Stuff You Should Know - How Twins Work How Twins Work

Episode Date: May 11, 2010

Twin siblings are common enough that most people know a pair or two, but why does twinning occur? Josh and Chuckers explain where twins (and babies) come from, discuss different types of twins and debunk some "twin myths" in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.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 for. Do you see that? No, I saw it and you said well amena. Yeah, it's not true.

But I'm not telling. I know what it stands for. Well sure you do. 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 setup 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? No. Okay.

Let's talk about twins. That is not a Tuma. What's that? That's pretty good. From the movie Twins? Yeah. No, that's from Kindergarten Cop. Oh.

It's not a Tuma. So lame. Yeah. Can't believe I goofed that. Yeah, it's okay man. You got the accent down. Yeah. Twins was when he sang the Yackity Yack.

Don't talk back. Don't talk back. Don't talk back. You don't squaduck, you're in floor. Okay. So twins. Yes. We're talking about twins.

Obviously. Or we're talking about Kindergarten Cop. That's a toss up at this point actually. Sure. Let's go with twins, Chuckers. Okay. All right. So you've known some twins I'm sure in your life.

Yeah. I've known a few. I used to know a lot more back when I was in school. Sure. I knew twins. I don't know any now. I don't think. Yeah.

I don't know. No, I know. Actively know any twins. You never jog with any of them? No. Okay. So you are familiar then as I'm sure most people are. They're not entirely uncommon although there's a lot fewer of them than one might

imagine especially identical twins, right? Yeah. Fraternal twins are actually way more common and we'll get into how these things are made and by these things I mean people who are twins. Yeah. Two thirds. They will soon be corralled like gingers, right? Yes.

Two thirds more common I think is the fraternal twins. Okay. I guess 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? She's not a no. Okay, Jerry says no.

So we're all singletons is what people like us are called. That's right. Very unique little snowflakes. That's right. Yeah. 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. Okay. So about midway through a women's menstrual cycle, she releases an egg. Yes. That's what it sounds like I think so as it travels down the fallopian tube. Sure. And then that single egg is fertilized by a little swimmer, a little sperm guy.

Right. And a bunch of them are coming at it at once. Yeah. I imagine that's rather intimidating. Apparently I understand that 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 connect and they'll try to like get other people out. Like teammates in a NASCAR race.

Exactly. Interesting. But when they get to the egg, it's every man for himself. Right. And so the sperm gets to the egg and fertilizes it. Yes. So what you have about a day and a half later is conception and then it's called a zygote. Right.

And then after that it divides into the fertilized egg divides into two. Yeah. And this is, we're talking about singletons don't, don't get all crazy yet. Right. The twins. The fertilized egg divides into two. And then right four days later, it is at about 100 cells. Right.

It's dividing. And now it's called a blastocyst. Right. Well, you keep hogging all the great words. Sorry. And then the sixth day after that, the blastocyst implants the uterine wall and that's where it gestates into human being. And along the way, we all develop vestigial tails.

Did you know that? Yeah. I've heard that. Let's fall off for most people. Sure. Yeah. And if not, what are you called? Or what is it called?

It's called a vestigial tail. Oh, okay. Thought it was another name. I can't, no, there's a name for like being born with stuff like that. Right. And I can't remember. We have an article on the site. I can't remember.

It wrote it. Yeah. Okay. So Chuck, week nine, you've got a fetus prior to that. It's an embryo. Yes. And as the baby develops, it's surrounded by a fluid filled amniotic sac, right? That's where it gets all the food and oxygen and all the things little fetus needs to progress.

Right. And it evacuates its bowels and its little tinkler into the umbilical cord. Right. Yes. It does. Yeah, nine months later, approximately, you have a baby, a little singleton, right? Not necessarily a simpleton, but definitely a singleton, right? Right.

So that's normal, regular old, straight up. I have a new little single baby. So what happens when you have twins? There's two types, right? Yes. We talked about identical and fraternal. There's much more eggheading names for those than that. Yeah.

