I stumbled upon a couple articles which blew my mind about Human DNA! First up involves these unusual pair of identical twins known as the Salyers. Or maybe they’re just odd or weird because the women always wanted to marry identical twin brothers. To me it’s just too specific and when you limit your options over such a trait, you may be closing yourself off to finding a better partner. They got their wish at the annual Twins Day Festival in Twinsburg, OH by meeting these dudes who fit the bill. They all got married and each had a son about three months apart. So these cousins are genetically siblings! It’s a thing I learned about called quaternary twin. The Salyers aren’t the first, allegedly there have been around 300 known sets in recorded History. I fear and wonder how many births were voluntary given we know how the Soviet Union did experiments involving identical twins the state’s early years.
The second story involves pseudo twins or doppelgängers. Spanish Scientists investigated what we’re all familiar with, “Hey, you look so much like so and so!” We’ve all experienced in one way or another. They hunted down 32 people via photography to find good matches while making sure the candidates had no family connections within a century. If you’ve seen the pictures, you will notice they’re not absolutely identical in every detail: you see minor differences like height, facial traits (nose, chin) and hair. People can make this out, recognition software cannot. HA! Take that Skynet and the other AI overlords! The zinger? They do share similar strands of DNA despite not being related and Nature scored a point in the age-old argument between Nature v. Nurture; these people often have other stuff in common: education levels, smoking habits, weight, etc. Scary!
This brings back a really awesome plot point in an underrated movie I will always defend, Jupiter Ascending. It has some major flaws in its execution but I loved how Mila Kunis’ character (Jupiter) was genetically the same as the Earth’s previous and “rightful owner.” Allegedly, these two people’s DNA being indistinguishable had a probability of one in a quadrillion. Given our understanding today is only ankle deep in the ocean of genetics, I have doubts on the validity of the Wachowski’s facts. Still, it’s a pretty cool explanation for reincarnation; what the aliens fighting over the earth called the legal term.