Extreme Lookalikes May Share Much Deeper Ties Than We Ever Realized

There is more to a doppelgnger than meets the eye

Some people with similar faces have the same heights, weights, and behaviors.

Humans are more than just skin deep.

Half of the look-alikes pairs were classified as doppelgngers by all 3 facial recognition programs. 9 pairs of look-alikes were found by researchers.

Many of the genes that make up these super doppelgngers are related to body and facial features.

Their personal questionnaires show they share more.

Smoking habits, weight, and education are some lifestyle features associated with look-alike pairs.

The sample size is not large but the results are striking.

"These findings give clues about the genetic setting associated with our facial aspect, and probably other traits of our body and personality, but also highlight how much of what we are, and what defines us, is really inherited or instead is acquired during our lifetime," the authors wrote.

Twin studies are popular in the field of genetics, but doppelgngers are a bit of an undiscovered market.

Franois Brunelle has been using the internet to find and keep track of look-alikes since 1999.

Researchers are using his catalog to understand what makes us human and what makes us different.

The current study draws on 64 photographs of look-alikes recruited from a website.

Even though pairs were not related, look-alikes were found to share the same genes.

Individual participants had different views on how their life affected their genome.

Environmental factors include nutrition, exercise, and smoking.

A lot of the life in our guts is different from person to person, even among those with the same genetics.

Each look-alike's Epigenome describes the chemical modifications made to coiled strands of DNA that can turn genes on or off. Ultra look-alikes differed in their differences.

The structure of the human face is sculpted by specific parts of DNA according to previous research.

Look-alikes aren't long- lost twins or spirits. The participants in the study did not inherit their genes from the same ancestors.

One day, they could be used to predict how an individual will grow and age.

Manel Esteller is a scientist from the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona.

The same factors correlate with both physical and behavioral attributes of humans.

The study was published in a journal.