What’s so special about Twins?

that like? Speech? Nicely done, Gabe, Yeah, secret language. And actually, in today's case, I'm referring to twin languages or you know, the secret languages that twins developed that nobody else knows.

And of course, almost every little kid makes up at least a few words, but cryptophacia supposedly occurs in about half of all twins, and researchers think much of the reason it develops is because, you know, like most kids, twins will mispronounce certain words, but then because they understand each other so well, they just reinforce those words and develop a new language out of them. Okay, sure, yeah, that makes sense, But it was actually a lot of

fun to read about. Matthew and Michael Jolden. These are the twins, they're now adults, and they took this idea to another level, and instead of leaving behind that secret language early in life, they just decided to really develop it and fully flesh out this language, complete with an alphabet, grammatical rules, everything. Now the language is called Mary, and

over the years they've continued to develop it. Now we're talking thousands of words, and today the brothers have a decent online following where they share their learnings from something like twenty other languages they've learned over the years. Oh wow, that's pretty awesome. And I mean, I know it's a little weird to say, but I gotta admit I'm pretty jealous. I get a game. But it makes a lot of sense. And you know, of course, cryptophasia isn't the only thing

people find fascinating about twins. I think most of us have probably thought about what it would be like to be a twin. That is, of course, those of us who aren't already twins. So you know, today we're gonna take a look into the history of twins, what different civilizations have thought about them, some of the surprising facts around the science of twins, how the idea of evil twins emerged, And of course we couldn't resist doing some digging into non human twins, so let's dive in. Y

Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and today I'm joined by our friend and researcher Gabe Lousier. Mangesh is still on vacation. I am happy to report my voice is back from its vacation. It feels good to be speaking normally again. But Gabe, how's it going. Hey, it's going well. Thanks for having me on, of course, and on the other side of the soundproof glass boarding a fetching new goatee. I wish you could see this thing, Gabe. That's our friend and

producer Tristan McNeil. Oh, well, I'm not so sure about that. If if Star Treks taught me anything, it's to beware the sudden appearance of well sculpted facial there. So it's usually a sure sign you're dealing with an evil twins to watch yourself well. Honestly, though, unless you know how to work the sound equipment, I think we're just gonna have to take our chances here. And besides, if that is Tristan's evil twin, then I have to at least

given props for staying on theme here. It feels appropriate because today's show is all about twins, duos, doubles, and because this is a bit of a grab bag episode, we can start pretty much anywhere we want. So, so, Gabe, you're joining us today. What what sounds good to you?

Where do you want to start? Um? Well, I don't want to go too dark too quickly, but I'd like to stick with the whole evil twin thing for a minute, if you don't mind, because on one hand, you know, it's just such a weird leap to make right, like just because two people look the same, they must be polar opposites in terms of morality. But I mean, on some level, the ideas really struck a chord with us, because it's not like Evil Spock was the first of

his kind or anything. And in fact, humans have a long track record of being distrustful of doubles, like the birth of twins was long thought to be a bad omen in many cultures, and there's all kinds of folklore from throughout Europe and Africa that tells about these so called changelings, and these were said to be like a supernatural children, the offspring of fairies or demons, and they were supposedly left in place of stolen human children, so

they would look identical, but they secretly harbored all these sinister intentions. Well, you know, the example I always think back to for evil twins is that German idea that everyone has their own doppelganger or double goer, and this is, you know, supposedly a kind of specter that each of us has that looks exactly like us. And the myth was that seeing your double three times would cause you to die shortly thereafter. And the term itself was coined

by a German author named Jean Paul. This was back in seventeen nine six, but you know, you have similar ideas popping up around the same time in both English and Irish literature as well. And in these cases, the spiritual double was called effect because the concept was pretty much the same. You know, if you catch a glimpse of yours and you're unfortunately a goner. You know, Also, this is kind of random, but that John Paul guy

mentioned he actually came up with two words to describe doubles. Well, I mean that's appropriate, right, yeah, But sadly the second term hasn't endured quite so well. It was actually just the same word, but with a T dropped in the middle, So I guess it's doppeled ganger. I'm not sure exactly how to say it, but it was used to describe a meal where two courses were served at the same time. I love how the more practical term is the one

