They were at the chest and and an autopsy performed
(18:34):
on them afterward, um, after their death, which accounts for
the word autopsy. UH found that they shared no organs.
They could have just gone skin graft. They did two
sexual organs. They had two of everything, except they were
joined at the chest, so they had two sexual Organs,
and they fathered twenty one kids with two sisters. But
(18:57):
they had to be a weird Saturday night. It was room.
Yeah yeah, well, yeah, everybody's in the room. That's a
managa whatever. I don't even know what that is, right.
But they lived to be sixty three actually, and then
I think they were the oldest living conjoined twins of
their time. I imagine it's probably in history. And there
was another set that's fairly um well known, I guess I.
(19:20):
I didn't hear them until this article. Did you read
this part? I did not about the bidden In Maids
Mary and Eliza chulk Hurst. They were born a d
in England, I take it. And they were pago pagas.
That's a fun way to say say that pig pegas. Uh.
They were pago pagas. So they were connected along their
(19:41):
lower back and the butt hawks so they're not facing
each other, no, which I think would probably be a
real pain. Yeah. Well, I mean there's probably no scenario
that's really easy to live with about it. They lived
to be thirty four though, that's pretty old, especially back then.
And I think Chang and hang and uh, the Biddenden
(20:04):
Maids died within hours of each other, which is fairly frequent.
Remember when we were researching Ronnie and Donnie. Yeah, the
doctor was talking about how, you know, sometimes people can
live up to eighteen hours, but usually it's not very long.
So can we talk about my other two favorite types
of twinning? Though favorite too. Sometimes, Josh, a woman can
(20:29):
release two eggs, like you would when you would have
fraternal twins, but maybe one might be let's say, two
weeks later than the other. Your husband or boyfriend or whoever, Uh,
you're having your baby with you still liberal fertilizes both
eggs at different times, and you're actually pregnant with quote
(20:49):
unquote twins, but one would be born two weeks after
the other, right, depending on the moment of conception. And
that's called superfication, and that's at never heard of that.
I'm kind of blown away. Yeah i am too. I'm
even more blown away, Chuck by a little term called
super feet condition. Yeah. They'd added a little extra few
(21:09):
letters in there because because it's like bonus. Yeah. Um,
if a woman releases more than one egg during ovulation, uh,
and two different males fertilize the eggs, so you get
sperm from one male and then spurn from another male
and both of them are fertilized and take in just
eight she can have siblings half siblings at the same time,
(21:36):
virtually the same time. But boom, super fee condition and
actually the first one you talked about, superfetation. They can
lead to half identical twins where um, the egg splits
before fertilization and is infertilized by two separate sperm. So
these twins actually share sev their d n A. Yeah,
(21:57):
polar body twins. Yeah, pretty cool term. Yeah, so that's yeah,
it's the same thing, except it's not two eggs to
begin with. It's one egg that splits. That makes sense. So, Chuck,
you want to talk about some you want to just
put some twin myths down, take them around the barn
and shoot them. Sure, or we can validate them. Yes, okay.
(22:19):
There's a study called the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart,
and it's an ongoing four part deal where their study um,
fraternal and identical twins raised together and separate to see
like what the big all the hullabaloo is all about.
And what they found a lot of times is that
twins separated at birth identical twins, uh or I guess
(22:40):
fraternal too. They share a lot of the same characteristics
in life. And Jim and Jim Lewis and Springer were
separated at four weeks old, right, and they were adopted.
So note both of their first names are the same.
They were given the same first name by their adoptive parents, right,
instead of the same last name. Very odd. Uh. They
(23:01):
were apart until they were thirty nine years old. They
both grew to six ft tall weight exactly a hundred
and eighty pounds when they were little boys. Each one
had a dog named Toy right. Each one had been
married two times. The first wives of both were called Linda,
and the second wives of both were called Betty yea.
Each one had a son they named James Allen, which
(23:24):
is interesting. They and and here's another little fact for you.
My dad's name is James Allen and he had a
twin that died at birth. This is getting out of hand. Yeah.
I remember when my dad first told me that. I
was like, oh. And then a couple of years later
I was like, Wow, that's so weird to think that
I would have had an identical twin uncle. Yeah, that
(23:45):
just never happened. That would have changed the course of
your life entirely. Uncle look alike? How it called him? Uh? What? What?
What other things that they have in common? Each one
had driven a had a light blue Chevrolet, and they
both vacationed at past a grilled beach in Florida. Right,
here's my favorite. Uh. They both enjoyed Salem cigarettes and
Miller Lite beer. Yes, I love that one too. Um.
(24:08):
They were both nail biters, they both held part time
job as sheriffs. They both had migraines. And then the
little love note thing. Yeah, and uh, and how the
Mind Works, I think is what it's called Stephen Pinker's book. Um.
He he off handedly mentions that. Uh. And he's saying,
is there a gene for leaving love notes around the house?
(24:29):
And he's saying, twins rude apart kind of suggest Yeah, right,
they both left love notes for their wives. It's so odd.
It is what an odd characteristic to share. So they
were obviously studied in that in that Minnesota study of
twins reared apart, But they do mention I thought this
is funny that they had different hairstyles. Well, yeah, I
mean like it is easily sensationalized you know, and you
(24:52):
you you've got to say, like, you know, those facts
lead you to believe that they were the exact same
person in every single way. So when they said had
the mop top Beatles haircut and one had like the
pompadoor Johnny Cash with the sideburns even longer CIDs. Yeah,
so maybe they just listened to different music and well
another one was more articulate than the other, and the
(25:12):
other was a better writer than the articulate one. Alright, yes,
interesting stuff. Imagine having a twin with the same first
name being like hey Jim, Hey Jim. They get old
really fast, nice sideburns, nice mop top, let's go smoke
some Salem's let's oh boy um and then uh forty
(25:33):
eight hours the TV show did did a special on
identical twins raised Apart, and they found interesting things like
Barbara and Daphne that were twins and they both had
miscarriages and then had two boys and one girl. A
little bit of a connection there, I don't know, however,
the top that is though, are those the giggle twins? Yeah,
(25:55):
because they apparently had the same laugh. Well they crossed
their arms and giggle in the same way, right, which
you could have picked up from watching ALF. They could
have both been watching ALF. Yeah you never know? Yeah
did you watch ALF? Yeah? I didn't watch OFF. I
never got it. It's like a puppet. Have you ever
seen Permanent Midnight? Oh yeah, that's the guy who wrote
(26:16):
the first season of ALF. That's what Permanent Midnight is about.
