It seemed like a normal day for Kurt de Cramer, a vet in a busy veterinary practice in South Africa’s Rant en Dal Animal Hospital in Mogale City.

He was performing a Caesarean section on a female Irish wolfhound, who showed distress and prolonged abdominal straining when she was due to give birth. For de Cramer it was a routine event; he averages about 900 Caesarean sections each year.

But something was different about this delivery. When he started the procedure, de Cramer noticed that the wolfhound had an unusual bulging by her uterus.

At first, he thought the lump was excess fluid surrounding a foetus. De Cramer painstakingly extracted this foetus from the bulge by making an incision into the dog’s uterus.

That was when the real shock came. He found not one, but two foetuses. They were both attached with umbilical cords to the same placenta.

“When I realised that the puppies were of the same gender and that they had very similar markings, I also immediately suspected that they might be identical twins having originated from the splitting of an embryo,” says de Cramer.

He could not stop and marvel at this peculiar discovery, because there were still five live puppies to deliver. These appeared as they normally do, each with their own placenta arranged in single file in their mother’s uterus.

This was the first time de Cramer had delivered two living pups from one placenta in 26 years of practice. He immediately called upon other reproductive specialists to confirm his suspicions.

The team, including Carolynne Joone of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia and Johan Nöthling of the University of Pretoria in South Africa, obtained blood samples when the twins were two weeks old.

“The twins looked very similar,” says Joone. “But pups from the same litter often do, [and] there were small differences in the white markings on their paws, chests and the tips of their tails. I wasn’t sure they were monozygotic [identical] at all initially.”

However, the results confirmed what de Cramer had suspected: the dog had given birth to two identically genetic puppies. De Cramer had therefore delivered the first known instance of monozygotic twin dogs. The team outline their findings in the journal Reproduction in Domestic Animals.

The subtle differences in the markings on their fur initially caused some doubt to their status as identical.

This can be explained by the fact that, despite having the same DNA, the way individual genes are expressed can differ. “Human identical twins also have the same genes, but because those genes are expressed differently in each person, they have different freckle and fingerprint patterns,” says de Cramer.

When the twins were six weeks old the team again took DNA samples, this time from their tissue rather than their blood. They also profiled the rest of the litter, “really just to have some sort of idea of how similar the pups in the litter were genetically”, says Joone.

If the other pups from the same litter had very similar profiles, the team says they could not have convincingly concluded that the other two were identical.

Again, the results confirmed that the first two pups were genetically identical, whereas the others were only similar to the level that littermates usually are.

This is the first recorded case in the scientific literature, but does that mean it is a rare occurrence? Female dogs, known as bitches, often have several pups in each litter. Many of the pups often look strikingly similar, and DNA tests are not typically performed.

It is hard to know, says Joone. “We are so lucky that this bitch ended up having a C-section,” she explains, because otherwise it is unlikely her owners would have noticed. “Yes, there would have been one less placenta than there were pups, but as the bitch often eats the placentas the owner probably would have simply shrugged this off.”

While this is the first confirmed instance of genetically-identical twins, it is impossible to say just how rare it is. “There have been rumours about twins in dogs before,” says Joone. “We just happened to be lucky enough to be able to confirm it genetically.”

It seems unlikely that identical twin puppies are particularly common. “It has taken so long for us to find a monozygotic pair, so they are probably rare,” says Joone. “But so many of them will have been born naturally and blissfully unaware.”

Non-identical multiples are common in many species, like dogs and rabbits. However, identical offspring are believed to be extremely rare. The exception is ourselves and nine-banded armadillos, which give birth to identical quadruplets, each with their own placenta.

It is thought that identical twins are rare because, when two foetuses share one placenta, they do not get enough nutrients from the mother and are therefore less likely to survive.

For instance, identical twin foetuses have been reported in horses, but none have survived. A horse’s placenta is not efficient enough to transport oxygen for two foetuses.

This means that when a twin foal dies in the womb, “the living one will abort due to his dead neighbour”, says Jan Govaere of Ghent University, who in 2008 published a paper on the abortion of identical twin horses, one of which had died early on. “If a horse is carrying twins, most of them are lost within a month of gestation,” he says.

For the same reason, it was surprising to de Cramer that the identical twin pups he delivered were healthy. He had only seen one other case of two foetuses sharing a placenta, back in 2014, and the foetuses were already dead when he performed a Caesarean section.

“It is even less likely for placenta-sharing puppies to survive, because of several complications relating to nutrient and oxygen supply from a single placenta having to do the job that is normally done by two placentas,” he says.

