Brittany and Briana Deane, twin sisters from Virginia, married twin brothers Jeremy and Josh Salyers. While the fact that these twins married twins seems like a fairy tale, they both also gave birth to sons approximately three months apart. Even more amusing is the fact that their boys are related in more than one way! Netizens are both captivated and perplexed by the narrative. Here’s how it all went down.

The twin duo met at a twin’s festival in Twinsburg.

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Brittany and Briana met Jeremy and Josh in Twinsburg, Ohio, in 2017, during the annual Twins Days Festival. The festival is the largest gathering of twins and multiplets worldwide. Interestingly, the twin duo found it could be great if they started dating each other. So, they dated each other for around a year. When both the Deane and Salyers twins were sure about each other, they finally decided to get married in 2018.

Josh and Jeremy even picked the second date of the second month to propose to Brittany and Brianca to make a double proposal for a double marriage even more memorable. So, the Salyers brothers proposed to the Deane sisters on 02 February 2018 at the Twin Lakes State Park, Virginia, and both the sisters immediately accepted the proposals.

The twin couples decided to get married during the Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, where they met for the first time. The pair returned to the festival the same year to marry in an iconic venue in an iconic joint wedding ceremony they called “Twice Upon a Time.” In similar outfits, Josh married Brittany and Jeremy married Brianca, and the newlywed twin couples now live in the same house in Bedford County, Virginia.

Their sons are related in more ways than one.

As if marrying twin brothers and sharing the same house to live in was not amusing enough, Brittany and Brianca both gave birth to sons in 2021. Brittany gave birth to his son Jett Slayer in January 2021, while Brianca’s son Jax Salyer was born in April 2021. Naturally, both the baby boys are cousins. However, there’s more to it than that.

The genetics Jett and Jax share are more similar than that are for the cousins. On average, first cousins have 12.5% common genes. However, both the parents of Jett and Jax, being identical twins, share 100% similar genes. Therefore, their parents are genetically the same, which means that the genetics shared by Jett and Jax are similar to those of the siblings. It makes them both “genetic sibling” brothers.

As if that was not enough already, Jett and Jax are quaternary twins as well! The unusual and rare marriage of twin brothers with twin sisters is known as a “quaternary marriage” because it involves four people. And when the twins who married twins have children, they are called “quaternary twins,” like Jett and Jax here. Quaternary twins are exceptionally rare, and there are only about 300 quaternary families in the world.

Nonetheless, they are pretty popular on social media as well! Josh, Jeremy, Brittany, and Brianca have a joint account on Instagram, where they regularly post their everyday life updates with over 230,000 followers. Their posts, particularly with Jett and Jax, get several thousand likes and a lot of comments. The followers enjoy watching Jett and Jax growing up together, as well as how the couples with their sons share their lives under the same roof.

Salyers family is interesting, and so are these twin facts!

1 Twin birth rate is not the same across the world.

Call it a coincidence or a fact, but certain regions of the world have a greater percentage of twin births than others. For example, Japan has the lowest rate of twin births, while Nigeria has the highest. In fact, Igbo-Ora, a Nigerian town, is known as the world’s “twin capital,” with the highest rate of twin births.

2 Igbo-Ora, Nigeria, is the “twin capital” of the world.

Igbo-Ora, a town roughly 60 miles north of Nigeria’s major metropolis, Lagos, even hosts a twin festival every year. It attracts hundreds of twins to this place from the whole country. Also, almost every family in Igbo-Ora has twins. In fact, 45 to 50 pairs of twins are born for every 1,000 live births in the region.

While experts have yet to determine why Igbo-Ogra has so many twins, residents have their own theory. Locals consume okra leaf soup (ilasa) with amala and yam. They think that the gonadotropins in yams aid in producing multiple eggs in women, contributing to twin births.

3 Kodinhi Village in India has an abnormally high number of twins.

A village in the southern part of India, Kodinhi, also witnesses an extremely high twin birth rate for a place with a population of a mere 2,000. The village is located around 150 kilometers north of Kochi in Kerala. It has more than 400 twins among the village’s 2,000 residents! Previously, the region had just a few twin births. However, 30 of the 300 babies born in the region in 2008 were twins. The number continued to rise, and a few years later, the region saw more than 60 twin births.

While the global average is four twin births per 1,000 people, India is slightly above with an average of nine. Kodinhi, on the other hand, has a far higher twin birth rate of about 45 out of every 1,000 births. Nonetheless, local doctors say that the number of twin births in the region has more than doubled in the previous decade and is continuing to grow.

Other than Igbo-Ora (Nigeria) and Kodinhi (Kerala), Ung Loc Commune (South Vietnam) and Candido Godo (Brazil) also have higher than usual twin birth rates.

4 There’s no plausible explanation as to why twins happen.

Twin births are more common today than in the past, but no one understands what causes people to have twins. While non-identical twins are more common than identical twins, experts believe that In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) can increase the likelihood of conceiving twins. It happens when they mistakenly transfer more than one embryo in the process.

Furthermore, a woman over the age of 35 is more likely to give birth to twins. This is because she is more likely to release more than one egg when ovulating. Surprisingly, the gestation duration for a single kid is approximately 40 weeks, but it is roughly 38 weeks for twins.