If you go watch Permanent Midnight and then you go
watch the first season at ALF, there's a lot of
like kind of really quick, dark funny things in there
that My favorite part of that movie is when he
and Owen Wilson are had lost their drugs and Owen
Wilson says, if I was a Perka Dan, where would
(26:36):
I be? Great line and chuck. You know, um, twins
root apart is like a perfect natural experiment to try
to settle nature versus nurture. Yeah right, Um, it's not
always a natural experiment. And I'm making air quotes for
those of you who can't see. There's a group in
New York that was affiliated well, they had an end
(26:59):
with a your adoption agency in New York and I
think the sixties, and they were basically like, oh, you've
got some twins up for adoption. Make sure that this
goes this one to this family, and this goes to
this family, and then they kept tabs. So they were
like purposefully separating twins and in the adoption through the
adoption agency and then studying them like this huge longitudinal study. Uh.
(27:22):
And actually, uh, they apparently got some really great results,
but they became so afraid. Is apparently the public sentiment of,
you know, separating twins for the study of nature versus nurture.
Public sentiment changed. So by the eighties, I think they
concluded this twenty year study. Um, they were like, Okay,
we're just going to never talk about this for the
(27:42):
next sixty years. So they sealed it and I think
it's in like a the Yale University Library under lock
and key. But it's coming out in the next like
ten or twenty years. I think, Yeah, it's gonna rock
our world. Yeah that in the whole Kennedy assassination, the
truth will be out there. I don't know if that
one's overcoming out. We'll know when their dates set for
it is there. Yeah, I think so where the records
(28:03):
are gonna be open? Awesome, can't wait. I need to
watch more stuff they don't want you to know. Huh. Yes,
are awesome Conspiracy Theorist podcast. Yeah, uh so, Josh, we
do know that, Um, we don't know what causes the
uh the MZ twins right now, but we do know
that the rate is consistent throughout the world, which is
about one and two fifty right now. That's that doesn't
(28:26):
necessarily mean that, like it's every time there's what did
you say, one in to fifty or four in a thousand?
One in fifty is a little easier, okay, But it
doesn't mean that every time there's a thousand births, you
know there's four equally distributed. No, of course, not right.
But if you take the birth statistics across the entire world,
you're gonna find about four per one thousand, and actually
(28:48):
by ethnic group, uh it changes. African Americans tend to
have far more twins than any other group. And Africans
and I'm sorry African people of African descent um, and
Africans themselves. Sure that I think they said that Yoruba
tribe in Nigeria has forty five per one thousand births,
(29:08):
and that's a lot. That is a whole lot. Uh.
On the low end, Chinese people have eleven point two
per one thousand berths right, right, And that that's in
the United States, by the way, not in China. Chinese
people living in the United States, So Chinese Americans have
eleven point two per one thousand, but if you go
to China, it's like eight hundred per one thousand. I
(29:30):
don't think that's the right number. That is not the
right number. But um, there are a couple of factors involved,
chuck real quick. Um the the uh. I think the
follicle stimulating hormone can cause a woman to have more
than one egg. Um. And that's usually found more frequently
in heavy women and older women. Uh. And we've been
kind of trending towards he and right as far as
(29:52):
parents go. So twinning as a result in the US
has risen eighty or thirty eight percent and sixty five percent.
Since that's pretty big jump. Okay, so let's move along
and get rid of some myth. Dude. Twin language josh right,
also known as idea glossia and cryptophagia. That is, uh,
(30:14):
when some people say it, twins have like a secret
language that they speak to each other, sort of not true.
What the deal usually is is, um, let's say when
they're developing. Let's say the first little twin has like
a slower development with the language than the second twin.
The second twin will kind of hang back or mimic
and mimic mirror neurons, maybe mimic the other twin, and
(30:36):
then all of a sudden they kind of developed this
code if you will, right. Uh, so twin language, no
technically no, all right? Uh? And then you always hear
about twins having esp like one of them gets injured
somewhere and the other one across the country knows about
(30:57):
it right then or or something. So this have been
tested actually, and uh. In one experiment, it's kind of clever.
They took two twins and they put one. They put
them in separate rooms, split them up. Well, yeah, you
got to, or else they'll just cheat like crazy. I
wonder if they faked it though, and they're like they
really thought they had Donnie when they had Ronnie. Yeah
(31:17):
you have both, yeah, yeah, um, but you split one.
You split them up and you give one some cards
to pick to choose from with different illustrations on it,
and then the other one has the same set of
cards in another room. So you have the one that
chose to the card, the sender send the image telepathically
to the target, the recipient twin, and then the recipient
(31:40):
twin is supposed to choose that card. Well, the crazy
thing is is, in the first round of this experiment
they got it right like half of the time, which
is pretty significant. But then they altered the experiment a
little bit and they had a an assistant choose the
card for the twin, and then the twins sent them telepathically,
(32:01):
and all of a sudden it dropped the right. And
they think that it was because the twins were hitting
at because of shared preferences, not uh tell telleth telepathy.
There's something really wrong with me today. Yeah, I think
that's probably the deal. That a lot of experiments don't
show any kind of special bond. Some do, but the
(32:22):
same experiments show that special bond between let's say a
mother and a daughter or a brother and a sister
that aren't twins, and they think that it probably just
has more to do with um, like you said, growing
up together, shared preferences and interest, that kind of thing.
So what do you want to do celebs or movies
famous twins? Josh, have you ever heard of Mario Andretti
(32:46):
race car driver. Yes, no, I have been either. That's see.