Monozygotic is identical and dizygotic is fraternal. Right. Right. We'll go with, can we call them identical and fraternal? Sure. Okay. So starting with, we'll start with fraternal, right? Yeah.

That's the easy one. Yeah. They're pretty simple. And fraternal twins, by the way, don't have any more shared DNA than, you know, Chuck and his very handsome brother share. 50%. Yeah. I wish I shared that much with my brother.

So what happens is the mom releases two eggs rather than one. Yeah. So you add, hit some with the sperm. Yeah. Like 50 million sperm. Right. And then one gets in and then another gets in. And you have two developing zygotes.

Yeah. It's basically the same thing. It's like having two singletons at the same time. Right. Baking two buns in the same oven. Right. And with the dizygotic twin, I'm sorry, a fraternal twin, you've got three possible sets of combinations. Two males, two females, or male and a female.

And actually male and female are the most common. They represent half of all fraternal twins. Yeah. Those are my favorites. Mine too. Love it. Stephen Katie Doody. I don't know any personally, although Scott and Stacy Frey like were my brother's age.

And I just always thought that was the coolest thing. Yeah. They're all, they're very close. Uh huh. They're always very sweet. Yeah. Were yours sweet? Yeah.

And plus the whole, you know, the brother protecting the sister and the sister setting up their brother with her friends. Right. Right. It's the perfect relationship. It's the perfect relationship. Boy, girl, fraternal twins are super cute. Yes.

We need a t-shirt that says that. Not like those weirdos that look alike. All right, Chuck. The same thing can happen with multiple births, triplets. We have triplets that listen to us as we know. Tries zygotic. Right. And so on.

Right? Sure. Now with a monozygotic birth, 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. Yeah. 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 going to have their own amniotic sex. They're going to have their own placenta. Uh huh. And if time wears on, and the division occurs later, they could have the chance of having

fused placenta, fused amniotic sex. And this is not necessarily a good thing, actually. No. You can, if you share placenta, sometimes the twins will not develop equally because one twin is hogging all the nourishment than the other, and that's called fetal growth restriction. Right. It's just like Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yeah. Was that the scenario? Yeah. Remember, they said Danny DeVito was like an accident and they weren't expecting him. And he comes to realize that he's after birth. Right. 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 nourishment for himself, leaving little Danny DeVito with

very little. The Stingy Covenator. Yeah. 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 hog some of that, some of the blood, and will be unusually small, whereas the recipient twin will have too much blood and be unusually

large for their age, developing age. Big baby, small baby. Right. In the same womb at the same time. Fighting for their stuff. Right. Well, it's something that I thought was really interesting in this article, which is written by Katherine Nier.

She's one of our head editors around. And the twin. And the twin. Mm-hmm. She refers to herself in first person as the author in this throughout. Right. Right. She mentioned that twins that have undergone twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, or TTTS,

for those in the know, can actually, the circulation can be separated. Yeah, by lasers. Do you know how much dough the surgeon who performs in-utero operations charges? Yeah. I imagine. Where does that fit into the healthcare package? That's what I want to know. Yeah.

And that accounts for like 60% of it. Oh, really? And that's just like one surgery. Yeah. Yeah. That's my calculation. Sure. I would imagine that's 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 anemic. The other can just be enormous. Again, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. Right? Right. And identical twins, Josh, obviously, can only be two males or two females because they

share identical genetic material. True that. Check, there's also a syndrome that's a lot more frequent than we once imagined called vanishing twin syndrome. Yeah. Where you start out with twins or multiples, then all of a sudden you're down one. Right. And they used to think that this was a very rare infrequent thing.

And actually, I imagine in old-timey eras, they had no idea that this was happening. Before the ultrasound, sure. Right. And then once the ultrasound came around, we could start to kind of track what was going on. And we discovered that the mother was actually absorbing one during her pregnancy. Yeah. That's got to feel a little odd.

Well, and they set up to 21 to 30% of multi-fetal gestations, this happens. Yeah. That's way more than I would have thought. Yeah. And I wonder if it's just nature's way of saying, like, no, eight is too many. Right. You know? Seven.