that fell out of use. Like, you know, somebody had to ask, should we keep the word for eating soup and salad at the same time or the one that refers to sinister look alikes to predict our own deaths? Let's keep that one. Well, you never know. I mean, this could be the first step to bringing back the other, meaning we'll see what we can do. But I do have to admit that the concept of doppelganger lends itself

pretty well to literature. I mean, it's a clever way to dig into that duality of humans that a lot of literature refers to, and that kind of that light and that dark side that we have. And that's probably what's at the root of the whole evil twin trope thing in the first place. Don't you think, Oh yeah,

that makes a lot of sense. And I mean, to be fair, though, doppelgangers aren't exclusive to folklore and novels, there are some real world cases where people claim to have seen their doubles, and true to all those myths, those people, you know, they died prematurely. For example, Abraham Lincoln, he actually claimed to see a double reflection of himself in the mirror just after he was elected, and one face looked normal, but the other was said to look

eerily pale and kind of ghost like. Yeah, Lincoln said this happened two more times to him, but no one else was ever there to witness it. And I mean, he did tell his wife, Mary Todd about these visions, and strangely enough, she actually took them as a sign that Lincoln would serve two terms as president, one for each of these faces. But you know, she also interpreted the kind of ghost like face to mean that he would die before the end of that second term, and

you know, of as he did. Wow, that's so strange, and it's also, of course a little bit unsettling. But come on, I mean, there has to be a scientific explanation for this kind of stuff. I mean, Lincoln was under a ton of pressure, you know, and a lot of other doppelganger sightings involved people who are either half asleep or seriously ill. So I would think maybe it's just a trick of the brain, like a hallucination brought

on that by this fatigue or illness, don't you think. Yeah, I mean, as fun as it is to speculate, you're probably right. Like I even read about this one neurological condition called hugo scopy, and it's it's where you basically hallucinate your own image at a distance. And you know, something like that is probably at play in cases like

Lincoln's where only one person ever sees the double. But still there are cases where multiple witnesses have claimed to see somebody else's double, and those are a little harder to make sense of. Learned a new word. What you said was called hugo scopy, huge scopy. Okay, good one. All right, Well, let's leave at least a little bit of mystery intact on this one. But I think we should leave the folklore behind and talk instead about a more literal kind of double, which of course is twins.

And once again, appropriately enough, there are actually two ways that a woman can conceive twins. Now. The first is when two eggs are released during ovulation and both are fertilized and both become embryos, and this results in what we call fraternal or non identical twins, and they share about fifty of their genes with each other, which is

actually the same as any siblings born at different times. Now, the other way to conceive twins is for a single fertilized egg to be split into early in its development, and in this case you wind up with identical twins. And because the two embryos resulted from the same combination of a single egg and sperm, they share roughly ninety nine point nine percent of the same DNA. And the weird thing is, we actually aren't really sure why an

egg splits like this. I mean, technically speaking, it's kind of a biological malfunction or you know, a birth anomaly. Well, what about like conjoined twins, are they also identical twins? Yeah? So conjoined twins are essentially identical twins that have joined together in utero. And whether or not this happens really comes down to timing. So if the fertilized egg takes longer than twelve days to split, then it generally won't separate fully and the resulting identical twins will be conjoined

in some way. Okay, I see. So it's like if the egg is fertilized mid split and then never completes the process, then the embryo it develops into is kind of stuck that way as well. Yeah, exactly. And there's actually another subset of identical twins based on the crucial timing of that egg split. Now they're called mirror twins, and scientists think they come about when the fertilized egg separates later than usual, but not as late as with

conjoined twins. So if the split occurs anywhere between seven and twelve days after fertilization, then the resulting embryos will likely be these mirror twins. Interesting, So what are mirror twins? Exactly like? It kind of sounds like the good twin bad twin thing all over again. And now it's it's not exactly that, or it's not that at all. I mean, the term means that the twins have the same physical features except asymmetrically opposite. And I find this kind of

