Meet the black and white twin sisters born of the same mother

UK: These two teenage girls are twins - they just don't look like it.

Lucy, Aylmer, with white skin and straight ginger hair, and Maria Aylmer, with her thick curly hair and darker skin, were both born in January 1997.

So in school, classmates had no trouble telling them apart.

Thanks to a rare scientific quirk resulting from their mother and father's mixed-race pairing, they were both born with different coloured skin.

Their mum Donna is half Jamaican while father Vince is white.

But when they heard they were having twins, they could never have guessed that they would produce twins looking so different from each other.

Blue-eyed Lucy, who lives in Gloucester with her family, said: "It was such a shock for her because things like skin colour don’t show up on scans before birth.

"So she had no idea that we were so different.

"When the midwife handed us both to her she was just speechless."

The twins, 18, are the youngest of five children, which include Jordan, George and Chynna.

"Our brothers and sisters have skin which is inbetween Maria and I," Lucy added.

"We are at opposite ends of the spectrum and they are all somewhere inbetween.

"But my grandmother has a very fair English rose complexion, just like mine.

"No one ever believes we are twins. Even when we dress alike, we still don’t look like sisters, let alone twins. Friends have even made us produce our birth certificates to prove it.

"We were in the same class, but no one had a problem telling us apart. Twins are known for swapping identities. But there was no way Maria and I could ever do anything like that.

"Most twins look like two peas in a pod – but we couldn’t look more different if we tried.

"We don’t look like we have the same parents, let alone having been born at the same time."

They may be twins, but the quirky pair have different interests as well as different looks, with Maria studying law at Cheltenham College, and Lucy studying art and design at Gloucester College.

Lucy added: "Maria was outgoing whilst I was the shy one.

"But Maria loves telling people at college that she has a white twin – and I’m very proud of having a black twin."

The science behind these twins' appearance

Twins who are born not as identical to their sibling inherit different genes as they come from separate eggs.

And because Donna, their mother, carries genes for black and white skin, Maria has inherited one code while, by chance, Lucy has inherited another.

The rare occurrence as in Maria and Lucy's case is said to have a 'million to one' chance of happening.