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English twins emerge as black and white

Layton Richardson has lighter skin like his farther, and Kaydon is darker like his mother. October 26, 2006.

LONDON - A set of twins born in England are one - or make that two - in a million.

Their mother Kerry Richardson explained to NBC in Britain that now that the boys are three months old, she's starting to get a lot of attention when in public. She says she often has to explain to people that they are in fact twins.

Brothers Kaydon and Layton were born in Middlesbrough at the James Cook University Hospital on July 23.

"When they were first born, no one really noticed anything unusual as they were both practically the same color," the 27-year old Richardson told the Northern Echo newspaper in the United Kingdom. "But over the last few months, Layton has got lighter and blonder, like his dad, and Kaydon has gone darker, like me."

Richardson is of Nigerian-English heritage. The twin's father - no longer in contact with the family - is white.

Genetic experts say the odds of this happening to fraternal twins are about one in a million.

According to the Northern Echo, mixed-race people have genetic codes for light and dark skin in their genes.

International geneticist Dr Stephen Withers tells the paper that sperm and egg cell contains genes for both colors and in rare cases, an egg or sperm cell may possess coding for only one skin color.