stuff so fascinating. So, you know, just take as an example, if one twin is right handed, the other one will be left handed. If one has a birthmark on his right arm, the other one will have a birth mark on the left arm. Now there are even some extreme cases where twins have mirrored internal organs as well, so that one, you know, might have an appendix or even a heart on the right side, while the other will

have the organs on the left. And it's pretty wild to think about, especially when you consider that this is actually the most common type of rare twins. I think it's like one in four pairs of identical twins are also mirror twins. That seems like a lot. Yeah, although I mean, I guess twins in general have become more and more common lately. Like I came across this birth data report from the CDC and apparently the birth rate for twins has nearly doubled in the US and the

year since. So it used to be that only nineteen sets of twins were born per one thousand berths, but nowadays it's thirty four sets per one thousand, oh also, so nearly doubling. What's going on there, Well, it's really a couple of things. Like one is just that women are choosing to have kids later in life than they used to, so instead of getting pregnant in their twenties. You know, a growing number of ladies are waiting until their thirties, and and so how does that actually lead

to more twins? Well, so this is something I didn't know until doing the research this week, but apparently hormonal changes tend to make older women release more than one egg at a time during opulation, which of course increases the likelihood of fraternal twins. And actually the peak age for this is thought to be about thirty five years old, and the chances of conception in general tend to decrease from there, but thirty five is kind of the sweet

spot if you want the best odds of twinning. Okay, so think about the timeline you gave with the increase of twins spiking after the eighties. I'm guessing the other factor would have to be like the assist of reproductive methods. You know, I've definitely read about in vitro fertilization and and the fact that that I think can up the

chances of multip births. Right, Yeah, that is right. And I mean, now we have stuff like artificial insemination and fertility boosting meds, but in vitro is definitely the most popular method for people struggling to conceive, so it probably plays the biggest role in the twin boom that we're seeing. And in fact, according to the Washington Post, thirties six percent of all the twins born in the US were the results of fertility treatments, with in vitro being the

most common. Oh wow, I didn't realize it was that high. And so did you get a sense of why I v F in particular results in so many twins? Yeah. So the treatment usually involves multiple rounds or cycles, and during each one, doctors typically implant multiple embryos at the same time. And the thinking is that, you know, hey, this procedure is in cheap, and there's no guarantee it will work the first or even a second time around, so let's maximize our chances and hope that at least

one of these will, you know, be viable. But the catch, and this is something we didn't know until more recently, is that the odds of conception actually increase with each round of IVF, and that's up until the ninth round. Okay,

I see that makes sense. So if a doctor implants multiple embryos in like the fifth or sixth round or something like that, then I guess there's a fair chance the parent might wind up with two or three, or I don't know, heck even eight kids in the case of the notorious Optimom Right, Yeah, I know exactly, And I mean doctors have caught onto this by now, so most of them, you know, won't implant more than two

embryos at a time anymore. And that's actually a big reason why the birth rates for twins remains so high, while that of like triplets or higher has dropped significantly. Okay, well, there's definitely more twin science that I want to talk about before we get back into some of the more offbeat stuff. But before we get to that, let's take a quick break. You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the double lives of twins. So gave.

I think most of us have wondered, at one time or another what it would be like to have a twin, especially an identical one. Now, there's just something strangely appealing about sharing, you know, not only the same family and childhood experiences, but the same face, the same d n A as another person. That must be so interesting. I mean, of course they've always had that, but it's it's interesting to imagine what it might be like for those of us who aren't. Of course, some of that comes down

to all the fun perks that go with it. You know, think about confusing your friends or I don't know, sometimes you just want to tag out of those boring social functions, not to mention always having the perfect scapegoat for whatever crimes you might commit. So, did anything like this ever make you wish you had a twin? Yeah? I mean, well, maybe not the whole frame your twin angle. I mean I definitely daydreamed about it once or twice as a kid, sure, And I mean I grew up in the nineties, so

it was kind of hard not to. Like, twins were all over pop culture like the old and twins were still in the limelight. Plus there were shows like Sister Sister, that remake of The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan had the Weasley twins, and Harry Potter, like the list just

goes on. Yeah, and I kind of wonder if that visibility had anything to do with the twin baby boom that we were talking about, because you know, there were suddenly more twins in the world and it felt like time to give them their due in the media and now.

