Identical Boy-Girl Twins
(Inspired by item # 2 of Ambulance Driver's response to the Random Facts About Me meme)
I have fraternal boy-girl twins. (No, they don't beat each other up.) They are about as identical as night and day, and always were.
When they were babies and total morons would ask (after being told they were a boy and a girl) "Are they identical?" here is what I answered, while keeping a straight face for as long as I could:
Well, you can't tell. You have to wait until they grow up and have kids of their own, and then if all their kids have the same blood type, they're identical.I figure anyone stupid enough to ask deserves whatever I care to dish out.
posted by #1 Dinosaur @ 6:18 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
LOL...and with you being a physician, people will SWEAR to its veracity:
"That HAS to be true! I heard it from a DOCTOR!"
LOL...when I was 16 and working my first job, I worked with a boy who was about 17, who had a twin sister. He believed" absolutely believed,
they were identical..
He would tell that to everyone. He should be about mid 50s now, I wonder if he ever figured it out?
I have a fraternal twin sister who does not look at all like me. Our personalities are also way different - she's a high-strung Type A while I am a lot more calm.
We still get that thing where people will look first at my sister, then at me, and then they'll ask, "Are you identical?"
Well, duh, obviously not!
:)
I have fraternal (obviously) boy/girl twins. One time, when they were around 3, someone asked them if they were identical. My son immediately said "no, I have a penis, and she has a bengina". I think the people may have been sorry they asked!
Hate to break it to you, but it can happen. There are case reports of boy-girl identical twins, if the girl has Turner Syndrome. The Y is lost in early development in her case, but the rest of the chromosomes are the same. It's kinda cool.
MSILF: In the case you describe, even though the twins began as a single ovum, by the time they're born they no longer have identical genetic complements. Therefore although I might call them "monozygotic" I wouldn't agree that they were "identical."
My husband would respond to that question, "only in San Francisco" Most people didn't get it, but hey, if they were dumb enough to ask if they were identical, then they were certainly not going to get that snip of an answer.
Science now tells us that it IS possible to have boy/girl identical twins, if the girl has Turners syndrome. There are 3 documented cases. Discovery Channel did a show on twins that featured a set. This happens when the egg splits to create identical boy twins, but one of the resulting eggs loses a Y sex chromosome (this can happen with single eggs too). The result is a normal boy twin (XY) and a girl twin with a single X sex chromosome (instead of XX as in a normal girl). They are genetically identical in every way other than the sex chromosomes. So next time you are tempted to call people morons, think to yourself that you maybe do not quite know it all yourself, and therefore are not in a position to laugh at other people.
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