All siblings can have different fathers but how about twins?
It may be rare but it did happen. Twins can have different fathers.
A DNA test in Vietnam confirmed two-year-old twins were born with different fathers after their mother had sex with two men in the same ovulation period, the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper has reported.
The bi-parental twins were taken for testing after the family of the man insisted the pair do not look alike.
Le Dinh Luong, president of the Genetic Association of Vietnam, reportedly said it was an extremely rare case.
“Our Centre for Genetic Analysis and Technology lab has tested and found a pair of bi-paternal twins,” he said. “This is rare not only for Vietnam, but for the world.”
The family were shocked after they received the test result according to the reports.
DNA testing of the Vietnamese mother to rule out a mix-up of the twins with other babies at the hospital confirmed that both children were hers.
The birth of twins to two different fathers is not unheard of according to The Guardian.
“It requires the woman to ovulate two eggs at the same time, and have viable sperm from two different men waiting inside her to fertilise the eggs”.
A 1992 report on paternity suits over non-identical twins – those produced when two separate eggs are fertilised and carried at the same time – found that 2.4% had different biological fathers. It is common enough to earn its own lengthy name: heteropaternal superfecundation.
“For this to happen there’s got to be whole series of events that line up and happen in same few hours. Not only has she got to have sex with two men in a relatively short time, that has got happen at a time when she’s ovulating two eggs rather than the usual one,” said Allan Pacey, a professor of andrology at the University of Sheffield. “The trick is that the woman would have to have intercourse with the two men within five or six hours of each other.”