Of course, many folks who weren't bombarded with twins growing up still find themselves fascinated by the idea of them, and some people even feel like they should have been born a twin, like something is missing from their lives without one, and as it turns out, they just might

be onto something. So what do you mean by that, Well, it's actually said that one in ninety live births resulted either fraternal or identical twins, but one in eight of those live births actually began as twins, and this is

something called the vanishing twin phenomenon. And the current thinking is that this is either the result of one of the twin fetuses being absorbed into either the body of the mother or the body of their surviving twin, And this is something we've known about for a file now, but we still aren't quite sure why it happens. Yeah, that's actually pretty creepy, I mean, because it would mean a good percentage of us Singleton's had a twin who

actually vanished sometime during pregnancy, right, is that what you're saying? Yeah, I mean somewhere around fIF or more by most counts, And this can lead to all kinds of weird effects for their surviving twin. Like sometimes when fraternal embryos merge into a single body, that person will actually have two

sets of DNA and different parts of their body. So if you were to take a swab of the cheek of one of these people, you would get one read out, but if you draw their blood you could actually get a completely different one. So weird. It's like some kind of highly specific, not all that useful superpower, right, But you know, there's actually a ton of useful research that's

come from twins studies. In fact, studying identical twins has proven so useful that many researchers now make an annual pilgrimage to the appropriately named Twinsburg, Ohio, just for the chance to study them in mass alright, so wait, back up a second. Is Twinsburg like a town entirely populated by twins? I mean not exactly, but it was found that, or more like refounded by a set of identical twins named Moses and Aaron Wilcox. Now this was back in

eighteen nineteen. The tiny town was still called Millsville, but once the Wilcox twins arrived, they made the town an offer that it couldn't refuse, so in exchange for renaming the town in their honor, the twins donated six acres of land to be used as public space. And if that wasn't enough, they even threw in twenty bucks twenty whole dollars to help build a new school house. Yeah big spenders, huh. But I mean, obviously these guys must have taken the twin thing pretty seriously, I guess now.

I mean, there's no question about that, because not only were the Wilcox's business partners for life, they also married women who were sisters, had the same number of kids, got sick from the same disease, and even died within two hours of each other. But they didn't let a little thing like death stopped them from twinning it up. Because get this, the brothers were actually buried in the same grave in Twinsburg, one stacked right on top of

the other. It's hard to say that, actually, Yeah, alright, so clearly they were just you know, nuts. But I mean, if the town was just named for one set of twins that happened to live there like two hundred years ago, then why are researchers still flocking to Twinsburg today. Well, because Twinsburg is home to the Twins Day Festival, of course. I mean, Gab, I know you've heard of twins Days and it's actually the largest annual gathering of twins in

the free world. Okay, yeah, I actually do remember you guys. I think you briefly mentioned this on an episode like sometime last year. That's right. This is actually the twenty second year of the festival, which by the way, pulls in between two to three thousand sets of multiples each year. So the weekend typically features you know, themed events for twins and they get to compete in these different contests,

live performances, cook offs, like you name it. In fact, I was poking around on the event's website and apparently the theme this year is two player mode, so attendees are encouraged to dress up like their favorite video game or board game characters. Oh wow, that actually sounds pretty fun to me. But there's gonna be so many Mario's

and Luigi's running around that weekend, can even imagine. But you know, aside from all the fun and games, there's also the research Plaza, and this is where hundreds of researchers set up shop, and then they're looking to get help with their projects from the many identical twins that are there in attendance. So what kind of stuff are they working on? All kinds of stuff. I mean, one of the hottest fields right now is, of course, facial

