vanishing twins

[harleygirl29]

Hi, I just heard a news story stating that left handed people were once a twin,and that their twin had died in utero, and been reabsorbed. Has anyone else heard of this?

[LostStar]

Yep, i have (whether or not it is totally true...) i heard that it is so early on in pregnancy though and that it's just that the stonger [i guess still a foetus at that stage?] survives.

[LazyGun]

I have never heard of that particular explanation before harley.

The birthrate of twins is on the increase, but is still less than 3% of births.
Lefthandedness is on the increase, from a base persistent rate of around 15% in the general population.
Wiki has an interesting page on left handedness;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handed

And there is some thought that it might be genetic
http://www.left-handed.com/forum/viewtopic.php ?t=87

Left handedness is up to 3x more common in men than in women, and some researchers have hypothesised that Left handers were exposed to higher rates of testosterone pre birth.

[boobesque]

I had heard this, and was quite surprised, my son is left handed and would have been a twin, i lost his twin at 6 weeks and 2 weeks later the other twin had reabsorbed

[AniseedTwist]

I haven't heard this, but doesn't this mean that in every set of twins there would be one right-handed and one left-handed twin? I'm sure if you were to ask several sets of twins this wouldn't be true.

[sophie_1003]

aniseedtwist--- its not saying that one of all twins is left handed just that all left handed people were twins

[glitzybabe]

yeah i heard that i was watching a programme a while back about twins and it said that....but i don't see how thats true because im an identical twin and neither of us is left handed?!?