Black And White Twins

Kaydon and Layton Wood are just five yet already they are local celebrities.

Dressed in identical outfits (their parents have always taken great pride in doing so), the boys are often stopped in the street by passers-by who can’t believe it when they are told the pair are not only brothers, but twins. In fact, the twins have been making headlines in regional newspapers since they were born – because one is white and the other black. A perfect mix: Five-year-olds Layton and Kaydon WoodEach year, 12,000 sets of twins are born in Britain. Of these, 385 of them are black or mixed race.

But this once unheard of phenomenon is on the increase and some experts even predict that having twins who are polar opposites in colour could actually become almost commonplace.

The film follows the story of five families with twins like Kaydon and Layton, and explores the medical explanation for this striking occurrence. Dr Jim Wilson, a population geneticist at the University of Edinburgh, explains: ‘You can predict that two pure-bred white people can’t have black and white twins, just as two pure-bred African people can’t either.However, it is not possible to predict exactly what colour people who have a mixed African and European heritage will be.‘Since parents contribute 50 per cent of the genes each to an off­­­­spring, the first generation born to a mixed-race couple will definitely be midway in colour between the two. Headline makers: Layton and Kaydon pictured as babies Special boys: Twins Layton (left) and Kaydon with mother Kerry shortly after they were born in 2006‘But second-generation children are different. If one of the offspring marries a white person, it is possible for them to have a white child because you no longer have 50/50 white and black variants.‘Where you have one mixed-race parent and one white parent it’s still unlikely for a white baby to be born. But one child in ten is now mixed race, which potentially means black and white twins will become far more common.’Kaydon and Layton’s mother Kerry, 32, is a local government administrator in Widnes and is married to Paul, also 32, a logistics analyst for the NHS.She says: ‘When the twins arrived, the doctors initially told me they had a touch of jaundice, which gave the impression they both had a light suntan.

'But gradually the boys changed colour and by six weeks it was startlingly obvious that one was white, blond-haired and blue-eyed while the other was dark-skinned with black curly hair.‘I’m mixed race – my dad is Nigerian while my mum is white – and the boys’ father is also white.’Dr Wilson continues: ‘There are about 20 genes [from a total of about 20,000] known to control skin and eye colour.