Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Were All Lefties Once Twins?
Tuesday, March 13, 2007

In the early days of the Feilerettes they first began to put food into their mouths with their left hands. Both of them. It was very cute to watch and seemed more, surefire evidence of the power of biology. Around that time Mrs. Feiler Faster and I went to buy a suit and the undeniably reliable scientific source of the suit salesman told us one of the more interesting things we learned during those early, sleep-deprived months: That all left-handers were once twins. The idea here is that anyone who is left-handed but not a twin would have had a twin who vanished somewhere along the way, a common practice before the arrival of the sonogram. Anyway, we repeated this endlessly because it was just too good to be true and too interesting to bother to verify.

Cut to: The other day I was trolling around the Internet and stumbled onto a twins site that had some interesting facts. Check out the fact of the left-handedness. Hmmmmm.........................

Did You Know?

· "Twin" comes from the German word "twine" meaning "two together."

· Gemini is the constellation or zodiac sign of twins.

Types of Twins

· Identical twins - result when a single egg splits. They share 100% of their DNA. They are the same gender and tend to look very similar.

· Fraternal twins - result when two eggs are fertilized at the same time. They share 50+% of their DNA. They can be the same or different genders, they can look similar or very different.

· Conjoined twins - are identical twins that occur when the egg does not split all the way when forming in the womb. 1 in 200,000 births are conjoined.

· Mirror-image twins - are identical twins that show mirroring traits instead of identical traits. For example, one is left-handed, the other is right-handed.
About Twin Births
· 1 in every 32 births is a twin. Since 1980, twins births have risen 62%

· Fraternal twinning occurs 1 in 60 births. Identical twinning occurs 1 in 150 births.

· A twin pregnancy causes normal pregnancy symptoms, such as nausea and morning sickness, to occur earlier. On average, twins are born 22 days premature.

· Multiple births are the most common in African American cultures. Multiple births are least common in Asian cultures.

· The nation with the highest number of multiple births is Nigeria.

Fun Facts

· In the United States, over 150 identical twins are married to identical twins. Genetically their children are brother and sister, but legally their children are cousins.

· Cryptophasia is when twins have their own "twin language" that only they understand. Many twins appear to have this so-called language when they are babies.

· Sometimes it is hard to tell if twins are identical or fraternal but look alike. DNA tests are an accurate way to prove if twins are truly identical or fraternal.

Studying Twins

· The scientific study of twins is called gemellology.

· 18-22% of twins are left handed, for non-twins the rate of lefties is only 10%.

· Studies have shown that identical twins tend to live longer than fraternal twins, researchers believe this is due to their close communication.

· Studies show that identical twins exhibit the same brain wave patterns.

Labels: Twins

Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM
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