Why in some places on the planet incredibly many twins are born

Gemini has always enjoyed increased attention from scientists and the public. They are of great interest to geneticists, and simply incredibly cute.

Twins are different: identical (identical) and non-identical (multi-egg). In the first case, twins are born from one fertilized egg, which is divided into two or more cells during development. These twins are born with the same genotype, and they are exactly alike like two drops of water. Such twins are always of the same sex and even often have the same characters. Interestingly, despite their complete genetic identity, the fingerprints of these twins are still different.

But multi-egg, or dizygotic twins, are born in the event of the fertilization of two different eggs. Moreover, such twins can be of different sexes and are similar to each other no more than siblings. This is because dizygotic twins have about 50% of the total genes.

Many perceive the birth of two absolutely identical people as a miracle, but scientists, on the contrary, see this as only a combination of certain factors. But there are places on our planet where the birth of identical twins happens much more often than in the rest of the world. Genetics have long studied the inhabitants of these places, but so far they have not been able to advance far in the knowledge of this phenomenon.

The most famous place on the planet where twins are regularly born is the town of Candidu Godoy in Brazil. This city even received the status of the “World capital of twins”, and 10% of twins account for 1000 births. For example, in one of the districts of this city, there are 44 pairs of twins for 80 families. But scientists cannot explain the reason for this. Some associate this with the genetic experiments of the Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele in South America, while others believe that these are simply the genetic characteristics of a population that has lived in some isolation for a long time.

In addition to them, settlements around the world are scattered in which the birth of twins is observed much more often than in the country and in the world as a whole. These are the villages of Bazhou in China and Hongghiep in Vietnam, Chilke in Peru and Igbo Ora in Nigeria, the town of Inverklyde in Scotland. And in India there are three such settlements: Kandallur, Kodini and Umri. There is its own "village of twins" in Russia - the village of Denisovka in the Rostov region.