recognition technology. We've talked about this in a couple of recent episodes, and it's obviously of interest to anyone from Apple to the FBI. And you know, one of the best ways to test accuracy of this kind of software is actually to see if the program can spot these

often minute differences between identical twins. But more broadly, twins are a great way to tackle the old nature versus nurture problem because you know, by observing and testing the development and even the decay of these identical twins, you wind up with a pretty effective and natural way to help distinguish between these environmental factors and the genetic ones. So,

for example, imagine a pair of identical twins. You know, they exhibit a trait of shyness or something like that, for example, maybe more so than a pair of fraternal twins. And if you see this, maybe that suggests that that similarity and shyness is due to these genes, which would be the nature piece of this rather than the environment, which is of course the nurture piece. Yeah, that's really interesting.

I'm curious that is shyness just a random example you picked, or is that really something twin studies have helped with Now that this is this is a real one, and and thanks to the twins, that's just one personality trait that researchers now believe is at least somewhat determined by genetics. But there are many others too, like the willingness to take risk, and even the likelihood that someone will hold religious beliefs like those have been linked to our genes

as a result of twins studies. And it's not just psychological or personal traits either. Twin studies have proven that the genetic risk of inheriting a whole host of diseases, think about things like asthma osteoporosa's heart disease and others. That there's that nection. Wow, And I mean this is the stuff that's you know, the result of the kind of research that goes on at these twin festivals. Like

how does that work? Because I mean I'm picturing a bunch of twins just kind of running a gauntlet of like blood tests and X rays and whatever else. It sounds weird, but that's pretty much how it works. And you know, if the attendees feel like lending a hand, they're all kinds of ways for them to help out, everything from filling out surveys to having their picture taken, maybe submitting a DNA sample through their hair or their spit.

But here's a rundown of the battery of tests that a set of twins went through at the last Twinsday festival. Here's a quote from one of them. We were recorded reading the same strange passage about rainbows and pots of gold, so that a computer program could try to tell us apart by voiceprint. We submitted spit to have our DNA

sequence to confirm our identicality. We sipped and swished shots of milk to gauge ability to taste fat and clear liquid tinctures to measure our sensitivity to sweet and bitter. And we took surveys on social media use and online news habits to see if we're both news junkies. Wow, it still sounds pretty strange, but it is cool that so many twins and multiples are willing to help out

like that. So, I mean it's probably sort of nice to feel like the bell of the ball like that, right, I mean, you have all these researchers tripping over themselves just to get a look at your saliva or whatever. Yeah, it's true. And you know it's not just their egos that that benefit from all the attention. I mean, twin participants are usually given some sort of compensation for their

time as well. I was looking into this to see if they were were paid at all, and that's typically you know, ten to fifteen bucks, but more importantly, usually some sort of gift back, Gabe, So I get it. I see why they participate. Yeah, and now I definitely wish I had a twin. You know, I don't want all of this to go to their heads. So what do you say we shift gears and talk about some unique twins of the non human variety. All right, let's do it. But before we do that, let's take one

more quick break. Al Right, Well, so far we've stuck two cases of human twins, both natural and supernatural, and that's largely because twins, or at least the identical kind, we're pretty rare outside of our own species. But now I thought we could widen our scope just a bit and maybe do kind of a rapid fire around to cover some of the more unusual sets of twins we

came across this week. Yeah, that makes sense. And actually, let's stick to animals for a minute, because what you pointed out that was actually something I didn't know before. We were doing our research for this episode, and I came across a recent case where an animal totally bucked

that no twins trend that you mentioned. And this happened in August of two thousand sixteen, when a veterinarian named Kurt D. Cramer was performing a surgery in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his patient was this Irish wolf found who was in dire need of a C section. This is kind of embarrassing, you might laugh at me, But an Irish wolf found. That's that's some kind of dog, right. It's not like a wolf or something spoken like a like a true cat. Person there gay, but yes, this is

in fact the dog. All right, please continue? Okay, sod Cramer is in there and he's doing his thing when he comes across something he's never encountered before. To live puppies attached to the same placenta. Now, right off the bat, the vet suspects that this means the puppies were identical twins, even though their markings were somewhat different. But a blood test actually confirmed the suspicion, and the two pups, named Cullen and Romulus, were officially declared as the first identical

