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. 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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. 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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? 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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? 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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. 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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? 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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? 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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