Things Only Women Who Have a Twin Understand

“There are a variety of interesting situations that can arise with twins,” says Prince. “All twin and multiple gestations are more likely to have certain birth defects and complications. Some are unique to non-identical twins, and some only occur in the instances of identical twins.”
He’s not exaggerating—there have been some very bizarre twin stories that have cropped up lately. We got Prince, Klugman, and twins expert Nancy Segal, Ph.D., director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton, to rank these headline-grabbing twin stories from most likely to happen to super rare, plus how they might have happened:
The Twins That Were Born with Two Different Skin Colors
People often do a double-take when they hear that Lucy and Maria Aylmer are fraternal twins. Why? They have different skin colors. “No one ever believes we are twins because I am white and Maria is black,” said Lucy, who has red hair and fair skin, in an interview with Barcroft Media. “Even when we dress alike, we still don’t even look like sisters, let alone twins.”
This is rare but is becoming more common now that biracial marriages are more prevalent, says Segal. “It’s not surprising, especially if the parents have very distinct genetic backgrounds,” says Prince, who explains that this can only happen with fraternal twins, and obviously, that it can only happens with parents who have different skin colors. It's basically the same as any other kid a biracial couple would have, he says, since fraternal twins have two different eggs and sperm. It's just like parents with different eye and hair colors having children with different traits.
The Twins Who Were Conjoined and Shared Their Chest, Abdomen, and Intestinal Tract
Twin boys Carter and Connor Mirabel were successfully separated via surgery in early May when they were five months old, the New York Daily News reports.
Conjoined twins happen when the fertilized egg divides later than usual during development in utero, and it doesn’t happen often. “It’s not common, which is fortunate,” says Prince, adding that roughtly one in every 200,000 identical twin births are conjoined.