That's fine. But eight now. Eight is enough. And then, of course, Chuck, we get to a different kind of twinning called conjoined twinning. Yeah. Got to mention this. And this is awesome in that no one really knows how this happens. But the prevalent theory is that the zygote, right?

Yeah. Okay. The zygote splits very late, like 12 days. Right. Which apparently is late during gestation. Right. And it never fully divides. Yeah.

It doesn't have the chance to fully divide. And so all of a sudden you have conjoined twins. Yeah. That seems to be pretty logical. It definitely does. 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 different categories within the subcategories within the category. But I will give the three main, Terada, Kata, Didama. That's if you're joined at the lower portion of your body. And I have to say that includes Ishiophagus, which Lakshmi Tatma, the little Indian girl who was born with her twin, her headless twin. She basically looked like the goddess Lakshmi. Oh, right. Right.

Yeah. And actually I checked it out and made sure she was still going strong. And a January 28th 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. Cute. Cute as a button. I thought you said Padma Lakshmi from Top Chef or whatever her last name is. And I thought she was a conjoined twin.

No. Nice work, Doug. Well she does have that scar on her arm, but I knew that was from a car accident. This is from a new arm growing. Well, I 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. So then we have the Terada and a Didama.

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. Right. Or this also includes kids with like a, from the waist down have two sets of legs. Right. But everything else above is just single. Right. Right.

And this is Terada and a Cadeta Didama. And a Cadet Didama. And that's joined somewhere at the midsection. 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 Amphalopagus, and you know who is Amphalopagus conjoined twins, don't you? Ronnie and Donnie. Ronnie and Donnie Gallion. That's right. The world's oldest living conjoined twins. Right. From Ohio somewhere.

Right. Yeah. And they turned 58 last October. Yeah. Yeah. We did a bit on them on the webcast. And they, as you would expect, kind of cantankerous with each other, but also like love and hug on each other.

Yeah. I think it's Donnie who is, he gets, he's afraid of the dark. Right. So Ronnie like cuddles him. Yeah. It's really sweet. If you haven't ever seen any footage of Ronnie and Donnie Gallion hanging out, you should look it up.

They also punch each other in the face when they're watching TV. Right. When they get mad. Yeah. Well, they have two TVs. Right. And then they'll be watching them obviously at the same time. Sure.

And one will turn the volume up and the other turns his volume up and it keeps going and then somebody gets punched in the face. It's kind of funny. Yeah, it is. That moves us on, Josh, to another form of conjoined twin called parasitic twinning. Right. 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 a parasitic twinning. And by the way, Andy Garcia was born with a parasitic twin. I didn't know that until I read this. I didn't either. But the very rare form of parasitic twinning is fetus and fichu, which is where the twin, the unformed or underdeveloped twin, is found in the body of the living twin, the surviving

twin. Yeah. And often in the form of a teratoma, you'll find teeth, hair, spinal bones, segments, bones. And these are all just called teratomas. What makes it a fetus and fichu is when there's a recognizable trunk and limbs. I know. But imagine finding that in your abdomen, which is commonly where it grows. Yeah.

It's really sad is what it is. It's about to say creepy, but if it happens to you, it's just a tragedy. Imagine if you and your parents never had any idea that you were part of a twin, then all of a sudden it's like, oh, here he is. That's where he got to. Right. You know? That's gotta be kind of shaking.

That happens a little more often than I'm comfortable with. It said one in every 500,000. Oh, I thought you were about to reveal your own story. No, but I just saw one in every 500,000. 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 conjoined twins, actually, they're rarer than I thought. Apparently by Katherine Nier's estimate, there's only about 50 conjoined, conjoined twins, unconnected conjoined twins in the world today. Yeah. I think we said one in every 40,000 births, but only one in every 200,000 live births because 40 to 60% of conjoined twins are still born or die a day or two after birth, which is really sad. Right.