twin puppies ever discovered. Twin puppies. I'm not a big fan of dogs, but I have to admit that even makes my heart melt a little bit. I'm curious, like, did you read anything about why twins are so rare and other species? Yeah? I did. I was reading a little bit on this. The way the BBC explained it is that the placenta of other animals that they just aren't able to support two fetuses at once. It's although identical twins might form in the wounds of other animals

pretty often, rarely if ever carried to term. So when you think about it, those little pups were really one in a million. But you know, okay, before you say anything about this, just don't tell their five letter mates. They're probably already feeling a little overshadowed by all this already. Well, you have got to stop making me sympathetic to dogs. That that's my goal here today. Gave just making you

sympathetic to dogs. Finally, Okay, well, I'll see your identical twin puppies story, and I will raise you one about a carton of eggs that all contained double yolks. I didn't know where you're going this, but I don't feel like that's anywhere near as endearing as the puppy story. But but go ahead, Well, yeah, we can let the listeners be the judge of that, because this story doesn't have the most emotional appeal. But it's still a really

strange one. And you know, it helps to know that it's pretty uncommon for a hen to lay an egg with two yolks. In fact, your odds of finding a double yolked egg or about one in a thousand. It's so unlikely that some European folklore actually interprets finding even one of these eggs as a sign of good fortune or even as foreshadowing, you know, for the birth of human twins. Actually, it's kind of a nice change of pace from all the folklore about twins being bad omens.

But but you said, somebody found a whole carton of double yolks? So what what kind of omen is that? Yeah? I have no idea really, but I mean the seventeen year old who have found the full dozen, he took it as a sign that, you know, he should probably buy some lottery tickets. That. To be fair, most eggs sold in stores are packaged by weight, so that increases the odds of double yolks being packaged together, and you know cartons of heavier like jumbo eggs for for instance.

But finding a full run like that is still super rare, and you know it would never really happen outside of a grocery store. All right, Well, I mean I still feel like the twin puppies were better. But but but but let's move on from the animal world and talk about a very different type of twin. I mean, a very different type of twin and a strangely named one, the twin bed. Oh god, I'm so glad you're bringing this up, because you know what, I've always thought that

was a weird term. Like, I mean, I only had one of them as a kid, so it just makes it sound like you have like in a strange bed or something like. There's just some long lost twin bed out there that was carved from the same tree. And well, to be fair, actually the U s is the only place that seems to have this problem, you know, just

looking at what they call it in other countries. In England, for example, a one person bed is just called a single and then the term twin bed is really only used in cases where you actually have two single beds in the same room. Okay, well, I mean hats off to the UK then, because if that's the case, then they are doing beds right. Okay, you obviously looked into this.

So how did the selling point for single person beds become the fact that you know, you could if you wanted by two of them, like we're bed makers marketing specifically to families with twins or what. Well, it's not a bad guess, but it actually has more to do with married couples than it does with their children. I mean, you've probably seen old episodes of certain TV shows like I Love Lucy or you know something, where the married characters sleep and separate twin beds, and that was it

just for TV. Like twin marital beds were common both in the US and England right up until the late sixties and even in the early seventies when they were finally deemed like prudish and kind of old fashioned. All right, But I mean, how was that ever the fashion in

the first place. Like, I know, some research claims that like couples sleep better when they sleep in different beds, but if we're talking about like the nineteen thirties and forties, it was probably some kind of puritanical concern, right, like something to do with morality. Yes, I was looking at the origins of the practice, and it seems like sleeping in separate beds has always been tangled up in concerns over everything from morality and social status to of course

potential health risk. Like I was reading this great article on Atlas Obscura that explained how communal sleeping was. It was really the norm for entire families, not just couples. And this was right up until the Victorian era. But once the upper class began as signing separate bedrooms to family members, the public gradually came to see communal beds

as unsanitari and decidedly low class. Even then, as the nineteenth century war on, you know, people started to worry that it might even be dangerous for married couples to sleep in the same bed. For example, there was this housekeeping guide published in eighteen ninety two that warned readers that quote, the air which surrounds the body under the bedclothing is exceedingly impure, as it has been impregnated with the poisonous substances that escaped through the pores of the skin.