I highlighted the ones that I was like. I didn't
know they had a twin because some of them obviously,
you know, like Jenna and Barbara Bush. Yeah, but they're
for turn A right. Uh yeah, Giselle Bunch in the
smoking hot model. Yeah, Jesus sister. I imagine a smoking
(33:08):
hot sister. She is good looking, she's her manager. She's
not model hot, but she is very attractive. Are they
identical or fraternal? Their fraternal? Vin Diesel really yeah? He
has a kind of a funny looking brother named Paul Vincent.
A picture of him. How do you name your kid?
Paul Vincent? And then Vin Diesel's a stage name, dude.
(33:31):
I wonder if his name is Vincent Paul. Oh. Maybe
maybe his parents were very unamazed innative, or maybe Paul
Diesel changed his name to Vincent because he thought it
was too you know. Gear Head Scarlett Johansson has a
brother named Hunter. They look a lot alike Ashton Kutcher,
Did you know that? I think that rang a bell? Actually? Yeah?
(33:52):
The Cutch has a brother named Michael, who has cerebral palsy. Sadly. Yes,
that does ring a bell. Yeah, and he like it's
his kind of lives for him him and has brought
a lot of awareness to that um altist. Morrissett as
a brother named Wade who cares. And Wade Morrisset is
a singer, yoga dude and a cureton. It's just like
an Indian chanter. Can we be done now? Uh? Parker
(34:16):
Posey as a brother named Chris Cool. I'll bet he's cool. Uh.
And then Keifer William, Frederick Dempsey, George Rufus Sutherland. Did
you know he had that many names? Yes, he has
a fraternal twin sister named Rachel. Why would you give
a kid that many names? Donald Southerland is probably smoking
a lot of something back in the day. Oh yeah,
(34:36):
at least he did an animal House. And then, of
course my favorite twins, Kim and Kelly deal. Kim deal
with the Breeders. Okay, well they're both in the Breeders
and Kim was in the Pixies. Pixies Uh. And before
we move on, I want to put a call out
because I saw a special one time on a TV
show about these two twins. Two I think like twelve
(34:58):
year old black girls in England, and they mimicked everything exactly.
They spoken stereo at the same exact time, they walked
exactly the same in synchronousy. It's like the twins in
the Shiny It's very creepy and that's exactly what they were.
And you know what happened. But one day they found
(35:19):
one of them drowning the other one in a creek.
Did they save the one? I don't know and I
can't find I saw this like years ago and I
have never, ever ever been able to find anything on it.
So putting the call out there to the s Y
s k army anyone knows about this, I'm dying to
know the story. Well, if you want to read one
of the better articles on how stuff works, check out
(35:39):
twins is type twins in the handy search bar how
stuff works dot com and that leads us to listener mail. Yes, Josh,
I have a couple of quick ones. This is from
Adrian and Canadian City, fredericton n B. What does that mean?
I have no idea. Yeah, probably he's eleven. It's called
Canadian City, New Brunswick. Or he's saying, yeah, it's hey, guys,
(36:05):
my name is Adrian. In case you're wondering, I'm a boy,
and surprisingly enough, I am only eleven years old and
I listen to your podcast every night. I can I
believe that thanks to you guys, I'm the smartest boy
in my class in the subject of interesting facts. And Jerry,
I have not forgotten about you. I believe that without you,
the sound effects would run for the hills. Keep up
(36:27):
the good work, people. Please put this in your next podcast,
because if I heard myself on the show, then it
would be one of the highlights of my life. Well,
technically you're not hearing yourself, but you're hearing Chuck read
you Adrian. But that's close enough. That's right. Jerry loved this.
When Jerry Ford did this after we had already seen it,
did she go cute, Well, i've the sound effects. They
would run for the hills and that's adorable. No, she
(36:48):
just wanted to remind us of her place and exactly.
And then this is from Abu and this is another
kind of call out to the fans because we said
something about Arthur the weather man in our little YouTube
bar last well, which one was at And do you
remember I had nothing to do with whatever we were
talking about it now, I don't remember. It will probably
come out after this one. No, it already came out. Okay,
(37:11):
But we heard from Abu that Arthur the weather Man
actually perished in the Hate the earthquake. I don't think
that's true, but we don't know if that's true. I
looked it up on the Internet and everything points back
to the single source that isn't reputable. So if anyone
out there has any information on Arthur, No, Arthur, if
you're out there, let us know you're alive. Please. Yeah,
(37:31):
we're praying and hoping that you're alive. It's gonna be hot. Yeah,
if you have any information on Arthur the weather Man
or you live in a Canadian city. And by the way,
thank you Adrian and Abu Uh. Send us an email.
We love getting emails. Chuck loves responding to emails. Jerry
loves forwarding emails. Just send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
(37:58):
this and thousands of other time fixed, visit how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
M brought to you by the Reinvented two thousand, twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
(00:21):
Someone asked me on Facebook what the w stood forward?
You see that? And I thought, and you said, will Amina, Yeah,
it's not true, but I'm not telling I know what.
It's Dandsbard. I don't know if I know your name.
I'm not telling. Why don't I know that? I'm doubting
reality right now? Okay, all right, moving on? What's your
shut up? Buddy? Um, I don't really have a setup, Chuck. Frankly,
(00:44):
I'm getting a little sick of my own setups? Do
you have one? Okay, let's talk about Twins? That is
not a tuma. How's that? That's pretty good from the
movie Twins. Yeah, No, that's from Kindergarten Cop. It's so lame. Yeah,
I can't believe I give that. It's okay, man, you
got the you got the exit down. Perfect. Twins was
when he sang the yackac don't talk back, don't talk back,
(01:06):
don't talk back. You. Okay, So twins, Yes, we're talking
about twins obviously, um or we're talking about kindergarten cop
to toss up at this point. Actually, um, let's go
with twins, chuckers. All right. So you've known some twins,
I'm sure in your life. Yeah, I've done a few.
(01:27):
I used to know a lot more back when I
was in school. Um, I knew twins. I don't know
any now, I don't think. Yeah, I don't know actively
know any twins. You never jog with any of them. Okay,
so you are familiar then, as I'm sure most people are.