So about 95% of conjoined twins don't make it past the day. Right. So the ones that do, yeah, and then that 5%, probably most of them are going to be disconnected at some point, if possible. Of course, there have been some famous ones, right, besides Ronnie and Donnie. Yeah. Who are the Guinness guys? Aang and Chang Bunker.

Right. Archie, their brother. Oh, is that his name? No. Aang and Chang were born in 1811 in Siam, which we call Thailand now, and pretty early on, they realized like, hey, we can make a lot of money off of ourselves. So they started touring the world, and they did make a pretty respectable sum for themselves, and they actually retired to, I think, Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

Didn't they get married, too? They married sisters, Sally and Adelaide Yates. Right. And the couples together had a combined 21 children, and they were never separated. That's the word I was looking for, that they disconnected. Now they were at the chest. They were at the chest, and an autopsy performed on them afterward, after their death, which accounts for the word autopsy, found that they shared no organs.

They could have just gone, whew, skin graft, done. They had two sexual organs? They had two of everything, except they were joined at the chest. So they had two sexual organs, and they fathered 21 kids with two sisters. Yeah. But they had to be a weird Saturday night in Wilkesboro. Clearly everybody's in the room. Yeah.

Well, yeah. Everybody's in the room. Wow. That's a menaja, whatever. I don't even know what that is. Right. But they lived to be 63, actually, and I think they were the oldest living conjoined twins of their time.

I imagine. Oh, yeah. That's probably in history. And there was another set that's fairly well-known, I guess. I didn't hear of them until this article. Did you read this part? I did not. About the Biddenden Maids?

No. Mary and Eliza Chulkerst. They were born in 1100 A.D. in England, I take it. And they were Pygopagus. That's a fun word to say. Say that. Pygopagus? Pygopagus.

They were Pygopagus, so they were connected along their lower back and their buttocks. Oh, 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. That's true. What do you think about it? They lived to be 34, though.

That's pretty old for Kanjo and Twins, especially back then. I think Chang and Aang and the Biddenden Maids died within hours of each other, which is fairly frequent. Remember when we were researching Ronnie and Donnie? The doctor was talking about how sometimes people can live up to 18 hours, but usually it's not very long. Can we talk about my other two favorite types of twinning now? These are my favorite, too.

As 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 you're having your baby with 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. That's called superfitation, and I'd never heard of that. I'm kind of blown away.

Yeah, I am, too. I'm even more blown away, Chuck. This is great. By a little term called superfecundation. Yeah, they added a little extra few letters in there. Right. Because it's like, wow! Bonus.

Yeah. If a woman releases more than one egg during ovulation and two different males fertilize the eggs, so you've got sperm from one male, and then sperm from another male, and both of them are fertilized and take, and gestate, she can have half-siblings at the same time, virtually the same time. Boom. Superfecundation. Actually, the first one you talked about, superfitation, they can lead to half-identical

twins, where the egg splits before fertilization and is infertilized by two separate sperm, so these twins actually share 75% of their DNA. 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.

Right. 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. I guess. Okay.

There's a study called the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, and it's an ongoing four-part deal where they're studying 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, 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 both of their first names are the same.

They were given the same first name by their adopted parents. Right. Instead of the same last name. Very odd. They were apart until they were 39 years old. They both grew to six feet tall, weighed exactly 180 pounds. When they were little boys, each one had a dog named Toy. Right.

Each one had been married two times. Yeah. The first wives of both were called Linda, and the second wives of both were called Betty. Yeah. Weird. Each one had a son. They named James Allen, which is interesting. They spelled it different.

Right. The spelling was different, right? And here's another little fact for you. What? 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 years later,

I was like, wow, that's so weird to think that I would have had an identical twin uncle that just never happened. That would have changed the course of your life entirely. Sure. Uncle look alike. That's what I would have called him. What other things do they have in common? Each one had driven a, had a light blue Chevrolet, and they both vacationed at Pass Grill Beach

in Florida. Right. Here's my favorite. So it's Salem cigarettes and Miller light beer. Yes. I love that one too. 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 how the mind works, I think is what it's called Stephen Pinker's book. Right. He, he, he offhandedly mentions that and he's saying, is there a gene for leaving love notes around the house? And he's saying twin's root or part kind of suggests.