Today the twin dogs are still doing well. They were slightly smaller at birth, but by the time they were six weeks old they had reached a similar size to the other pups in their litter.

As with many rare things in nature, “people don’t see these things unless they know to look,” says Joone. “Perhaps now they will, and more will appear.”

Melissa Hogenboom is BBC Earth’s feature writer. She is @melissasuzanneh on Twitter.

Source: BBCNews

The Anti-Robbery Squad of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Yaba, has arrested a four-man gang that had allegedly been terrorising residents of the Ikorodu area of Lagos State.

PUNCH Metro learnt that the suspects – Akin Ayotunde, Isaac Ogbonna, Sola Dede and Sodiq Lawal – specialised in lurking around houses at night and switching off their victims’ generators before attacking them.

They, however, met their Waterloo last Thursday when they were arrested after invading the apartment of one Bello Hakeem in the Igbe area.

Our correspondent was told that the suspects spent six hours in the victim’s duplex and went away with his car, generator, money, phones, Automated Teller Machine cards, modems, laptops and cash.

They also stole his wife’s jewellery and withdrew N100,000 using one of the ATM cards.

Hakeem told our correspondent that around 11.09pm on Tuesday, he observed that his generator suddenly went off and he asked two of his children to go outside and fix the problem.

“About five minutes after they left, they were forced back into the house by four men, who were armed with knives.

“They ordered us to cooperate with them. They searched the house and made away with three laptops, six phones, three ATM cards, a new 3.5KVA generator, one 75alms battery, two modems, jewellery, cash, and my Toyota Corolla. They held my family hostage for six hours before leaving at about 6am the next day,” he added.

Hakeem, an environmental scientist, said he reported the incident at the Ijede Police Station, adding that the suspects were able to withdraw N100,000 from his First Bank account before he deactivated all the stolen ATM cards.

He said two days after the incident, a friend called him that a car that looked like his own had been put up for sale.

He said operatives from the SCIID, Yaba, were alerted and the suspects were rounded up.

The four suspects, who confessed to the crime, said they operated with knives to avoid bloodshed.

The gang leader, Ayotunde, 27, said,

“I used to sell garri with my grandma in a market before a former Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, demolished shops in the market. I tried another job, but it didn’t work.

“I then sold the idea of robbing houses to my friends and we agreed to use only knives and not guns. We always lurk around developing areas in Ikorodu at night, look for any house that had its generator on, scale the fence and put off the generator. When the occupants of the house come out to check the generator, we attack. We made N60,000 from our first operation in March.

“I was arrested when the man whom I had given the man’s car to called me that he had found a buyer. He said the buyer had paid N700,000 for the vehicle and that I should come for my share. We agreed to meet at a restaurant in Ojota. But on getting there, I discovered that it was a set up and I was arrested.”

Ogbonna, 23, an indigene of Ebonyi State, said he was looking for money for the treatment of his elder sister when he was invited to join the gang.

“My sister needed blood transfusion and I had to look for money by all means. I got N25,000 from the operation,” he added.

The third suspect, 24-year-old Dede, from Ondo State, said he joined the group because he was told nobody would be killed, adding that he needed money to change his apartment.

He said, “An Alfa told me to move out of my family house because there was a spiritual force working against the success of men in the house. I needed money to change my apartment.”

The police also arrested the receiver of some of the stolen items, Akeem Lawal, who claimed that the suspects lied to him that the goods were imported.

The Police Public Relations officer, SP Dolapo Badmos, confirmed the arrest, adding that investigations were ongoing.

She said, “The last house they robbed belonged to a couple who quickly alerted the police. They were trailed and arrested. They are currently undergoing interrogation at the command.”

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) through its Lagos Zone Coordinator, Prof. Olusoji Sowande at a news conference in Lagos on Tuesday, threatened to embark on a nationwide strike in regards to its demands for the implementation of its 2009 agreement with the Federal Government.

Sowande said the 2009 FG/ASUU agreement, Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on funding of state universities, breaches of the conditions of service and re-negotiation of the agreement, exclusion of Nigerian universities from Pension Management Company and non-release of NEEDS Assessment Intervention Fund were still being ignored. The

He said:

“The review of the agreement should have been undertaken in 2012 and 2015 but that did not happen.‎ “The implication is that our union has shown enough patriotism and understanding on these matters in the last four years.

“We are perplexed and disappointed that both the Federal and State Governments are not responding to our consistent appeals to bring about genuine transformation in the education sector.

He said they would rather not embark on a strike because it is the Students and ASUU members that end up suffering. Adding:

“It is unfortunate that the only language government appears to respect and listens to is that of industrial action like strike”.