There not entirely uncommon, although there's a lot fewer of
(01:47):
them than one might imagine, especially identical twins. Right, Fraternal
twins are actually way more common. Uh, And we'll get
into how these things are made. And by these things,
I mean people who are twins to will soon be
corralled like gingers. Right, Yes, two thirds more common I
think is is the fraternal twins. Okay, Um, I guess
(02:09):
to to get to the point of how twins are made,
we should maybe talk a little bit about how babies
are made. And what we're talking about are called singletons
like you me, Jerry, Jerry, you're not a twin, are you? Okay,
Jerry says no, So we're all singletons, is what people
like us are called, very unique little snowflakes. Yeah, uh so, Chuck,
(02:32):
let's talk about how a singleton is made. Okay, I'll
get the ball rolling. We're not going to talk about
the nasty, dirty things that go into making babies. We'll
just go with the science of it all. Uh about
midway through a women's menstrual cycle, she releases an egg. Yes,
that's that's what it sounds like. Think so as it
(02:54):
travels down the fallopian tube, and then, uh, that single
egg is for eyes by a little swimmer, a little
spermy guy, right, and a bunch of them are coming
at it at once. Yeah, imagine that's rather intimidating. And
apparently I understand that um, brothers brother sperm related sperm
can recognize one another in the uterus and will tag
(03:18):
team to like get there faster. They'll draft, or they'll
they'll connect, and they'll try to like put other people
out teammates in a NASCAR race exactly. But um, when
they get to the egg gets every man for himself, right,
And so the sperm gets to the egg and fertilizes it. Yes,
and then um, what you have About a day and
a half later, it's conception, and then it's called a
(03:40):
z I got right. And then after that it divides
into the fertilized egg divides into two yeah. Uh, and
this is we're talking about single tents. Don't don't get
all crazy yet, the twins. The fertilizing divides into two.
And then right four days later it is about one
d cells keeps dividing and it's called a blast asist. Right, well,
(04:02):
you keep hogging all the great words. And then the
sixth day after that, the blast assist and plants the
uterine wall. And that's where it just states into human being.
And along the way, we all developed vestigial tails. Did
you know that? Yeah, I've heard that fall off for
most people. Yeah. And if not, what are you called
or what is it called? It's called a vestigial tail. Okay,
(04:27):
I can't know there's a name for like being born
with stuff like that, And I can't remember. We have
an article on this site. I think Clambert wrote it. Um, okay,
so chuck uh. Week nine, you've got a fetus Prior
to that, it's an embryo, and as the baby develops, um,
it's surrounded by a fluid filled amniotic sac right, that's
(04:49):
where it gets all of the food and oxygen and
all the things little little fetus needs to progress, right,
and it evacuates its bowels and its little tinkler into
the umbilical core. Right. Yeah. Uh and so today, nine
months later, approximately singleton, a little singleton, not necessarily simpleton,
(05:10):
but definitely singleton, right, right, So that's normal, regular old,
straight up, I have a new, little single baby. Right.
So what happens when you have twins? There's two types? Right, Yes,
we talked about identical infraternal. There's much more egg heading
names for those than that. Yeah, monozygotic is identical and
(05:30):
dizygotic is fraternal. So we're we'll go with can we
call him identical infraternal? Okay? Uh so starting with let's
we'll start with fraternal, right, Yeah, that's an easy one. Yeah,
they're pretty simple in fraternal. Twins, by the way, don't
have any more shared DNA than you know, Chuck and
his very handsome brother share. Yeah, I wish I shared
(05:51):
that much with my brother. Um, so what what happens
is the the mom releases two eggs rather than one
in the dad uh hits them with the sperm. Yeah,
like fifty million sperm, right, and then one gets in
and then another gets in and you have to developing. Yeah,
(06:12):
it's basically the same thing. It's like having two Singleton's
at the same time, baking two buns in the same oven. Right.
And with with the die zygotic twin, I'm sorry, a
fraternal twin, you've got three possible sets of combinations, two males,
two females, or a male and a female. And actually
male and female are the most common. They represent half
(06:32):
of all, um fraternal twins. Yeah, those are my favorites.
Mine to love it. Stephen Katie Duty. I don't know
any personally, although Scott and Stacy Freylick were my brother's age,
and um, I just always thought that was the coolest thing. Yeah,
they're all they're very close, they're they're always very sweet. Yeah,
where you're sweet. Yeah, and plus the whole you know,
(06:54):
the brother protecting the sister and the sister setting up
their brother with her friends. Yeah, it's a great It's
it's the perfect superlation and boy girl fraternal twins are
super cute. Yes, we need a T shirt that says
that not like those weirdos that look alike. Um, alright,
chuck uh. The same thing can happen with multiple births, triplets.
(07:14):
We have triplets that listen to us as we know,
tri zygotic, right and so on. Sure, Now with a
monozygotic birth, UM, you've got one egg that is fertilized
by the sperm, and it splits into two after it's
fertilized and starts developing two identical human beings. That's called
(07:39):
cool science. It really is the fact that this can happen.
I love it. And the sooner the split happens, say
within day two, the more independent the children are going
to be in utero. Right, they're they're going to have
their own amniotic sacks. They're going to have their own placenta.
As time wears on the U and the division occurs later,
(08:02):
they could have the chance of having fused placenta UM,
fused amniotic sacks. And this is not necessarily a good thing. Actually, no,
you can UM if you share a placenta. And sometimes
the twins will not develop equally because one twin is
hogging all the nourishment then the other and that's called
fetal growth restriction with just like Danny DeVitto and um
(08:26):
Arnold Schwartzen, Yes, that was that the scenario. Yeah, I
remember they said, they said, Uh, Danny DeVito was like
an accident. They weren't expecting him. He comes to realize
that he's after birth and it was really sad. It
was a sad point in the movie. That's what he said.
He's like, I'm after birth, right, it was sad slash
funny frank, Yeah, but I imagine that that's what happened.
