Thursday, July 17, 2008

Black and white twins born to German mixed-race couple


BERLIN, July 17 (RIA Novosti) - Black and white twins have been born to a mixed-race couple in Germany, the Die Welt newspaper reported on Thursday.
Their mother, Florence Addo-Gerth, 35, from Ghana, has dark skin, and the father, Stephan Gerth, 40, from Potsdam in Germany, is white.

Ryan, who came first, weighing 2.650 kgs, has light colored skin, blue eyes, and dark hair. His brother Leo, weighing 2.606 kgs, looks like his mother, with dark skin and dark eyes. Ryan has been described by his mother as 'noisy,' while Leo is a lot calmer.

"None of us could believe it," said the Lichtenberg maternity ward's head doctor, Birgit Weber, adding that "both kids have definitely the same father."

Florence was quoted by peacefmonline.com as saying: "I imagine sitting in a playground where the other mothers will call me crazy when I tell them the boys are twins."

The twins were delivered by Caesarean section in a Berlin hospital on July 11, but were kept from the public for six days.

The probability of different colored twins being born even to a mixed-race couple is extremely rare. Doctors believe that the 'genetic surprise' might have occurred as one of the mother's ancestors was white or one of the father's ancestors was black.