I don't know if anyone really cares abou...

Michelle - October 28th, 2005 7:40 PM
[Original Comment]

I don't know if anyone really cares about this or not but I found the site and still find it difficult to believe but the site is www.nomotc.org/library/twinning_facts.html
I'll cut and paste what it says.
Polar body twinning is very unusual and very rare. The process is quite complicated. The polar body appears when the egg has been developing, even before fertilization. It is a small cell that does not function and will usually degenerate and die. It is thought that in some cases, when the egg is old, the splitting off of the polar body takes place in an abnormal way. It then becomes larger, receives more nourishment, and does not die as it usually does. Instead, it acts as a second egg. The polar body and the egg share identical genes from the mother, but they may then be fertilized by two separate sperm from the father. This will result in twins who share half their genes in common (from the mother) and the other half different (from the two sperm). They share some features of identical twins and some features of fraternal twins and thus are so-called half-identical twins.
Superfetation occurs when a women ovulates more than one egg but the eggs are released at different times, sometimes up to 24 days apart, and they are fertilized when they are released. The resulting twin pregnancy has different conception dates, so the babies may be quite different in size. Days or weeks may separate the births. It is quite an unusual event. In some cases, the births of twins may be weeks or months apart due to deliberate medical intervention. This is called interval birth.
I was wrong about the difference in age being months, looks like weeks at most.




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