Rare identical twins with different skin, eye colors born in UK

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Usually, identical twins are born looking just that way: identical. But for a pair of parents in the United Kingdom, telling their identical newborns apart won’t be so difficult— one was born with lighter skin and hair, while the other was born with darker skin and brown eyes, Metro.co.uk reported.

Identical twins are monozygotic, which means they were created in the same embryo but different sacs. Usually, identical twins share the same physical features, but that isn’t always what happens, as was the case for Amelia and Jasmine, whose father is black and whose mother is white. Metro.co.uk didn’t report the twins’ last name.

“When they were born, we were flabbergasted— even the doctors couldn’t believe it,” Libby Appleby, their mother, told the news website. “They look like they’re different races. Amelia is the spitting image of her dad, while Jasmine is a mini version of me.”

Dr. Claire Stevens, of King’s College London’s department of twin research, told Metro.co.uk that characteristics may differ in identical twins during a process called somatic mutation.

The twins are thought to be the first identical twins born with different skin and eye colors in the U.K.