THE SECOND-BORN TWIN’S EFFECT

Abstract

Our study aimed to find as many distinguishing features as possible between monozygotic twins. We also researched dizygotic twins, but our primary focus was on concordance and discordance between the identical twins. We conclude that special cues can make it easier for people to distinguish between twins and to determine which is the first-born twin and which is the second. Or who is the leader among them, and which twin is more often able to take charge. We were interested in the attitude of the twins to infectious diseases, especially COVID-19, and we concluded that relatively more frequently this disease initially infects the first-born twin, but despite some data we have, which twin carries the disease more severely is still difficult to determine at this stage and requires more extensive research. As for adult twins who have been infected with COVID-19, there have been cases when the first-born twin was quite mildly infected with COVID-19, while the second-born was not infected at all. But here it should also be noted that in these cases the twins were vaccinated against COVID-19 while in the previous cases mostly schoolchildren participated in the experiments who had not been vaccinated. As for non-identical twins, we obtained almost similar results regarding COVID-19 as we had in identical twins. At the same time, it is known that even identical twins who share the same appearance and genetics do not have the same handwriting. Some people may be able to copy your handwriting, but they would never get to write identically. Experts say our handwriting can tell a lot about us including our health and motor skills and we got a rather strange picture when comparing the handwriting of monozygotic twins. It turned out that the handwriting of the second-born twin was still a little limper compared to the first-born twin. A total of 10 twins participated in this experiment, and all of them were foreign students who knew how to write their first and last names in Georgian, this allowed us to determine that the first-born twin wrote Georgian letters a little more correctly than the second twin. It was also surprising that we were dealing with an almost analogous situation in the case of non-identical twins.