Is it true that most left-handed people were once part of a pair of mirror-image twins, and, while still in the womb, they somehow managed to absorb the proteins contained in their right-handed twin until there was nothing left of them?
Thanks.
Who the hell has been spreading that nonsense? Of course it’s not true. I can’t imagine how you would even prove that it isn’t true, because no one would bother collecting data disproving it.
This is a new one.
Where in the world did you hear that?
I’m curious where you heard this. While I’m not an expert on fetal development, I can’t imagine a connection between embryonic homicide and which hand you use to write with.
Thanks.
I read about this somewhere on the web a while ago, but I haven’t been able to find it.
The author said that in many pregnancies ultrasound finds twins, but only one child is born. The surviving child in left-handed 50% of the time.
Very sinister.
If this is the case, wouldn’t identical twins have opposite handedness more often than one would expect from pure chance? (In fact, one might expect identical twins to have the same handeness, what with being identical - but that would depend one what it is that determines handedness, something of which I am completely ignorant.) Does anyone know if that is the case?
So do babies born right-handed absorb their left-handed twin as well?
I can’t find a cite right now but I recall that there is such a thing as a “merged twin” where two embryos combine to form a single individual. IIRC the phenomenon was discovered when a woman and her children were tested for organ-donor compatibility – the test showed that she was not related to her own children! As a merged twin she had eggs from both embryos, so the ones that got fertilized were actually from the other twin.
A doc could give much more information.
Surreal: The last I heard, the question of what causes handedness is still unresolved.
Emilio Lizardo IIRC that kind of “merged” twin is called a chimera resulting in a peson with two different genetic profiles depending on where the sample is taken.
I still can’t find the page that talked about one twin absorbing the other twin’s nutrients, but I did find this
http://www.cascobayweekly.com/cbw2003/cover/cover01.22.04-4.stm
“Anyone may have had an undetected twin in the womb. It is conjectured that since twins are more likely to be left-handed than the normal population, left-handed singletons may be surviving co-twins of a vanishing identical!”
groan
I think Pauli said it best when he said:
“That’s not right. That’s not even wrong.”
- Burp *
I just had the most awesome image of a mini-biological Voltron!
And I’ll form the head!
Just another day in Surreal’s never ending mission to seek out knowledge where no-one even suspected it existed.
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My hat is off to you Surreal. I don’t know where you get it all from, but your General Questions are never boring.
The first statement does not logically follow from the second! This is putting aside all claims as to the truth of the second statement - you cannot take the second statement and logically derive the first from it. I can’t even figure out how to explain this clearly.
SOMETIMES they find twins, but only one child is born.
As a result of this particular type of pregnancy, HALF of the surviving children are left-handed.
This doesn’t even mean that the surviving child “ate” the other one - it just means that, for whatever reason, the other wasn’t born.
How does this possibly mean that MOST left-handed people (meaning MORE THAN HALF, and SIGNIFICANTLY more than half or it would just be “many”) not only WERE part of that particular type of pregnancy, but moreover “ate” the other child - something that wasn’t posited in the original statement?
Sounds like you mean this case: “When two became one in the womb”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3264467.stm
The “see also” links on that page have other interesting related articles.