I just love that line for some reason. Yeah, that is so ridiculous. It's really it's it's hard to imagine couples sleeping in separate beds for like over a hundred years, just on the strength of arguments like that, I know,

but it's it's true they did. But to be fair, there's reason to think that some good did come from this twin bed arrangement because as the women's rights movement came to the forefront in the late nineteenth century, separate marriage beds came to symbolize this shift in power between husbands and wives. So this is how an author named Hillary Hines described this shift in an article called Together and Apart. Here's what she writes. Twin bed are visually

equal to each other. They take up the same amount of space. There's a kind of pause between one bed and the other. There would have to be some kind of conscious negotiation or at least some conscious decision to move from one to the other. Isn't that wild? Like? Who would have thought the twin bed could be a symbol of early feminism? Yeah, that is pretty cool. See, I'm glad we're thinking outside the box with some of

these twins. And and actually for this last one, I want to think way outside the box, all the way to outer space in fact, because it turns out twins aren't something that's exclusive to life on Earth. According to a report from Harvard and UC Berkeley, just about every star in the sky is likely born with a twin, including our very own son. And you know, they determine this after noticing this peculiar distribution powder and of a crop of newborn stars. And this was in the constellation Perseus.

So the study authors they tried a bunch of different mathematical models to explain why the stars ended up in their specific locations, but in the end, only one of them made sense with what they were seeing. And that's the idea that most stars had twins at one point. Right, So the idea is that any star with a sun like mass is likely born with a distant twin, and after about a million years or so, roughly of those twins move in closer to one another, while the majority

tends to split up and go their separate ways. You know, you know it, gave. I have to be honest, it's always sad when families drift apart, even these cosmic ones that you're mentioning. Yeah, that's true. But in the case of the sun that lights up our own galaxy, we actually might have dodged a bullet into What do you mean by that? Well, researchers of long hypothesize that our son once had a non identical twin of its own, one that eventually escaped the gravitational pull of our Sun

and then spiraled off into some other galaxy. And so I say we dodged a bullet on that because there's reason to think that this missing twin was actually the evil one. So in fact, scientists even have a name for this theoretical son. Get this, They call it nemesis. Okay, I feel like we're full circle on the evil twin thing, and all right, so I'll buy it on this one.

What exactly makes the sun evil? Okay? So you know that asteroid that's supposedly wiped out all the dinosaurs, Well, researchers suspect that the nemesis son was the one that knocked it into Earth's orbit in the first place. Okay, all right, well, I will admit you have won me over. Like depriving the world of dinosaurs is about as evil as it gets. But to avoid going out on a sour note, what do you say we dedicate today's fact off to some of the more upbeat and non evil

twins out there. Okay, yeah, so like the kind that didn't prompt extinction level events, right exactly. It kind of feels like a long shot, but sure, let's give it a dry m all right, Well, then you know, it's actually possible to have twins who are the offspring of two different authors. In fact, there was even a court case in New Jersey a few years ago where a mother of twins claimed that a certain man was the

father of these children. So he took a paternity test and they found that he was in fact the father, but only of one of them. According to this DNA test, and biologists have shown that one in every twelve pairs of fraternal twins are born from successful fertilizations that occurred at two different times, and in some cases that might mean from different men. Wow, I've actually never heard that before. But okay, I know you spent a lot of time in New York. Did you ever get the chance to

go to, uh, the Twins restaurant in NYC? This was maybe back in the mid nineties. I didn't, and honestly I've never heard of it. Well, you missed out, because it must have been a pretty interesting place to visit, because other than the chef and the restaurant manager, everyone else who worked there was an identical twin. And in fact, there were twenty nine sets of twins working as the waite staff, bartenders, hosts, and hostesses and and so on.

