Cândido Godói () is a municipality of 6,151 inhabitants in the state of

Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul (, ; ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative units of Brazil#List, fifth-most populous state and the List of Brazilian s ...

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

near the

Argentine Argentines, Argentinians or Argentineans are people from Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Argentines, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their ...

border, famous for the high number of

twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of Twin Last Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two ...

s born there. The twin phenomenon is centered in Linha São Pedro, a small settlement in the city of Cândido Godói, in an ethnically homogeneous population of

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

descent.

Twinning rate

The rate of twin births in Cândido Godói is 10%, significantly higher than the overall 1.8% rate for the state of

. This rate is unusual, exceeding the highest observed national

ning rate (4.5 to 5% for southwestern Nigeria). Nearly half (8 of 17) of twins examined in one study were

monozygotic Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of Twin Last Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two e ...

(identical) twins, a few more than the average of 30%. Twin births were noted from the early twentieth century, when the first immigrants included seventeen sets of twins, and have been observed through several generations in the latter part of the twentieth century. The population is largely of Polish or German ancestry, with many tracing ancestry to the

Hunsrück The Hunsrück () is a long, triangular, pronounced mountain range, upland in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by the valleys of the Moselle (river), Moselle-Saar (north-to-west), the Nahe (south), and the Rhine (east). It is continued ...

region of Germany, which has a higher than average twinning rate. The rate in Cândido Godói could reflect genetic

founder effect In population genetics, the founder effect is the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population. It was first fully outlined by Ernst Mayr in 1942, us ...

: rare genetic traits occurring by chance among a small group founding a community will be more common among their descendants than in the population at large.

Explanation attempts

The notorious

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

doctor

Josef Mengele Josef Mengele (; 16 March 19117 February 1979) was a Nazi German (SS) officer and physician during World War II at the Russian front and then at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, often dubbed the "Angel of Death" (). He performed Nazi hum ...

, who had conducted twin "studies" in Germany and experiments with twins in

Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...

, is known to have fled to South America as the

Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not an explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are calle ...

were closing in on the Nazi German regime. The Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa has suggested that Mengele conducted experiments on women in the area, which could be responsible for the high ratio of twins. According to some commentators, about the time of Mengele's arrival in southern Brazil in 1963, the incidence of

twins Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of Twin Last Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two e ...

began to increase, allegedly leading to the current rate of twinning at 1 in 10, over half of whom are dizygotic (fraternal). However, such speculation has been disputed by local historian, Paulo Sauthier, who says Mengele did not study twins during his time in Brazil. Moreover, according to geneticists, the most likely explanation for the high frequency of twins is genetic isolation and inbreeding. Records indicate that the high frequency of twins predates Mengele's arrival to South America. This phenomenon of a large number of twin births is not unique to Cândido Godói, and has also been observed in the town of Igbo-Ora in

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

and the village of Kodinhi in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Candido Godoi Municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul Twin Brazilian people of German descent Populated places with highest incidence of multiple birth

Twinning rate

Explanation attempts

See also

References