Lucy and Maria Aylmer are twin sisters that live in the UK but the problem is, nobody believes they are twins.
They were born in 1997 and have long been mistaken for friends rather than sisters.
these two girls are twin sisters Lucy and Maria Aylmer pic.twitter.com/j498cJVOCD
— ramez (@r18e05h08) January 25, 2017
“No one ever believes we are twins because I am white and Maria is black,” Lucy told the NY Post.
“Even when we dress alike, we still don’t even look like sisters, let alone twins.”
It’s easy to see why the mistake is often made. One has dark eyes and skin and the other has red hair and a fair complexion.
“No-one ever believes we are twins because I am white and Maria is black. Even when we dress alike, we still don’t even look like sisters, let alone twins. When we’ve met friends for the first time they never believe we are twins and they have even made us produce our birth certificates to prove that we are actually twins,” Lucy told ITV.
If you think that others are shocked when they learn that they are twins, imagine the mother’s surprise when the doctors gave the twins to her after the birth.
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Posted by New York Post on Friday, December 25, 2015
“It was such a shock for her because obviously things like skin color don’t show up on scans before birth. So she had no idea that we were so different. When the midwife handed us both to her she was just speechless,” Lucy said of her mother’s reaction.
Maria attends Cheltenham College, where she studies law and psychology. Lucy attends Gloucester College, where she studies art and design.
“Now we have grown older, even though we still look so different, the bond between us is much stronger. Now we are proud of the fact that we are each other’s twin sister. Maria loves telling people at college that she has a white twin-and I’m very proud of having a black twin,” Lucy said.
Posted by ITV News on Monday, March 2, 2015
The mother of the twins is half Jamaican and the father is white. The three siblings also have different skin colors.
“All our older brothers and sisters have a skin color which is in between Maria and I,” Lucy explained. “We are at opposite ends of the spectrum and they are all somewhere in between.”
She also says that people did not make the mistake of thinking they were each other when they were growing up.
“We were in the same class at infant school, but no one ever had a problem telling us apart,” she explained of her childhood.
“Most twins look like two peas in a pod-but Maria and I couldn’t look more different if we tried. We don’t even look like we have the same parents, let alone having been born at the same time.”
The reason why they appear different is because they are not identical twins.
“Those occur when a single sperm fertilizes an egg that subsequently splits into two genetically identical, but separate embryos,” IFLScience explains. “Non-identical, or fraternal, twins, on the other hand, are usually the result of the mother releasing two eggs at the same time, both of which become fertilized by two different sperms. Rather than being genetically identical, these share 50% of their DNA like normal siblings do.”
It seems that the mother carries the genes for both dark and white skin. “Lucy ended up inheriting the genes for white skin, whereas Maria inherited the genes for black skin.”
Although this does not typically happen, it is possible for it to take place.
“Most of the time, children will inherit a ‘blend’ of their parents features-as was the case with their siblings. In the twin’s case, they each happened to inherit incredibly different features. Additionally, many British individuals with Afro-Caribbean heritage are directly descended from white Europeans, which raises the chance of producing offspring with white skin,” it adds.