Yeah. So they both left love notes for their wives? Mm-hmm. 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 was funny that they had different hairstyles.

Well, yeah. I mean, like it is easily sensationalized, you know, and you, you, you gotta say like, you know, those facts lead you to believe that they were the exact same person in every single way. Sure. So. I mean, one had like the Beatles haircut and one had like the pompadour Johnny Cash with the sideburns.

Even longer sideburns. Right. Yeah. So maybe they just listened to different music. Right. And well, another one was a more articulate than the other and the other was a better writer than the articulate one. Right.

Right. 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. Right.

Let's go smoke some salons. Let's. Oh boy. And then 48 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 how over the top that is. So.

Are those the giggle twins? Yeah. Cause they apparently had the same laugh. Well, they, they crossed their arms and giggle in the same way. Right. Right. Which you could have picked up from watching Alph. They could have both been watching Alph.

Well, yeah, you'd never know. Yeah. Did you watch Alph? Yeah. I didn't watch Alph. I never got it. It was like a puppet. Have you ever seen Permanent Midnight?

Oh yeah. That's the guy who wrote the first season of Alph. I know. That's what Permanent Midnight's about. If you go watch Permanent Midnight and then you go watch the first season of Alph, there's a lot of like kind of really quick, dark, funny things in there that you're like, oh yeah. 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 percadan, 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. Absolutely. 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 in with a major 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 way 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. 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, uh, public sentiment changed. So by the eighties, I think they, they concluded this 20 year study. Um, they were like, okay, we're just going to never talk about this for the next 60 years. So they sealed it. And I think it's in like a Yale university library under lock and key, but it's coming out in the next like 10 or 20 years, I think. Wow.

Yeah. It's going to rock our world. Yeah. Yeah. That and the whole Kennedy assassination. The truth will be out there. I don't know if that one's ever coming out. We'll know in there a date set for it.

Is there? Yeah. I think so. Where the records are going to be open. Awesome. Can't wait. I need to watch more stuff. They don't want you to know, huh?

Yes. Our 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 in 250. Right.

No, that's, that doesn't necessarily mean that like it's every time there's, what did you say? One in 250 or four in a thousand? One in 250 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 can find about four per 1000. Sure. And actually by ethnic group, uh, it changes, uh, African Americans tend to have far more twins than any other group and Africans and I'm sorry, African people of African descent. Yeah. Um, and Africans themselves.

Sure. The, I think they said the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria has 45 per 1000 births. And that's a lot. That is a whole lot. Uh, on the low end, uh, Chinese people have 11.2 per 1000 births. 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 11.2 per 1000. But if you go to China, it's like 800 per 1000. 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. Sure.

That's usually found more frequently in heavy women and older women, uh, and we've been kind of trending toward heavier and older, right? Yeah. As far as parents go. So twinning as a result in the U S has risen 80 or 38% since 1990 and 65% since 1980. I know. That's pretty big jump. Okay.

So let's move along and get rid of some myths, dude. Twin language, Josh, right, uh, also known as idiaglossia and cryptophagia. That is, uh, when some people say a 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 develop 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, uh, gets injured somewhere and the other one across the country knows about it right then or worried or something. So this has been tested actually. And uh, in one experiment, it's kind of clever, they took two twins, uh, and they put one, they put them in separate rooms.

Yeah, we 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, although they clearly weren't split up. Yeah, you, 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, uh, 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 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, pretty significant, but then they altered the experiment a little bit and they, uh, had a, uh, an assistant choose the card for the twin and then the twins sent the image telepathically and all of a sudden it dropped to 25%.

Right. And they think that it was because the twins were hitting at 50% because of shared preferences. Right. Not, uh, you know, telepathy. Telepathy. There's something really wrong with me today. Yeah. I think that's probably the deal, but 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 interests, that kind of thing. Yeah. So what do you want to do? Celebs or movies?

