Twins!
Yesterday (Wednesday) I watched the ITV documentary The ‘Secret Life of Twins’. It showed many different twins as well as talking about the different types twins.
Admittedly, I haven’t got many twins in my tree, although they are there! And if you look in your tree you will probably find twins as well! In my tree one example of twins is Henry and Roger Clarke. Both born on the 3 March 1896 to Joseph Edmund and Mary Ann Clarke in Chertsey, Surrey.
The documentary actually taught me that identical twins do not have identical fingerprints. This is because fingerprints don’t form due to DNA. Although they start the same, the twins will begin to move in the amniotic sac and touch it, in different places, with their hands creating ridges to appear, resulting in different fingerprints.
By doing a bit more research, I came across ‘zygosity’. This says that there are 5 common variations of twinning. Three dizygotic and two monozygotic. Dizygotic means the twins are unidentical (fraternal) and have come from two different eggs and monozygotic means they’ve come from the same egg and identical.
Both have Male/Male, Female/Female and Male/Female. But Male/Female identical twins are extremely rare so can’t be counted as common.
The show also mentioned the Chapman and the Miller twins, they are mirror image twins, which is a type of identical twins but the egg splits later than usual, usually around day 10. This usually causes some twins to have opposite dominant hands or/and have organs on different sides of the body. If the split is even later than around day 12 it usually causes siamese twins.
To finish, the most consecutive set of twins, is 4 generations. I remember this due to one of them being a member on RootsChat and sharing the information!
Although, I’ve probably gone a bit too far from a genealogical perspective! I hope you found this interesting!
Published: 16 July 2015
Admittedly, I haven’t got many twins in my tree, although they are there! And if you look in your tree you will probably find twins as well! In my tree one example of twins is Henry and Roger Clarke. Both born on the 3 March 1896 to Joseph Edmund and Mary Ann Clarke in Chertsey, Surrey.
The documentary actually taught me that identical twins do not have identical fingerprints. This is because fingerprints don’t form due to DNA. Although they start the same, the twins will begin to move in the amniotic sac and touch it, in different places, with their hands creating ridges to appear, resulting in different fingerprints.
By doing a bit more research, I came across ‘zygosity’. This says that there are 5 common variations of twinning. Three dizygotic and two monozygotic. Dizygotic means the twins are unidentical (fraternal) and have come from two different eggs and monozygotic means they’ve come from the same egg and identical.
Both have Male/Male, Female/Female and Male/Female. But Male/Female identical twins are extremely rare so can’t be counted as common.
The show also mentioned the Chapman and the Miller twins, they are mirror image twins, which is a type of identical twins but the egg splits later than usual, usually around day 10. This usually causes some twins to have opposite dominant hands or/and have organs on different sides of the body. If the split is even later than around day 12 it usually causes siamese twins.
To finish, the most consecutive set of twins, is 4 generations. I remember this due to one of them being a member on RootsChat and sharing the information!
Although, I’ve probably gone a bit too far from a genealogical perspective! I hope you found this interesting!
Published: 16 July 2015
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