Twins, one is light-skinned the other is Dark-skinned

[OCBuckWife]

I knew, in theory, that this was genetically possible but I hadn't actually heard of it happening.

Some things aren?t always black and white. Then again, sometimes they are ? like the twin sons born July 11 to a German couple.
The first baby that was born, Ryan, has light skin and blue eyes. His brother, Leo, is dark-skinned with brown eyes.
"None of us could believe it," the maternity ward's head doctor, Birgit Weber, told one news source. "Both kids have definitely the same father."
Stephan Gerth is German and white. His wife, Florence Addo-Gerth, is from Ghana and has dark skin.
It was ?a real surprise,? Gerth told the German newspaper Die Welt, adding that the most important thing to him isn?t color, but that everyone is healthy.


The odds are one in a million, say doctors, but it can happen with fraternal twins due the genetic soup in our backgrounds. Peter Propping, former director of the Institute for Human Genetics at Bonn University, told Die Welt that the black mother may have had some white ancestors, or that the white father may have had black ones. Very occasionally, the roll of the DNA die may cause the baby of biracial parents to inherit only the genetic coding for one color. Rare though they are, the German twins do have some company. In the past few years, at least three mixed race couples have welcomed twins who were also black and white.

ARTICLE



I wonder how much un-deserved awkwardness, judgemental reactions or straight up racism the parent and/or the kids will end up receiving? The genetic quirk won't be the first conclusion most people will jump to first, I mean.




The comments at the bottom can be pretty funny/sad.

[Muck]

Burn The Witch!!

[Oh8ch]

This sort of thing is actually quite common with paternal twins - that is, twins who have the same father but not the same mother.

[Muck]

Originally Posted by Oh8ch

This sort of thing is actually quite common with paternal twins - that is, twins who have the same father but not the same mother.

Say whaaa?

[OCBuckWife]

Originally Posted by Oh8ch

This sort of thing is actually quite common with paternal twins - that is, twins who have the same father but not the same mother.

I'm sorry, not to quibble but while paternal does mean "of the father" there is no such thing as paternal twins. There are two kinds of twins. Identical or monozygotic (single-zygote origin), or fraternal aka dizygotic (a two zygote origin).
Scientists have theorized a third, hybrid type called polar body twinning, that occurs when an unfertilized egg splits into two parts and each part is fertilized by a different sperm. The twins would then share one-half of their gene set (from their mother). Because it is the father's DNA that determines the sex, the twins can be either same-sex or male/female. Is this the kind of twin you are referring to? This type has come up more often in the recent past due to in vitro fertilization I think.

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by Oh8ch

This sort of thing is actually quite common with paternal twins - that is, twins who have the same father but not the same mother.

Two baby mama's? We call that