In my friend group from home, there happens to be two sets of girl twins. One set is fraternal and one is identical. I am close with all 4 of them, but it is interesting to watch them and see their similarities and differences. When I am in with my friends who are identical twins, people always stop them because they look so much alike. But once you become close friends with them, you determine they aren’t so much alike. They do everything together and even go to the same college and live on the same floor. They are in the same sorority and have the same friend groups. I have always wondered that since they make the same decisions if they think the same and act as one another would if they weren’t around. But what I am really curious about is if twins actually have twin telepathy?
What’s interesting to me is that my fraternal set of twins not only don’t look alike but they are completely different and don’t have the same friend groups and don’t do much together. Whereas my identical set of twins look exactly the same and do everything together. They perform similar actions, like buying the same clothes, ordering the same foods, and sometimes even speak simultaneously. I have even been with them when one twin is crying, the other starts to cry because she feels bad she is crying. Is she actually feeling her pain for her?
Through telepathy one twin can sense what the other twin is thinking or feeling, whether sitting next to each other or at completely different places. It is found that the closeness between identical twins genetically plays a large role in why they experience telepathy so often, so that would explain why my identical set of twins are more common to have telepathy than my fraternal set. Because of this closeness, scientists claim it gives identical twins a heightened extra sensory perception, an ability to acquire information without relying on physical senses and or past experiences. It has been found that identical twins are twice as likely than fraternal twins to experience telepathy.
Personal anecdotes are the most accurate and strongest pieces of evidence to support twin telepathy. If you google it, you can find thousands of different stories. Researchers have also used a polygraph to document twin telepathy. In one study, one twin was hooked up to the polygraph while the other twin was in a separate room dunking his hand in ice water. The polygraph ended up showing a change at the exact same time the twin was placing his hand in the water. How crazy is it that the twin would create a change without feeling anything at all, but simply because his twin, in the other room, was feeling something. There are many other studies conducted that show a change in the polygraph due to twin telepathy.
There are numerous amounts of scientific theories behind twin telepathy, but one of the most credible theories has found that the similar brainwaves cause the twins to act so alike and therefore experiencing telepathy. With the advanced technology available in the world, science and research is able to form more complex theories. For example, scientists have found that cells can be “entangled, or coupled,” meaning that two very difference cells have unique connections. Scientists hypothesize that twin telepathy is related to these entangled cells because of this idea that the cells spin in opposite directions, but they correspond to one another. Meaning when one cell is altered even minutely, the other cell is still going to spin in the opposite direction. They are using this concept of entangled cells to conclude that when something happens to one twin, it affects the other twin no matter the distance they are from each other.
A study in England was done to measure and determine the existence of telepathy and thought concordance in pairs of twins and other siblings. The experiment consisted of one sibling choosing a number at random or drawing that he/she thought the other would draw. The results found that the twins scored nearly twice as many correct answers as would have been by chance. But when they did the ESP test, where the tester chose the image for the subject to draw or with a number on it, neither the twins nor siblings scored better than chance, concluding that twins do not have any special sense telepathy with each other.
After reading and viewing research on twin telepathy, I believe that twins have a special connection that no one else has. I think it is due to their DNA and how they are genetically the same, therefore they are prone to think and act the same and can even sense each other since they are so alike. Also, with having such good friends as twins it makes my view stronger on this idea. Personal anecdotes don’t prove causation equals correlation but they do make me believe twin telepathy is real.
Sources:
https://www.teenink.com/nonfiction/academic/article/539371/Twin-Telepathy-Does-It-Exist/
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/can-twins-sense-each-other.htm
My best friend is a twin. They are not identical as she’s a girl and her twin is a boy. We’ve always made jokes about them talking to each other in the womb and being “womb-mates.” I’ve asked her about being a twin and she definitely feels a different kind of connection to her twin brother than her two other younger siblings. I was intrigued after talking to her and reading your post so I went and did some research of my own on twins and came across this interesting article. http://paranormal.about.com/od/espandtelepathy/a/Twin-Telepathy-Best-Evidence.htm
In high school, I knew two sets of triplets and am still best friends with a set of fraternal twins. Being so close with them, it was easy to see the similarities and differences. The two twins are absolute polar opposites. The girl goes to PSU and the boy goes to Seton Hill. Their personalities are completely different, but every so often they’ll text each other at the exact same time or make the same exact comment about something and it is the strangest thing. This is just another anecdote but with a study like this, sometimes anecdotes are the most interesting.
I know you say that twin telepathy is due to DNA but do you think that perhaps telepathy could be due to spending too much time together? I personally am not close with any one who is an identical twin, but my 2 guy cousins are fraternal twins. I know that anecdotes don’t prove anything, but like you said they certainly help me believe the cause. I asked them if they had ever had a situation in which they thought they were telepathic. They both answered yes. I agree with this because sometimes I find that when I spend too much time with friends I also feel like I can sense when something is wrong with them before they even tell me.