If Luke and Leia are IDENTICAL twins, then why is Luke so much taller than Leia?

Because its a movie.

 

Luke and Leia are not identical twins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Both Luke and Leia both have some of Anakin and Padme's traits.

Luke has Anakin's eyes, hair, a dent in his chin. Pliot's skills, working robots, innocences, kind heart, stubborness.

Leia has Padme's eyes, hair, height, strength, chose in men, dipomacy, ready to get in a good fight. Stubborness, kind heart, love of family.

Even though they didn't grow up together, they became fast friends and allies. I think Padme and Anakin would be very proud of them now.

May the Force be with us always!!!!!!

Anakin and Padme Forever.

 

Because this thread hasn't gotten disturbingly random enough.....

If you really want to get technical, identical twins have to be the same sex not gender. In academia, sex refers to reproductive organs and genetics,(male or female, which is the arguement at hand); gender concerns socially learned forms of behaviour(refering to masculinity and femininity).

It is genetically impossible for identical twins to be of the same sex, but they can be the same gender, gender is a sociological term.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Sociology/Gender

 

BTW,

Dominant traits like brown eyes and cleft chins CANNOT skip a generation. They can be slightly less expressed keeping in mind that several genes ar responsible for eye color, hair color, facial features, etc. and development due to nutrition, injury, chance, can change things. There is no way somebody could have a cleft chin if his parents' chins weren't cleft at all. Because if either of them carried the dominant genotype, it would be the expressed phenotype.

 

Not so. My father has brown eyes, but I do not. If the parent has a mixed set of alleles, even a dominant trait isn't always passed on to the children.

I completely agree! I was thinking while watching RotS the other day that Anakin and Leia really do have a lot of similar features. They've got the same button nose, that's for sure. Most of the PT actors were extraordinarily well-cast and had the perfect facial features for the part.

Leia also really takes after her father personality-wise. It's a wonder he didn't figure out she was his daughter much sooner.

 

I think you meant to say it's genetically impossible for identical twins to be of different sexes...

A dominant trait isn't always passed on to the children, if the parents have mixed alleles. However, a recessive trait is always passed on to the children, because it wouldn't be expressed otherwise. However, a recessive trait is only expressed if the other parent also carries the recessive trait.

Both of my maternal grandparents had brown eyes, but three of their 9 children, including my mother, have blue eyes. That's only possible because both of them carried the recessive alleles for blue. My paternal grandparents both had blue eyes, as does my father (and so do I and my sister, obviously). I know eye color doesn't strictly follow Mendelian genetics, and very occasionally two blue-eyed parents produce a brown-eyed kid, but still...

 

You're right... I worded that incorrectly. Dominant traits aren't always passed down to offspring, however, when both parents have recessive traits expressed, their children cannot have dominant traits expressed.

 

Im very obvlivious to human features; your either pretty, beautiful, blue eyes, brown eyes, full, thin lips, sometimes I can detect cheek bones and maybe chins. What Im saying is the only people who look alike to me are Selena and Jennifer Lopez as Selena. I dont even see the similarities between Natalie and Keira anymore. So, no I dont see how Hayden and young Carrie look alike, but like what I said above Im a lil oblivious to this kind a thing.

 

You must be if you can't see how Nat and Keira look alike. They really do have a close resemblence.

I think young Mark and Hayden look quite a bit alike.

One of the funnier things about this thread is that if you look at Luke and Leia, they're actually both pretty short. They obviously both got their height-or lack of it-from their mother.

 

I think Keira's looking less like Natalie now that she's lost weight. And, well, the head-shaving thing on Natalie's end. But yes, when I first saw her, I went, "Whoa, is that Natalie Portman?"

I actually think Luke and Leia look more like Anakin than they do Padme. (Actually, I see an older Leia looking alot like Shmi.) Also, brown eyes can skip a generation as long as both parents have alleles for blue eyes. In the case of the Skywalkers, it simply means that Padme needs to be heterozygous for brown eyes (Bb) while Anakin is completely recessive blue (bb), resulting in Leia (Bb) and Luke (bb).

The Punnet square would look like this:

_B_ |_ b
b|Bb | bb
---------
b|Bb | bb

In other words, 50% chance for brown eyes, 50% chance for blue eyes with every child they (could have) had.

 

Um, has anyone seen the Olsen twins lately? They are identical and one of them is taller.

And Luke and Leia are fratenal twins, not identical. In idenical twins the ova divides, in fraternal there are two eggs.

 

Indeed. Which is why identical twins are always the same sex.

 

All Vader said in ROTJ was that he had a twin sister. I think one would assume it is not an identical twin...

 

Leia had to dance for the Hutt and everyone knows dancing for the Hutt makes your back go hunch, so Leia used to be Lukes height but that time of dancing did its toll on her, and Luke was always working out, making him grow, word

 

Um, has anyone seen the Olsen twins lately? They are identical and one of them is taller.

