Kodinhi is a small village in Kerala, about 35 kilometers south of Calicut and 30 kilometres west of Malappuram. There are about 2,000 families living in this southern Indian villages and almost every family has a pair of twins. Until now, no doctors or scientists have been able to conclude exactly why this is happening.
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| Kodinhi Twin Children. Image credit: indiatimes |
This village is well known for the number of unexplained twins since 1949. The oldest twin living in this village is Abdul Hameed and his twin sister Kunhi Kadia.
In 2006, Kodinhi Village began to attract the attention of researchers around the world because of the curiosity of a pair of twin sisters who noticed the high pattern of twin births in their own village.
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| Image credit: cntraveller |
This pair of twins named Sameera and Femeena were students of 8th standard in the IISC school near here. The twin sisters, went on to conduct a mini-survey as a part of their class assignment to ascertain the number of twins in their school and they found that there were 24 pairs.
The number of twin births in Kodinhi has been increasing over the years, with surveys showing over 79 pairs of twins within the age group of 0–10 years. In 2008, there were 30 twins out of the 300 children born in good health in the village. But in a few years; their number has reached 60.
However, not all families have a history of twin births. Praseena (34) is the only daughter Sukumaran (71), a retired government employee, whose family has been living in Kodinhi since the past two generations. Their family has had no twin births but now their daughter Prasanna is a mother to a pair of twins.
In October 2016, a team of researchers from various institutions including CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS) and University of London and Germany visited the village to investigate this phenomenon. The researchers collected saliva and hair samples, as part of their study.
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| Kodinhi map. Image credit: Google maps |
However, there is no scientific evidence yet. Some doctors have said that besides genetics, it could be a particular element in the air or water of the village. Other explanations include the diet of the villagers.
One member of the study, Dr. Thirumalaswami Velavan of Tuebingen University, said that the research “would identify genetic factors determining the hereditability of twins. There is no known genetic link identified yet for identical twinning and the real factor behind the phenomenon is yet to be ascertained”
Not just in India, researchers around the world are surprised by this village because there are over 400 twins here. It is believed that this place has got the blessings of God because twins are seen in very few cases, wherein in this village so many twins are born together.
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