Famous twins. Josh, you ever heard of Mario and Dretty race car driver? Yes. You ever heard of Aldo? No. I haven't either. That's, see, I highlighted the ones that I was like, oh, I didn't know they had a twin because some of them, obviously, you know, like, Jeff, you know, you know, you know,

like Jenna and Barbara Bush. Yeah. But they're fraternal. Right. Uh, yeah. Giselle Bunchin, the smoking hot model. Yeah. She is a sister.

I imagine a smoking hot sister. She is good looking. Is she? She's her manager. She's not model hot, but she is very attractive. Are they identical or fraternal? They're fraternal. Okay.

Vin Diesel. Really? Yeah. He is a kind of a funny looking brother named Paul Vincent. Nice. I'll show you a picture of him. How do you name your kid Paul Vincent and Vin? Vin Diesel is a stage name dude.

Oh, I wonder if his name is Vincent Paul. Oh, maybe. Maybe his parents were very unimaginative. Or maybe Paul Diesel changed his name to Vincent because he thought it was too, you know, gearhead. Scarlett Johansson has a brother named Hunter. Right. They look a lot alike.

Yeah. Uh, Ashton Kutcher. Did you know that? I think that rang a bell actually. Yeah. He 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 and has brought a lot of awareness to that. That's cool. Um, Alanis Morissette has a brother named Wade. Who cares? And Wade Morissette is a singer yoga dude and a Kyrton, which is like an Indian chanter. Can we be done now?

Oh, Parker Posey has a brother named Chris. Cool. I'll bet he's cool. And then Kiefer William, Frederick Dempsey, George Rufus, Sutherland. So crazy. Did you know he had that many names? No. Yes.

He has a fraternal twin sister. Huh. Name Rachel. Why would you give a kid that many names? Donald Sutherland's probably smoking a lot of something back in the day. Oh, yeah. At least he did an animal house. Right.

And then of course my favorite twins, Kim and Kelly Deal. Kim Deal of the breeders. Yeah. Well, they're both in the breeders and Kim was in the pixies. Pixies. 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 12 year old black girls in England. Okay.

And they mimicked everything exactly. They spoke in stereo at the same exact time. Creepy. They walked exactly the same in synchronicity. It's like the twins in the shiny. It's very creepy. And that's exactly what they were. And do you know what happened?

What? 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 that's crazy. Putting the call out there to the S.Y.S.K. Army.

Yes. 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. This is type twins in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com and that leads us to Listener Mail. Yes, Josh. I have a couple of quick ones.

This is from Adrian in Canadian City, Fredericton, N.B. What does that mean? I have no idea. Oh, New Brunswick. Yeah, probably. He's 11. It's called Canadian City, New Brunswick? Or are you saying it's a Canadian city?

Yeah. It's a Canadian city. Okay. Hey, guys. My name is Adrian. In case you're wondering, I'm a boy. And surprisingly enough, I am only 11 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, right? That's right. Jerry loved this one. Jerry forwarded this after we'd already seen it. Did she go, cute? Well, the sound effects, they would run for the hills. That's adorable. No, she just wanted to remind us of her place in this.

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 Weatherman in our little YouTube sidebar last, well, which one was that? And do you remember? I had nothing to do with whatever we were talking about, but no, I don't remember. It'll probably come out after this one. No, it already came out.

Okay. But we heard from Abu that Arthur the Weatherman actually perished in the Haiti 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. Yeah. It's going to be hot. Yeah. If you have any information on Arthur the Weatherman or you live in a Canadian city, and by the way, thank you, Adrian and Abu, send us an email.

We love getting emails. Chuck loves responding to emails. Jerry loves forwarding emails. Just send us an email to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more howstuffworks? Check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com homepage. Got to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry.

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Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gatethenumberonetravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. The South Dakota Stories, Volume 2. I could see beyond the black hills and the way they called for exploration. I could feel the air, the way it paints against skin and fills hungry lungs. I could hear the way the water ran for miles and the way the bison grazed, the way our

boots meet the earth as we step past expected. I could imagine my time in South Dakota and I wish to go back because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.