• ShustOne@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    I could see this happening when they are babies though. Like 6 weeks in Bob becomes Tom and Tom becomes Bob and you might never know. I don’t think that would be harmful at such a young age though.

    • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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      1 year ago

      Where I live, birth certificate registration require footprints taken by a nurse. I imagine identical twins still have different footprints pattern?

      Imagine when you’re old and tried to compare your footprints out of curiosity only to find out your identity has been swapped this whole time.

    • nieceandtows@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I can’t recognize my own daughter in the first few weeks/months of her life even if I look at the pictures and know its her.

      • Periwinkledot@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There was a case in my country where two babies were swapped at the hospital. One mom had the presence of mind to take pictures right after giving birth, which she used to prove that she was given the wrong baby (hers had a full head of hair). The other parents were blissfully ignorant of the fact there was a switch.

    • JDubbleu@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      As long as they don’t have different allergies or had biometrics recorded and assigned to them at the hospital it arguably wouldn’t even matter.

      • SgtAStrawberry@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And if one of them do have a bad allergy or disease you should really have a system in place to tell them apart and not rely on just looking at them and hope for the best.

    • candybrie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Having had twins, I can’t imagine it happening 6 weeks in for more than a few sleep deprived minutes. 6 hours, definitely. 6 days, maybe. But by 6 weeks, you know who is who. Even identical twins are pretty easy to tell apart after having spent significant time with them. It’s actually pretty common for parents of di/di identical twins (which are the type that could be fraternal) to not think their twins are identical only to have everyone else notice they are.

    • Pandantic [they/them]@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, there was an episode of full house with this idea - they used their footprints to tell them apart. I can imagine you couldn’t be doing that all the time tho.

      • Depress_Mode@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Exact same plot in an episode of Suite Life of Zach and Cody, too, complete with birth certificate footprints to confirm their identities. Although, the episode ends with the mom simply recalling off the top of her head which one belonged to who instead of making any direct comparisons, which always bothered me in an episode about the mom having confused the two in the first place.