Scientists Explain How Total Strangers Can Pass for Twins

Scientists explain how total strangers can pass for twins.


It can be flattering to hear that you resemble ScarJo or Beyoncé, but is it really possible to look just like someone you’ve never even met? Apparently, yes—and a new group is out to prove it.

A group of friends recently started the Twin Strangers Project in an effort to find people out in the world who look just like them. The cofounders of the project explain that they've heard a theory that everyone has seven people in the world who look exactly like them, and they wanted to find out whether or not this is true. So at the end of March, they gave themselves one month to compete to see who could find the most doppelgängers.

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They’ve already found several, and it’s no joke—they look like legitimate twins. “I haven’t stopped looking at you,” said Twin Strangers cofounder Niamh in a video to her bizarrely similar twin stranger Karen. “It’s weird.”

Turns out, there's a scientific reason for why someone you've never met could look uncannily similar to you: Any two people taken at random are going to share about 99.5 percent of their gene sequence, according to Joseph McInerney, executive vice president of the American Society of Human Genetics. Of that remaining half a percent, there are 16 million base pairs of DNA, which is where you get “an enormous amount of individual variation”—but that’s still only a half a percent of an entire human being's genome and only one source of individual differences.

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Of course, the more closely you’re actually related to someone, the more likely you are to share a genetic makeup. Identical twins, for example, have identical or nearly identical DNA, while siblings share a half of that remaining half percent of DNA with each other. First cousins also share DNA, but less than siblings, and so on.

That being said, “People who look identical almost certainly share more DNA than two random strangers who don’t look alike,” says geneticist Arthur Beaudet, M.D., a professor in the molecular and human genetics department at the Baylor College of Medicine.


While extensive research hasn’t been conducted on the topic, Beaudet says it’s possible that total strangers could share as much DNA as cousins—especially if they’re both from the same area since we’re all related on some level. “Some of these people may actually be distant relatives,” he says. That also explains why you might often hear that you look just like a total stranger if you still live in the same country or area where you grew up, he says.

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As for the whole “we all have seven people who look just like us” theory, Beaudet says it’s “quite possible and quite likely.” What’s more, he says that number may be even higher for people who originate from a particularly high-population region like China.

Think you look like one of the Twin Strangers? Reach out to them here.

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