And each set of these twins would work at the same time, where the same clothing, and of course if one called in sick or even got fired, then you know the other one had to follow that their lead and not come in or have employment either. So, as Ruth Rachael from The New York Times put it, quote, Twins sounds like a pretty silly gimmick until you get there, when you're greeted at the door by two gorgeous and identical hostesses. Then glance at the bar to find two

identical men pouring drinks. The idea begins to grow on you. So unfortunately, twins did close in two thousand, but every once in a while you'll hear talk of a new one opening up, so, you know, keep your fingers crossed. I'm kind of surprised that that didn't make it. That's an interesting idea. All right, Well, let's talk longevity, and it turns out that identical twins are more likely to

make it to retirement age than the general population. Our researchers believe that, you know, part of this might be the social bond between them, and we've talked about before that that power of meaningful human connections and longevity. But there actually maybe another contributing factor. So think about the fact that most twins were born prematurely, so in times when they had to work harder to survive, they were building up a resiliency that actually may have helped them

live longer. That makes sense. Well, I was reading a few stories of some twins who you know, have remarkably similar lives and that's despite being separated at birth, and the one that stood out maybe the most to me was that of two brothers, Jim Lewis and Jim Springer, who were each adopted in and didn't come back together until they were nearly forty years old. And despite all that time apart, just listen to what they had in common. Okay, They were both given the name Jim by their respective

adoptive families. They were both married twice, first two women named Linda and then two women named be. They both grew up with dogs named Toy, and they both had sons whom they named James Allen, though they did spell Alan differently, you know, one with an E, one with an A. So that's something that but that's not all. They also were both sheriff's deputies. They drove the same Chevy,

drink the same beer. It's so strange. So these guys did not see each other until they were right around forty years old, and yet had all of these things in common exactly. It's like the Wilcox brothers, except you know, they didn't coordinate. It weird. That is unbelievable. All right, Well, I think we should put one myth to rest, and that's about twins and their fingerprints. While they may share nearly all of their DNA, their fingerprints are not identical.

And that's because it actually turns out that the ridges and ripples on your fingers are often changed by experiences in the womb. So even very small differences like a slightly long umbilical cord and some other things like that, they can actually change your print. That's pretty wild. Well, all right, I have another restaurant one. So have you ever been a regular at a restaurant and you kind of felt like the owner the manager just lived there

because they were, you know, always there working. Oh definitely. I mean, I know, the restaurant business is a really tough business. So I feel like when I'm at most really good local rest runts, it seems like the owner of the manager is always there. Yeah, exactly. Well, now I'm starting to think that some of those people may be pulling one over on us. And that's after reading

about a pair known as the Robot Couple. So this is actually what locals called a married couple in you Wu, China, and they got the nickname because they kept their restaurant open twenty one hours a day and you know, they were always there and I mean always there. But what their customers didn't know was that both the man and the woman were identical twins, and all four of them

worked at the restaurant. They you know, they take different shifts just in order to keep the restaurant open, you know, pretty much all the time. And so most locals just thought it was one you know, endlessly energetic couple that didn't need to sleep, you know, like robots. And it actually wasn't until a few years after the restaurant opened that one of the twins finally did an interview and

revealed the truth. Wow, that's wild. It kind of makes me wish though, that they had never revealed the truth and just kept this going for because twenty one hours a day, I mean honestly though, twenty one hours a day with two shifts, just keeping that going. That's impressive, even when it's for people. So I can't imagine seeing what you thought were just two people running this all the time. All right, Well, we need to decide on

a winner today. And you know, I feel like, in honor of this whole evil twin thing, I wish you could see this game because it is really impressive. So I know that was a great last fact from you, but I think I want to give today's fact Off trophy to Tristan's evil Twins goatee. What what do you think about that? Yeah, that sounds very you need to stay on his good side. I guess that's right. Well, thanks again for joining us today. Gabe Mango would be

back for tomorrow's episode. Now if we forgot any good facts about twins, I'm sure we did. We always love hearing those facts from. You can email us part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. But thanks so much for listening, Yea, thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even

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