Four-year-old ‘mirror’ twins do everything in precisely opposite ways

Four-year-old ‘mirror’ twins do everything from parting their hair to holding a pen in exactly opposite ways.

Leah and Erin Sullivan, from Inverness, Scotland, are like ‘two sides of the same coin’, according to their mother Zoe, 42.

While Leah separates her hair to the left, Erin separates hers to the right and both favor the opposite hands for playing or writing.

The pair even sleep in exactly the same position, but on different sides.

They are ‘mirrored twins’ – a little-known phenomenon that means that identical siblings are asymmetrical in appearance and in the way they move or interact.

The phenomenon is believed to affect up to a quarter of identical twins, and Zoe found that her twins were affected last year.

The mom who stays at home Zoe said, ‘If their hair is up, it’s very difficult to tell them apart!

‘Leah’s hair grew faster, but it wasn’t until the two of them were about two and a half years old that their bangs started to grow and I realized they were breaking on different sides!

‘It doesn’t matter what you did, like trying to separate it in the middle or the other side, and it really is the only way to distinguish them!

– That’s when we realized they were mirror twins. We think Erin can be left-handed, but Leah is definitely right-handed.

‘After I realized, I searched the internet, it can be very extreme!’

She said that Leah is usually left in the photos, with Erin on the right, and they walk with opposite dominant feet.

And when they look at each other, it is exactly as if they are looking in the mirror.

Your nursery also uses its unique hair styles to tell the difference, but there may still be more symmetries that reveal themselves as the girls grow up.

Zoe added: ‘They are totally different in personality. Almost like different sides of the same coin.

‘Every bit of personality Leah has, Erin doesn’t, and vice versa.

‘Erin is very direct – what you see is what you get – but Leah is more sassy and the total opposite!

“You see many twins with similar personalities, but with them it is like a person split in two.

‘Leah has a great sense of humor, but Erin doesn’t understand – she is much more serious.’

Identical twins are the result of a single fertilized egg dividing into two embryos between four and eight days after conception.

Mirror twins are thought to be the result of dividing the egg even later, between nine and 12 days, although this has never been proven.

The mother of eleven children, Zoe said: ‘Twins are in the family on my side, because my grandfather was a twin and I have twin aunts, but they were still a shock!

‘I also had a pair of non-identical twins four years ago, and I think part of me knew in my heart that they would be twins, but I was more shocked that they would be identical.’

The girls were born prematurely at 27 weeks on January 25, 2016, on the eighth birthday of their first pair of twins.

Leah weighed 3 lb 4 ounces and Erin 2 lb 6 ounces at birth, and was hospitalized for six and 10 weeks, respectively.

Leah suffered a lung collapse, Erin contracted sepsis and had extra fluid in her brain, and both girls had a heart murmur.

At one point, Erin weighed just 810g and, with seven other children at home at the time, the parents were exhausted.

Zoe, who is married to the girls ‘father, Ben, said:’ It was a very traumatic time.

‘Ben was doing part-time so he could take care of the other kids while I was in the hospital and then we changed – I have no idea how we did it!’

Zoe admitted that when they were babies, it was almost impossible to tell the girls apart.