(08:49):
Arnold just kind of took all of the a nourishment
for himself, leaving little Danny DeVito with very little. The
stingy governatory and Josh. Another thing can happen called twin
to twin transfusion syndrome, and that is when the twins
are sharing circulation, so they can actually transfuse blood from
(09:09):
one to the other. But that can be bad because
the donor twin can you know, hog some of that
some of the blood and uh will be unusually small,
whereas the recipient twin will have too much blood and
be unusually large for their age, developing baby small baby
in the same womb at the same time fighting for
(09:31):
their stuff, right what It's something that UM I thought
was really interesting. In this article, which is written by
Catherine Near, she's one of our head editors in A
Twin and a Twin UM, she refers to herself in
first person as the author in this throughout UM. She
mentioned that, UH, twins that have UM undergone twin to
twin transfusion syndrome or t T t S for those
(09:55):
in the know, UM can actually the circulation can be
separated by laser. Do you know how much Dough, the
surgeon who who performs in utero operations charges, I imagine
where does that fit into the health care package? That's
what I want to and the accounts for like sixty
of it and that's like one surgery. Yeah, but that's
(10:17):
my calculation. I would imagine that really tricky specialized stuff.
It really is, but it can be done, and you
kind of want to do it because one twin can
come out of nemic the other can just be enormous.
Again like Arnold Swartzenegger and Danny de Vito, right, and
identical twins Josh. Obviously, UM can only be two males
or two females. Because they share identical genetic material. True
(10:41):
debt check. There's also a syndrome that's pretty that's a
lot more frequent than we once imagine, called vanishing twin syndrome,
where you start out with twins or multiples, then all
of a sudden, you're down one. And they used to
(11:01):
think that this was a very rare and frequent thing.
And actually, I imagine an old timey eras they had
no idea that this was happening. For the ultrasound, sure right, uh.
And then once yeah, once the ultrasound came around, we
could start to kind of track what was going on.
We discovered that the mother was actually absorbing one during
her pregnancy. Yeah, that's gotta feel a little odd. Well,
(11:24):
and they set of multi fetal gestations has happened. Yeah,
that's way more than I would thought. Yeah, and I
wonder if it's just nature's way of saying, like, no,
eight is too many. You know, seven that's fine, but
eight now eight is enough? Uh? And then of course, chuck,
we get to a different kind of twinning called conjoined twinning. Yeah.
(11:47):
I got to mention this, and this is awesome, uh,
in that no one really knows how this happens. But
the prevalent theory is that the the z I got right. Yeah, okay,
the zigo splits very late, like twelve days, which apparently
is late during just station uh, and it never fully
(12:09):
uh divides, It doesn't have a chance to fully divide,
And so all of a sudden you have can join twins. Yeah,
that makes that seems to be pretty logical. It definitely does. Um.
And there's a whole slew of different kinds of conjoined
twins and it's all based on where the body is fused, right. Yeah.
I won't go over all the the different categories within
(12:30):
the subcategories within the category, but I will give the
three main terrata didema. That's if you're joined at the
lower portion of your body. And I have to say
that includes an issio fagus which lakshmid Tatma, the little
Indian girl who was born with her twin, her headless twin.
She basically looked like the goddess Lakshmi. Yeah, and actually
(12:55):
I checked I checked it out and make sure she's
still going strong and uh. A January twenty eighth article
in The Daily Mail had a picture of her post
surgery going to school, wearing a little plaid skirt and
a tie and waving hute cute is a button. I
thought you said Podma Lachama from Top Chef or whatever
her last name is, and I thought she was a
(13:15):
conjoined twin. No nice work. Well, she does have that
scar on her arm, but I knew that was from
a arm. Just thought it could have been she could
have been joined at the forearm. You know a lot
about Padma. I'm a top Chef nut. Uh. So then
we have the terrata and a didema, and that is
(13:36):
with one single upper body with a double lower half,
or if you're connected by a single body part, like
connected at the head, let's say, or this also includes
kids with like a from the waist down have two
sets of legs, but everything else above is just single, right,
And then the final one is terata and a katata
(13:57):
didema and a di didema. And that's joined somewhere at
the mid section, so maybe joined at the chest. You
might share a heart, you might share some other organs
or back to back, let's say above the spine, that
kind of thing, right, and chuck, that includes umflow Pegas
and you know who is M flow Pegas can joined twins,
(14:20):
don't you Ronnie and Donnie. Ronnie and Donnie Gallian. That's right,
the world's oldest living can join twins from Ohio somewhere, right. Yeah.
Then they turned fifty eight last October. Yeah. Yeah, we
did a bit on them on the webcast and they
there as you would expect, kind of cantanker us with
each other, but also like love and hug on each other.
I think it's Donnie who is uh, he gets he's
(14:42):
afraid of the dark, so Ronnie like cuddles him. Yeah,
it's really sweet. If you haven't ever seen any footage
of Ronnie and Donnie Galleon right hanging out, you should
look it up. They also punch each other in the
face when they're watching TV when well, they have two TVs, right,
and then they'll be watching them obviously at the same time,
and one will turn the volume up and the other
(15:02):
trains his volume up and it keeps going and then
somebody gets punched in the face. It's kind of funny. Yeah,
it is uh that moves us on. Josh to another
form of conjoined twin called parasitic twining, and this is
when one conjoined twin is a lot smaller and maybe
not as fully formed. And sometimes this is when you
(15:23):
can get like a limb and an odd part of
your body, like an arm growing out of your back
or something like that. Right, And a subset even rarer
than this is uh parasitic twinning. And by the way,
Andy Garcia was born with the parasitic twin. Didn't know
that until I read this. I didn't either. But a
very rare form of um parasitic twinning is fetus and feetsu,
(15:44):
which is where the twin, the unformed or underdeveloped twin,
is found in the body of the living twin, the
surviving twin UH, and often in it in the form
of a taratoma. You'll find teeth, hair, um, spinal bones, segments, bones,
(16:04):
uh and these are all just called teratomas. What makes
it a fetus and feet you, is when there's a
recognizable trunk and limbs. Imagine finding that in your abdomen,
which is commonly where it grows. It's really it's really sad,
is what it is. It was about to say creepy,
but but I mean imagine it's it's just a tragedy.
(16:26):
Imagine if you and your parents never had any idea
that you were part of a twin and then all
of a sudden it's like, oh, here he is. Well
that's where he got to, you know, and you got
would be kind of shaking. That happens a little more
often than my I'm comfortable with it, said one and
every five hundred thousand. Oh, I thought you were about
to reveal your own story. No, no, no, no no.
