4/15/2006: Mixed-race couple has black and white twins
 

http://cellar.org/2006/blacknwhitetwins.jpg

This item is a few weeks old, sent along by xoB, but it's the sort of item that's timeless anyway. These two children are twins, born to the mother and father shown above.

xoB sends along the original Daily Mail article and the Snopes page that verify that this is, in fact, a case of twins born to the same father. Genetically, you could imagine how it might happen - but the Daily Mail article explains the genetics behind it, and rates the chances of it happening at about a million to one.

Makes a mental note ya both are jokesters :p


The blond baby is probably at crawling stage and the dark baby is toddling.

But I did see a program once where two blond hair sweds gave birth to a black baby!

Now that WAS TRUE. :)

he looks pleased ;(

pleased?Pissed? It's a sad day? They are all unrelated is my guess.

Here is the miracle I think you are looking for.

OMG! is that the were-rabbit from wallace and gromit?

naw, that's his wife.

They're twins alright, both parents are mixed race and carry both sets of genes. :mg:

I say both those kids are in therapy before they're in kindergarten.

now we just need a set of identical twins, expect one is black and the other is white

You can't get them that way. Identical twins = identical DNA = identical skin tone.

hey. a man can dream

Yes you can...
 

Identical twins does indeed mean the same sperm and therefore the same DNA, but please keep in mind that not all the genotypes in the DNA will express itself as a phenotype. In this case they both have the genes for both black and white skin but only one phenotype in this case expressed itself.

EDIT to say that after reading the snopes article they are fraternal twins not "identical twins" therefore there are two different eggs and sperm which makes it even more likely to occur (although still very rare).

That would be true *if* they were identical twins.

They are not. They are fraternal twins. Two sperm, two eggs, two separate DNA profiles, two children.

In this case, as both parents are mixed-race, one happened to get a set of genes for light skin and one got a set of genes for dark skin. It's not even all that shocking, in theory, it's just very jarring in practice.

... and as soon as I post that, I realise that you're responding to someone else, and suddenly I feel dumb.

This reminded me of the "mirror twins" from RAH's Time Enough for Love.