Mixed race twin girls living in the United Kingdom sometimes have to produce their birth certificates to prove to people that they’re twin sisters because they look as if they aren’t related.
When Lucy and Maria Aylmer were born in 1997, their mother was shocked to see that the
girls’ heritage showed up in remarkably different ways, the Daily Mail reported.
The mother of the girls, Donna Aylmer, is half Jamaican and their father, Vince Aylmer, is white. The result is that Lucy Aylmer has extraordinarily fair skin with red hair, while Maria Aylmer looks more like her Jamaican family members, with brown skin and dark hair.
The girls have three older siblings.
“Our brothers and sisters have skin which is in between Maria and I. We are at opposite ends of the spectrum and they are all somewhere in between,” Lucy Aylmer told the Mail.
The genes for non-identical twins are from different eggs, and Donna Aylmer has genes for white and black skin, the Mail said.
“People with Afro-Caribbean heritage often have some European DNA, dating back in many cases to the slave trade,” the newspaper explained. “This increases the chance of them passing on a gene for white skin to at least one twin.”
“No one ever believes we are twins,” Lucy Aylmer told the Mail. “Even when we dress alike, we still don’t look like sisters, let alone twins. Friends have even made us produce our birth certificates to prove it. ... We couldn’t look more different if we tried. We don’t look like we have the same parents, let alone having been born at the same time.”
The BBC reported that genetically a mixed race and European couple would have a one in 500 chance of having twins with different skin colors.
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