Actually, the Olsen twins are fraternal, radically enough.

Though, certainly there are small differences between identical twins. Their fingerprints are unique. Their metabolisms can vary, as can birth weight. Events that occur in the womb can also alter the appearance of an identical twin. Not on a mass scale, hopefully, but just tiny altercations in the physical appearance.

 

I agree with radar besides if u noticed Luke has blue eyes and Leia has brown.

 

I think the poor guy who started this thread is scared to come back now.

Anyway, moving on from the fact that Luke and Leia cannot possibly be identical and that guys are often taller than their younger sisters (albiet younger by a few seconds), I can definatly see elements of their parents in Luke and Leia. Leia has her mother's hair and eye color and some of her father's facial features, and Luke has Anakin's hair and eyes and Padme's face shape except for the chin. Luke had her nose in ANH but it changed in ESB (Mark Hamill must have broken his nose.) You can also see some Shmi in Leia as well, especially around the eyes.

EDIT: Not that this is relevent or that it matters at really, This just came to me as an afterthought.

All babies look alike

Well, all babies of the same race and hair/eye color

Actually, even newborns of different races and hair and hair/eye colors look pretty much alike to me. Light skinned babies are born sort of a bright pinkish and dark skinned babies sort of a darker pinkish. They all have little mouths and ears and little scrunched up noses; as for hair and eye color, newborns have very little hair to begin with and they don't open their eyes very often as they're new to the world and their eyes aren't use to the brightness. So it would make sense to use the same baby for Luke and Leia.

 

Both Luke*Leia have their fathers chin, and I dont know what all that mumbo jumbo was about HZ's and genes all I know is that the daughter got the mothers coloring and the son got the fathers coloring. I do think it would have been cool if Leia had blue eyes(her fathers) and brown hair(her mother). Luke*Leia's height was definetely from their mother though Carrie is still shorter than Padme though she doesnt look it. When they(Nat*Keira) were in the Amidala makeup it was hard to tell them apart(impossible with the black outfit, easier with the battle outfit). But w/o the paint I only see Keira's angular face and Nat with a more oval face. Mark Hamill was in a bad car accident after ANH and before ESB so his face changed drastically.

 

I don't know why it's so important for them to look like their parents in the first place. Phenotypical structures are not limited to only your parent's exact characteristics. I have elements of my father and mother, for instance, but the person I resemble the most is my maternal grandmother. Based on picture of her at my age, we could have been mistaken for twins. In another case, I have a friend whose parents have four children, all of which look nothing alike - one's blonde hair/blue eyed, another's green-eyed and brunette, and yet a third has red hair. All of this is due to the family's very rich ethnic background.

The SW twins shouldn't be any different. It's been suggested that Luke and Leia resemble their parents, but nobody said they were flat out doppelgangers. Yes, Luke and Leia are shorter than Anakin - but who says they inherited the height from their mother? Padme may very well have abbreviated relatives that we didn't see. Hell, who knows what Anakin carries - as a product of the Force/Sith, there's a chance Shmi's genes may not have even played a role in his physical and genetic development. For all known purposes, his genetic structure may even have a miniscule alteration from that of average humans in order to support his massive midichlorian count.

 

this is the dumbest thing i've ever heard. Im a fraternal twin. Identical twins mean your from the same EGG. You would have to be the same GENDER. They can't be Identical. Me and my sister are Fraternal she is older than me and i am taller than her. height all depends on the genes from parents that is passed on to them from generation and generation. So him being taller is not abnormal at all. Im taller than my sister. Even Identical twins one will be taller than the other. I can't believe i read all this.

 

I can't believe this thread is still going considering the
difference b/w fraternal/identical twins has been explained
OVER AND OVER. Geez, do some back reading in this thread
and you'll see why Luke is taller etc...

 

I've been away from these forums for quite a while, but as I was re-familiarizing myself with the forums, I came across your exchange and I just had give my view.

Now I don't know how long this thread has been going on, but I'd like to put my 2 cents in (or 2 pence, if you're British).

I have 2 nephews who are identical twins, but ever since their birth there have been differences. One twin, while in the womb, started siphoning off all the nutrients from the other twin. They had to be born early in order to save the one twin that was slowly starving to death. As a result, he is slightly shorter, more sickly, and has asthma while the other twin is very healthy and slightly taller. So, you can have identical twins that have differences at birth, but it is a medical impossibility to have identical twins that are of different genders. They would not be identical then, only fraternal.

Well, that's what I think...

 

If they were identical, wouldn't that mean that we'd have a Leia resembling Mark Hamill?

Or a Luke resembling Carrie Fisher?

 

They'd both have the double-bun hairstyle...

 

How on earth is this thread still around. AS HAS BEEN EXPLAINED REPEATEDLY, THEY AREN'T IDENTICAL. THEY CAN'T BE. LUKE HAS A PENIS, LEIA A VAGINA. END OF DISCUSSION!