But I just saw one in every five hundred thousand.
(16:47):
My first thought was, oh, wow, that's really rare. Then
I thought, there's a lot of people on the earth,
and that's not as rare as I would like it
to be. Yeah, And with conjoint twins, actually they're rarer
than I thought. Um. Apparently, by Catherine Near's estimate, there's
only about fifty un conjoined conjoined twins unconnected conjoined twins
(17:07):
uh in the world today, he said, I think one
and every forty verse but only one in every two
hundred thousand live births because of conjoined twins are still
born or die you know, a day or two after birth,
which is really sad. Right, So about of conjoined twins
don't make it past the day. So the ones that do, Yeah,
(17:30):
and then that that five percent. Probably most of them
are going to be disconnected at some point yea if possible. Um.
Of course there have been some famous ones, right Ronnie
and Donnie. Uh, yeah, who who are the Guinness guys?
Hang and Chang bunker Archie their brother Hang and Chang.
(17:50):
We're born in eighteen eleven and Siam which we call
Thailand now uh. And pretty early on they realized like, hey,
we can make a lot of money off of ourselves,
so they started touring the world. Um, and they did
make a pretty respectable sum for themselves, and they actually
um retired. They think Wilkesboro, North Carolina, didn't get married
(18:12):
to They married sisters Sally and Adelaide Yates and the
couples together uh had to combine twenty one children and
they were never separated. That's the word I was looking
for that connected. Now they were where at the chest?
They were at the chest and and an autopsy performed
(18:34):
on them afterward, um, after their death, which accounts for
the word autopsy. UH found that they shared no organs.
They could have just gone skin graft. They did two
sexual organs. They had two of everything, except they were
joined at the chest, so they had two sexual Organs,
and they fathered twenty one kids with two sisters. But
(18:57):
they had to be a weird Saturday night. It was room.
Yeah yeah, well, yeah, everybody's in the room. That's a
managa whatever. I don't even know what that is, right.
But they lived to be sixty three actually, and then
I think they were the oldest living conjoined twins of
their time. I imagine it's probably in history. And there
was another set that's fairly um well known, I guess I.
(19:20):
I didn't hear them until this article. Did you read
this part? I did not about the bidden In Maids
Mary and Eliza chulk Hurst. They were born a d
in England, I take it. And they were pago pagas.
That's a fun way to say say that pig pegas. Uh.
They were pago pagas. So they were connected along their
(19:41):
lower back and the butt hawks so they're not facing
each other, no, which I think would probably be a
real pain. Yeah. Well, I mean there's probably no scenario
that's really easy to live with about it. They lived
to be thirty four though, that's pretty old, especially back then.
And I think Chang and hang and uh, the Biddenden
(20:04):
Maids died within hours of each other, which is fairly frequent.
Remember when we were researching Ronnie and Donnie. Yeah, the
doctor was talking about how, you know, sometimes people can
live up to eighteen hours, but usually it's not very long.
So can we talk about my other two favorite types
of twinning? Though favorite too. Sometimes, Josh, a woman can
(20:29):
release two eggs, like you would when you would have
fraternal twins, but maybe one might be let's say, two
weeks later than the other. Your husband or boyfriend or whoever, Uh,
you're having your baby with you still liberal fertilizes both
eggs at different times, and you're actually pregnant with quote
(20:49):
unquote twins, but one would be born two weeks after
the other, right, depending on the moment of conception. And
that's called superfication, and that's at never heard of that.
I'm kind of blown away. Yeah i am too. I'm
even more blown away, Chuck by a little term called
super feet condition. Yeah. They'd added a little extra few
(21:09):
letters in there because because it's like bonus. Yeah. Um,
if a woman releases more than one egg during ovulation, uh,
and two different males fertilize the eggs, so you get
sperm from one male and then spurn from another male
and both of them are fertilized and take in just
eight she can have siblings half siblings at the same time,
(21:36):
virtually the same time. But boom, super fee condition and
actually the first one you talked about, superfetation. They can
lead to half identical twins where um, the egg splits
before fertilization and is infertilized by two separate sperm. So
these twins actually share sev their d n A. Yeah,
(21:57):
polar body twins. Yeah, pretty cool term. Yeah, so that's yeah,
it's the same thing, except it's not two eggs to
begin with. It's one egg that splits. That makes sense. So, Chuck,
you want to talk about some you want to just
put some twin myths down, take them around the barn
and shoot them. Sure, or we can validate them. Yes, okay.
(22:19):
There's a study called the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart,
and it's an ongoing four part deal where their study um,
fraternal and identical twins raised together and separate to see
like what the big all the hullabaloo is all about.
And what they found a lot of times is that
twins separated at birth identical twins, uh or I guess
(22:40):
fraternal too. They share a lot of the same characteristics
in life. And Jim and Jim Lewis and Springer were
separated at four weeks old, right, and they were adopted.
So note both of their first names are the same.
They were given the same first name by their adoptive parents, right,
instead of the same last name. Very odd. Uh. They
(23:01):
were apart until they were thirty nine years old. They
both grew to six ft tall weight exactly a hundred
and eighty pounds when they were little boys. Each one
had a dog named Toy right. Each one had been
married two times. The first wives of both were called Linda,
and the second wives of both were called Betty yea.
Each one had a son they named James Allen, which
(23:24):
is interesting. They and and here's another little fact for you.
My dad's name is James Allen and he had a
twin that died at birth. This is getting out of hand. Yeah.
I remember when my dad first told me that. I
was like, oh. And then a couple of years later
I was like, Wow, that's so weird to think that
I would have had an identical twin uncle. Yeah, that
(23:45):
just never happened. That would have changed the course of
your life entirely. Uncle look alike? How it called him? Uh? What? What?
What other things that they have in common? Each one
had driven a had a light blue Chevrolet, and they
both vacationed at past a grilled beach in Florida. Right,
here's my favorite. Uh. They both enjoyed Salem cigarettes and
Miller Lite beer. Yes, I love that one too. Um.
