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high cheekbones, same smile, same walking style. Was it Jorge, pretending to be someone
else? Confused, she returned to the butcher shop to show William a picture of his look-alike,
Jorge. William laughed and didn’t take it seriously, but Laura later showed Jorge a photo-
graph of William. “That’s me!” Jorge exclaimed. Scrolling through William’s social media
photos, Jorge found another surprise: his look-alike, William, sitting next to a mirror image
of Jorge’s fraternal twin brother.
Until then, William and Jorge had lived utterly separate lives. William grew up in a rural
village, while Jorge was city-raised. William and Jorge both — thanks to a colossal hospi-
tal mistake — believed they had fraternal twin brothers, Wilber and Carlos, respectively. In
reality, Wilber and Carlos, like William and Jorge, were identical twins. The hospital had sent
William home with Wilber, and Carlos home with Jorge.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Not for redistribution.
Although they were raised apart, William and Jorge both were jokesters, physically
strong, and supportive. Wilber and Carlos were moody and serious, always organized, and
prone to crying, and they had the same speech impediment. Each of them had wondered
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
why he felt so different from his supposed fraternal twin. Meeting their identical twin
revealed the power of genetics.
Genes matter, but so does environment. Urban-dwellers Jorge and Carlos had better
nutrition, and were taller than rural-raised William and Wilber. Wilber didn’t have access to
the speech therapy that Carlos did, which meant that only Wilber struggled with speaking
as an adult.
The remarkable story of the “Bogotá brothers” resembles that of many separated twin
pairs. When tested by psychologists Thomas Bouchard and Nancy Segal, separated identical
twins exhibited similarities in not only tastes and physical attributes but also personality,
abilities, attitudes, interests, and fears.

From ACCIDENTAL BROTHERS by Nancy L. Segal and Yesika S. Montoya. Copyright © 2018 by Nancy L. Segal and Yesika S. Montoya. Reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press. All Rights Reserved.

Bogotá brothers Due to a medical error, two sets of identical twins born in Bogotá, Colombia, were
separated at birth. The identical twin brothers were later reunited and noticed that they shared many of their
twins’ physical and personality traits. Yet the identical twins were raised in different environments, which led
to differences in their access to quality education and nutrition. The Bogotá brothers illustrate how nature and ®
nurture interact. AP Science Practice
Research

Stories of startling twin similarities have not impressed critics, who remind us that To draw conclusions, psychologi-
“the plural of anecdote is not data.” They note that if any two strangers of similar age, sex, cal scientists rely on data gathered
from studies — not anecdotes,
and ethnicity were to spend hours comparing their behaviors and life histories, they would hearsay, or common sense. This is
probably discover many coincidental similarities (Joseph, 2001). Twin researchers reply that why it is so important to understand
separated fraternal twins do not, however, exhibit similarities comparable to those of sepa- the information about research
methods in Unit 0.
rated identical twins.

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