Deptt. of Anthropology, Delhi University.
Online published on 19 November, 2011.
Twins and Multiple births have captivated the interest and attention from the time of antiquity and has been a treasure trove for novelists and anthropologists, medical professionalists, geneticists. bollywood etc. One such legend is about the twins reported is Rumulus and Remus the twin brothers in 753 AD. Rumulus got the crown of Rome. There are innumerable instances of twins reported in the mythological scripts of India, viz. Ramayan -the most religious historical script mentions’ about Bali & Sugreve. In this present paper we have discussed about various types of conventional twins MZ & DZ, many unconventional, rare, unusual and unreported twins viz. time-bag-twins, conjointtwins, heterokaryotic MZ twins, twins born from two wombs of the same female. MZ twins conceived by the biological mother and through her mother, who offered herself as surrogate mother. Yet other types of twins are IVF -ET. The rarest types of twins are foetus in-foetus, double monster chimera and parasitic twins.
