Cândido Godói, The Strange Twin Town

Twin births are not so common. After all , only one in every 250 births produces twins. But did you know that a Brazilian municipality called Cândido Godói in the state of Rio Grande do Sul has the highest proportion of twins in the world?

When you enter the twin city, you will see a welcome sign that says “Cândido Godói, the land of the twins”. Globally, people know this city as the “twin capital of the world”. This is because one in every 10 women there has given birth to twins.

Cândido Godói: The Twin City

This twin city is located in a remote southern municipality in Brazil which has a population of approx. 65,000 people. The city is located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul next to Argentina.

There are currently 90 twins living in the city. The Linha São Pedro area specifically contains 44 twins. Between 1959 and 2014 , 35% of births in Cândido Godói were twins.

In this city, one in every 10 women gets twins. As such, this area has the highest proportion of twins in the world. Another thing that is striking about this Brazilian city and the twins is that most of the same twin siblings are blonde and blue-eyed.

The inhabitants of Cândido Godói are well aware of this peculiarity. They hold a twin festival every year where they bring all the twins from the region together.

But these townspeople cannot explain what is happening in their own city. Some believe that it may be the result of improper use of nuclear power. Others think there is something in the water. Others still hold to the theory that there may be an “extraterrestrial influence” involved. Currently, two theories stand out as the most sensible. One involves experiments by a famous Nazi doctor, and the other is based on a genetic theory called the founder effect.

Hypothesis 1: The Nazi doctor’s experiments

This hypothesis follows the investigation of the Argentine historian and journalist Jorge Camarasa. This work is summarized in his book Mengele: The Angel of Death in South America. This book describes the experiments carried out by the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in the 1960s. More specifically , he discusses his experiments in Brazil, which he performed after fleeing to Latin America after the end of World War II.

The Nazi doctor was in charge of the Auschwitz concentration camp . There he used Jews as guinea pigs for his cruel experiments. His goal was to prove the supposed superiority of the Aryan race. Because of his cruel actions, people today remember him as the “angel of death”.

Mengele was obsessed with both identical and fraternal twins. He believed that it was necessary to discover the secret of several births so that he could increase the population of the Aryan race.

He turned this small town into a human laboratory for that purpose. Since his arrival in 1961, the number of twin births in Cândino Gobói has increased. Some witnesses say they remember his time there. They claim that the doctor treated some of the pregnant women with strange drinks and injections.

Hypothesis 2: The founder effect

An exhaustive genetic study of the population of Cândido Godói showed that Mengele’s experiments are not the reason why so many twins are born there. Most of the population of the city comes from a small group of ancestors. This means that almost all city dwellers are related in one way or another. As such, they share many genetic traits.

Experts call this genetic effect the “founder effect”. It refers to the creation of a new population by a small number of individuals. This is not very common in humanity, but there are some examples in history. In some cases it is voluntary, and in others it is mandatory.

The gene that many of the townspeople in Cândino Godói share is TP53. 43 of the women who had twins have this gene. Experts linked this gene to fertility and a higher probability of having twins. However, this is not the only factor that determines this. The gene predisposes certain women to have multiple births.

Apart from all that, the studies showed that the high frequency of twin births initiated Mengele’s arrival. In fact, it is also possible that the city’s uniqueness was the reason why the Nazi doctor decided to settle in Cândido Godói in the first place.

As such, the existence of this mysterious twin city cannot be explained by Mengele’s supposed experiments. Instead, the answer lies in the biological and genetic characteristics of the population.