A video of twin girls selecting the same colored blocks over and over again without actually being able to see each other has gone viral, leading some to question: Is twin telepathy real?
Adrea Garza, 39, says her now 6-year-old fraternal twin girls, Koti and Haven, have been uniquely in-sync ever since they were babies.
"They would just wake up at the exact same moment from their cribs every single morning," the Oklahoma mom tells TODAY.com. "I just thought it was a coincidence, because they were on the same schedules of course, but it started happening more and more and they'd even cry at the same time."
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Garza says her daughter's special connection continued during their toddler years, adding that they'd "both ask for a snack at the same moment" and would be "saying the same thing at the same time all the time."
"I was like: 'Well, let's get the camera," Garza says. "I want to try to capture this."
Garza started filming what she considers to be moments where her daughters were experiencing twin telepathy, or "extrasensory perception" — the ability to access thoughts and feelings without outside input, or acquire information without relying on any physical senses.
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In January, she filmed her 6-year-olds selecting the same colored blocks despite not being able to see the choice the other was making and posted it to Instagram. To date, it has over 130,000 likes.
The video was re-shared in September on a different Instagram account, and has since gone viral.
Other people shared their own experiences with what they thought was "twin ESP" in the comments.
Garza says she loves how connected her twins are, and after joining a twin mom group on Facebook and speaking with other parents it "seems like it's kind of a normal occurrence when it comes to twins."
"It never gets old," she adds. "It's always so cool. Now that they're older I feel like they're more in-tune with each other with certain things, but as they're developing and their own personalities grow ... they're finding their own individual identity.
"It's not happening as often as it used to," Garza says. "But when it does, I try to always capture it because I just think it's so special."
Is Twin Telepathy Real?
Joan A. Friedman, a psychotherapist, author and twin expert, says there is no scientific evidence that twin telepathy exists; however there is a mountain of anecdotal evidence.
"You mostly hear about it from adult twins," Friedman tells TODAY.com. "They're the ones who will say: 'I felt the moment my sister died' or 'I knew she broke her arm or had her baby.' I do believe that twins in that situation have a sort of 'extra sense' about what is happening with their twin. I think it's very real."
According to Friedman, these instances are most commonly seen in identical twins.
Friedman also cites studies in which physical closeness between twins can result in emotional and physical benefits.
One 2016 study found that twins who slept in the same bed had improved self-regulation, better sleep and a decrease in crying.
Many hospitals also choose to have twins in the same unit while in the NICU, citing a reduction in pain, a higher overall weight average and a decreased hospital stay.
"That makes sense to me," Friedman says. "They're in the womb together for those eight or nine months ... it gives them a heightened sense of each other."
Friedman does say that this anecdotal phenomenon is usually only seen in adult twins, adding that what can appear to be proof of twin telepathy is actually just children mimicking each other.
"Twins are together all the time and they play together and they watch what the other one is doing," Friedman explains. "And sometimes they're really competitive, because they want to do exactly what the other one is doing, so they copy each other.
"The fact that they're doing the same thing (could be) because they've done the same thing when they play together," she adds. "When they're separated they end up doing the same thing together and then the mother videos it."
Regardless of whether her children are experiencing twin telepathy, Garza says she hopes that when her girls are older they can look at the videos and remember that they have a uniquely special bond.
"I just hope they always know that they have somebody — a permanent, built-in best friend," Garza says. "This is somebody who is not only family, but your twin sister who is going to be on this earth the same time as you and experience the same things as you throughout life, and how cool that is — not everyone gets to have that. They're very, very lucky."
This article first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
