Tampa Bay| The case of four 1-year old brothers from
Florida, who were born from the same pregnancy but
of four different colors, continues to mystify the
scientists who have been studying the boys. The sons
of single mother Sheila Wilkinson, appear to have
taken all the traits of only one race each, and they all
have a different skin color.
Although this kind of phenomenon has been observed
in the past with twins on some very rare occasions, it
is the first case of multicolored quadruplets ever
known to have existed.
The 23-year old mother got pregnant during the 2012
Springbreak while partying in Louisiana. She admits
she had multiple sexual partners over a short time
period at and that she is not certain who the father of
her children is. The boys were born on December 7th at
the Tampa General Hospital, instantly attracting a lot
of attention from the world’s media and also from the
scientific community. They are named Jason, Timothy,
Anthony and William.
The geneticians who have studied the boys’ case,
believe that they could be the offspring of four
different fathers, a phenomenon called heteropaternal
superfecundation. Fraternal (dizygotic) twins are the
result of hyper ovulation, which means the release of
multiple eggs in a single cycle. Superfecundation
describes a situation where the eggs are fertilized by
sperm from separate incidences of sexual intercourse.
In a case where a woman has sex with different
partners, the twins could have different fathers.
In another case well documented case of multicolored
twins, one parent was white and one was black, and –
as can happen with any fraternal twins – Lauren took
after her mother, Alison Spooner, while Hayleigh took
after her father, Dean Durrant. What makes this
family so remarkable is that this happened not once
but twice, seven years apart. British researchers
calculated that the odds of two sets of “black and
white twins” in the same family are about 2 in a
million.