What if you would meet your identical twin – as an adult? What would that say about yourself if you would find someone just like you? Will your identity just be relative and not that special or would the excitement be just too big to have a person that not only looks like you but might help you out on some fundamental life questions? This actually happened to the following sets of twins – with different results :

Nature or Nurture?

 

Anaïs Bordier (F) & Samantha Futerman (US)

Separated by the Atlantic Ocean

Anaïs Bordier always knew she was adopted. Her birth certificate said she was born in Busan, South Korea; an only child to a young, unmarried woman. Anaïs grew up in France in a loving home with loving parents. In February 2013 her whole life would change. Now 25 years old, Anaïs was studying fashion in London when she stumbled upon a YouTube video featuring an actress in Los Angeles named Samantha Futerman. The resemblance was uncanny. Not only did they look nearly identical but they had similar mannerisms and idiosyncrasies; the only difference was their accent.

More on their remarkable story here.

Jack Yufe (Jew) & Oskar Stohr (Nazi)

Worlds Apart

Separated six months after birth in 1933, Jack Yufe was raised as a Jew in his native Trinidad while his identical twin, Oskar Stohr, grew up in Nazi Germany, where he joined the Hitler Youth. When the two met again in Germany years later, they discovered they didn’t particularly like each other. Not so much because they were different, but because they were so much alike.

More on their story here.

Identical Strangers

Reunited 35 years after a social experiment

Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein lived very similar lives. They were both born in New York, edited their high school newspapers and studied film at university. And both were adopted in 1968.
It was only at the age of 35 that they discovered each other and just how similar they were: identical twins who had been separated as infants in a bizarre social experiment.

More here and here.

The Jim Twins

Reunited after 39 years apart

Unlike most identical twins, Jim Springer and Jim Lewis share a first name instead of a last. The two were separated at birth and adopted by separate families who, by coincidence, named their respective sons James.
So began their parallel lives. Springer and Lewis shared not only a genetic code and a first name, but they shared more or less the same life, independent of one another until their reunion, 39 years after the initial separation.

More here and here.

Adriana Scott & Tamara Rabi

A twist of fate.
As soon as Tamara Rabi arrived at Hofstra University, she noticed the bizarre behavior. People she had never laid eyes on would smile, wave and greet her as an intimate. Then, met by Tamara’s blank stare, they would walk away. A few friends claimed to have spotted someone who looked just like her. Someone else from Mexico, she figured.

More here and here.

 

 

 

 

Georgia’s stolen children: Twins sold at birth reunited by TikTok video

Amy and Ano are identical twins, but just after they were born they were taken from their mother and sold to separate families. Years later, they discovered each other by chance thanks to a TV talent show and a TikTok video. As they delved into their past, they realised they were among thousands of babies in Georgia stolen from hospitals and sold, some as recently as 2005. Now they want answers.

Article by Fay Nurse and Woody Morris for BBC World Service

 

 

It’s one of biology’s biggest questions: is it nature or nurture that makes us who we are? Now, thanks to twin studies, scientists like Dr Nancy Segal may just have some answers.

By studying identical twins separated at birth scientists can gain unique insight into just how much our genes influence our behaviour, personality and traits.