Hello steemians. We are Taiwo and Kehinde Falana, a twin born to Mr and Mrs Falana somewhere in Ibadan, Oyo state Nigeria. So much has been said about this platform before we finally decided to create an account. Nature smiled on us because we had it easy, our account got approved within twenty four hours compared to some other people known to us that tried to sign up at the same time. You can say twins enjoy special benefits even on the block chain..lol.

We were given birth to in the late 80s, born and bred in Ibadan, the largest city in the West of Africa. Like a typical Ibadan daughters, our favourite food is amala with _Corchorus olitorus_ soup garnished with stock fishes. We have done virtually everything together since birth, except...of course, dating. We attended same basic, primary and secondary school as well as same university and even studied same course, Biochemistry. We are currently serving our father's land in form of National Youth Service Corps, a scheme that is compulsory for all Nigerian graduates. Fortunately enough, we were both deployed to the same state of service.

Something interesting about twins

Different people have different opinions about twins. While some fervently pray to have multiple births in form of twins, others would give anything not to have them. An incidence actually occur in our hood here in Ibadan, where the husband ran away from home simply because his wife gave birth to a twin. You can say that decision was economically driven.

Why do some twins look alike while others do not? Perhaps this has been a burning a burning question in your mind. Yes, a lot of people have difficulty in differentiating between the two of us. They simply cannot be blamed. From our 100 level to 400 level, most of our lecturers in school could not differentiate between us. However, some very close friends of us know the disparity.

In answering the question above, there are basically two types of twins

1. Identical or Monozygotic twins
2. Fraternal or Dizygotic twins

Monozygotic/identical twins are formed when a fertilized egg divides and each cell develops into separate babies with the same genetic information while fraternal/dizygotic twins are formed when two eggs are fertilized by different sperm cells and each develops into babies with different genetic information. What causes the division that leads to the production of identical twins remains a bit of mystery. About one quarter of all identical twins are mirror images of each other (Can we say that in our own case?). Fraternal twins are more or less babies of separate births.

A third type of twin?

Scientists have proposed a third type of twin even though it is still a subject of debate. It is simply a situation in which an egg divides and get fertilized by different sperm cells giving rise to fraternal twins that could be identical. This hypothesis has been given as the reason why some fraternal twins look like each other.

Image Credit

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3

References

Ibadan
National Youth Service Corps
Better health