(24:08):
They were both nail biters, they both held part time
job as sheriffs. They both had migraines. And then the
little love note thing. Yeah, and uh, and how the
Mind Works, I think is what it's called Stephen Pinker's book. Um.
He he off handedly mentions that. Uh. And he's saying,
is there a gene for leaving love notes around the house?
(24:29):
And he's saying, twins rude apart kind of suggest Yeah, right,
they both left love notes for their wives. It's so odd.
It is what an odd characteristic to share. So they
were obviously studied in that in that Minnesota study of
twins reared apart, But they do mention I thought this
is funny that they had different hairstyles. Well, yeah, I
mean like it is easily sensationalized you know, and you
(24:52):
you you've got to say, like, you know, those facts
lead you to believe that they were the exact same
person in every single way. So when they said had
the mop top Beatles haircut and one had like the
pompadoor Johnny Cash with the sideburns even longer CIDs. Yeah,
so maybe they just listened to different music and well
another one was more articulate than the other, and the
(25:12):
other was a better writer than the articulate one. Alright, yes,
interesting stuff. Imagine having a twin with the same first
name being like hey Jim, Hey Jim. They get old
really fast, nice sideburns, nice mop top, let's go smoke
some Salem's let's oh boy um and then uh forty
(25:33):
eight hours the TV show did did a special on
identical twins raised Apart, and they found interesting things like
Barbara and Daphne that were twins and they both had
miscarriages and then had two boys and one girl. A
little bit of a connection there, I don't know, however,
the top that is though, are those the giggle twins? Yeah,
(25:55):
because they apparently had the same laugh. Well they crossed
their arms and giggle in the same way, right, which
you could have picked up from watching ALF. They could
have both been watching ALF. Yeah you never know? Yeah
did you watch ALF? Yeah? I didn't watch OFF. I
never got it. It's like a puppet. Have you ever
seen Permanent Midnight? Oh yeah, that's the guy who wrote
(26:16):
the first season of ALF. That's what Permanent Midnight is about.
If you go watch Permanent Midnight and then you go
watch the first season at ALF, there's a lot of
like kind of really quick, dark funny things in there
that My favorite part of that movie is when he
and Owen Wilson are had lost their drugs and Owen
Wilson says, if I was a Perka Dan, where would
(26:36):
I be? Great line and chuck. You know, um, twins
root apart is like a perfect natural experiment to try
to settle nature versus nurture. Yeah right, Um, it's not
always a natural experiment. And I'm making air quotes for
those of you who can't see. There's a group in
New York that was affiliated well, they had an end
(26:59):
with a your adoption agency in New York and I
think the sixties, and they were basically like, oh, you've
got some twins up for adoption. Make sure that this
goes this one to this family, and this goes to
this family, and then they kept tabs. So they were
like purposefully separating twins and in the adoption through the
adoption agency and then studying them like this huge longitudinal study. Uh.
(27:22):
And actually, uh, they apparently got some really great results,
but they became so afraid. Is apparently the public sentiment of,
you know, separating twins for the study of nature versus nurture.
Public sentiment changed. So by the eighties, I think they
concluded this twenty year study. Um, they were like, Okay,
we're just going to never talk about this for the
(27:42):
next sixty years. So they sealed it and I think
it's in like a the Yale University Library under lock
and key. But it's coming out in the next like
ten or twenty years. I think, Yeah, it's gonna rock
our world. Yeah that in the whole Kennedy assassination, the
truth will be out there. I don't know if that
one's overcoming out. We'll know when their dates set for
it is there. Yeah, I think so where the records
(28:03):
are gonna be open? Awesome, can't wait. I need to
watch more stuff they don't want you to know. Huh. Yes,
are awesome Conspiracy Theorist podcast. Yeah, uh so, Josh, we
do know that, Um, we don't know what causes the
uh the MZ twins right now, but we do know
that the rate is consistent throughout the world, which is
about one and two fifty right now. That's that doesn't
(28:26):
necessarily mean that, like it's every time there's what did
you say, one in to fifty or four in a thousand?
One in fifty is a little easier, okay, But it
doesn't mean that every time there's a thousand births, you
know there's four equally distributed. No, of course, not right.
But if you take the birth statistics across the entire world,
you're gonna find about four per one thousand, and actually
(28:48):
by ethnic group, uh it changes. African Americans tend to
have far more twins than any other group. And Africans
and I'm sorry African people of African descent um, and
Africans themselves. Sure that I think they said that Yoruba
tribe in Nigeria has forty five per one thousand births,
(29:08):
and that's a lot. That is a whole lot. Uh.
On the low end, Chinese people have eleven point two
per one thousand berths right, right, And that that's in
the United States, by the way, not in China. Chinese
people living in the United States, So Chinese Americans have
eleven point two per one thousand, but if you go
to China, it's like eight hundred per one thousand. I
(29:30):
don't think that's the right number. That is not the
right number. But um, there are a couple of factors involved,
chuck real quick. Um the the uh. I think the
follicle stimulating hormone can cause a woman to have more
than one egg. Um. And that's usually found more frequently
in heavy women and older women. Uh. And we've been
kind of trending towards he and right as far as
(29:52):
parents go. So twinning as a result in the US
has risen eighty or thirty eight percent and sixty five percent.
Since that's pretty big jump. Okay, so let's move along
and get rid of some myth. Dude. Twin language josh right,
also known as idea glossia and cryptophagia. That is, uh,
(30:14):
when some people say it, twins have like a secret
language that they speak to each other, sort of not true.
What the deal usually is is, um, let's say when
they're developing. Let's say the first little twin has like
a slower development with the language than the second twin.
The second twin will kind of hang back or mimic
and mimic mirror neurons, maybe mimic the other twin, and
(30:36):
then all of a sudden they kind of developed this
code if you will, right. Uh, so twin language, no
technically no, all right? Uh? And then you always hear
about twins having esp like one of them gets injured
somewhere and the other one across the country knows about
(30:57):
it right then or or something. So this have been
tested actually, and uh. In one experiment, it's kind of clever.
