Image Credit: Daily Mail

When their twin girls Kendall and Bailey were born, their Mum and Dad couldn’t stop staring at them – they couldn’t believe it.

One of the girls was white, the other was black.

Their father, Curtis Martin, is half-Jamaican, while their mother Rebecca Horton is white. As non-identical twins, they were created when two eggs were fertilised by two sperm which means they have inherited different genes from their parents.

Rebecca says, ‘When people look in the pram and see that one is darker than the other, they will sometimes be a bit thrown and ask if they are twins. They are shocked when we say yes.’

Allan Pacey, a Sheffield University fertility doctor, said that just as twins can have different hair or eyes, they can also be born with skin of different colours. And just as a baby’s hair often changes with age, with blonde hair, for instance, darkening, the twins’ skin may yet change. This could lead to them looking more similar – or even more different.

Professor Pacey said the girls’ contrasting skin colours are caused by the way their parents’ genes were shuffled before being passed on. He said: ‘This shuffling has created something that is completely unexpected and throws us but it is just nature’s way of making us diverse.’