They took two twins and they put one. They put
them in separate rooms, split them up. Well, yeah, you
got to, or else they'll just cheat like crazy. I
wonder if they faked it though, and they're like they
really thought they had Donnie when they had Ronnie. Yeah
(31:17):
you have both, yeah, yeah, um, but you split one.
You split them up and you give one some cards
to pick to choose from with different illustrations on it,
and then the other one has the same set of
cards in another room. So you have the one that
chose to the card, the sender send the image telepathically
to the target, the recipient twin, and then the recipient
(31:40):
twin is supposed to choose that card. Well, the crazy
thing is is, in the first round of this experiment
they got it right like half of the time, which
is pretty significant. But then they altered the experiment a
little bit and they had a an assistant choose the
card for the twin, and then the twins sent them telepathically,
(32:01):
and all of a sudden it dropped the right. And
they think that it was because the twins were hitting
at because of shared preferences, not uh tell telleth telepathy.
There's something really wrong with me today. Yeah, I think
that's probably the deal. That a lot of experiments don't
show any kind of special bond. Some do, but the
(32:22):
same experiments show that special bond between let's say a
mother and a daughter or a brother and a sister
that aren't twins, and they think that it probably just
has more to do with um, like you said, growing
up together, shared preferences and interest, that kind of thing.
So what do you want to do celebs or movies
famous twins? Josh, have you ever heard of Mario Andretti
(32:46):
race car driver. Yes, no, I have been either. That's see.
I highlighted the ones that I was like. I didn't
know they had a twin because some of them obviously,
you know, like Jenna and Barbara Bush. Yeah, but they're
for turn A right. Uh yeah, Giselle Bunch in the
smoking hot model. Yeah, Jesus sister. I imagine a smoking
(33:08):
hot sister. She is good looking, she's her manager. She's
not model hot, but she is very attractive. Are they
identical or fraternal? Their fraternal? Vin Diesel really yeah? He
has a kind of a funny looking brother named Paul Vincent.
A picture of him. How do you name your kid?
Paul Vincent? And then Vin Diesel's a stage name, dude.
(33:31):
I wonder if his name is Vincent Paul. Oh. Maybe
maybe his parents were very unamazed innative, or maybe Paul
Diesel changed his name to Vincent because he thought it
was too you know. Gear Head Scarlett Johansson has a
brother named Hunter. They look a lot alike Ashton Kutcher,
Did you know that? I think that rang a bell? Actually? Yeah?
(33:52):
The Cutch has a brother named Michael, who has cerebral palsy. Sadly. Yes,
that does ring a bell. Yeah, and he like it's
his kind of lives for him him and has brought
a lot of awareness to that um altist. Morrissett as
a brother named Wade who cares. And Wade Morrisset is
a singer, yoga dude and a cureton. It's just like
an Indian chanter. Can we be done now? Uh? Parker
(34:16):
Posey as a brother named Chris Cool. I'll bet he's cool. Uh.
And then Keifer William, Frederick Dempsey, George Rufus Sutherland. Did
you know he had that many names? Yes, he has
a fraternal twin sister named Rachel. Why would you give
a kid that many names? Donald Southerland is probably smoking
a lot of something back in the day. Oh yeah,
(34:36):
at least he did an animal House. And then, of
course my favorite twins, Kim and Kelly deal. Kim deal
with the Breeders. Okay, well they're both in the Breeders
and Kim was in the Pixies. Pixies Uh. And before
we move on, I want to put a call out
because I saw a special one time on a TV
show about these two twins. Two I think like twelve
(34:58):
year old black girls in England, and they mimicked everything exactly.
They spoken stereo at the same exact time, they walked
exactly the same in synchronousy. It's like the twins in
the Shiny It's very creepy and that's exactly what they were.
And you know what happened. But one day they found
(35:19):
one of them drowning the other one in a creek.
Did they save the one? I don't know and I
can't find I saw this like years ago and I
have never, ever ever been able to find anything on it.
So putting the call out there to the s Y
s k army anyone knows about this, I'm dying to
know the story. Well, if you want to read one
of the better articles on how stuff works, check out
(35:39):
twins is type twins in the handy search bar how
stuff works dot com and that leads us to listener mail. Yes, Josh,
I have a couple of quick ones. This is from
Adrian and Canadian City, fredericton n B. What does that mean?
I have no idea. Yeah, probably he's eleven. It's called
Canadian City, New Brunswick. Or he's saying, yeah, it's hey, guys,
(36:05):
my name is Adrian. In case you're wondering, I'm a boy,
and surprisingly enough, I am only eleven years old and
I listen to your podcast every night. I can I
believe that thanks to you guys, I'm the smartest boy
in my class in the subject of interesting facts. And Jerry,
I have not forgotten about you. I believe that without you,
the sound effects would run for the hills. Keep up
(36:27):
the good work, people. Please put this in your next podcast,
because if I heard myself on the show, then it
would be one of the highlights of my life. Well,
technically you're not hearing yourself, but you're hearing Chuck read
you Adrian. But that's close enough. That's right. Jerry loved this.
When Jerry Ford did this after we had already seen it,
did she go cute, Well, i've the sound effects. They
would run for the hills and that's adorable. No, she
(36:48):
just wanted to remind us of her place and exactly.
And then this is from Abu and this is another
kind of call out to the fans because we said
something about Arthur the weather man in our little YouTube
bar last well, which one was at And do you
remember I had nothing to do with whatever we were
talking about it now, I don't remember. It will probably
come out after this one. No, it already came out. Okay,
(37:11):
But we heard from Abu that Arthur the weather Man
actually perished in the Hate the earthquake. I don't think
that's true, but we don't know if that's true. I
looked it up on the Internet and everything points back
to the single source that isn't reputable. So if anyone
out there has any information on Arthur, No, Arthur, if
you're out there, let us know you're alive. Please. Yeah,
(37:31):
we're praying and hoping that you're alive. It's gonna be hot. Yeah,
if you have any information on Arthur the weather Man
or you live in a Canadian city. And by the way,
thank you Adrian and Abu Uh. Send us an email.
We love getting emails. Chuck loves responding to emails. Jerry
loves forwarding emails. Just send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
(37:58):
this and thousands of other time fixed, visit how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
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