THE world’s most famous conjoined twins have beaten all the odds to learn to drive, go to university and look for love – despite fears they wouldn’t make into childhood.
Abby and Brittany Hensel, 29, are one of just 12 sets of conjoined twins in the world and are fused together at the torso, with each controlling one side of their body.
They shot to fame in 1996 aged just six when they appeared on a now famous episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Since then they have appeared in their own reality series and gone on to prove medical experts wrong by overcoming every hurdle in their way.
However the twins are quick to point out although they share the same body they have their own individual souls and character traits.
They were born in 1990, in Minnesota, USA, to parents Patty and Mike who had no idea they were even expecting twins, reports the Mirror.
Doctors later realised their heads must have been perfectly aligned during the ultrasounds to give the appearance of a “normal” fetus.
It was feared they wouldn’t even survive the first few days of their lives.
However, the pair graduated from Bethel University, each with their own different degree, before heading off for a career in teaching.
Speaking to the BBC, Abby once said: “Obviously right away we understand that we are going to get one salary because we’re doing the job of one person.”
But Brittany added: “One can be teaching and one can be monitoring and answering questions…so in that sense we can do more than one person.”
Brittany, the joker of the two, said: “The whole world doesn’t need to know who we are seeing, what we are doing and when we are going to do it.
“But believe me, we are totally different people.”
DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES
Abby, known as the stubborn one, added: “Yeah, we are going to be mums one day, but we don’t want to talk about how it’s going to work yet.”
In a clip from their 2012 reality show, the girls do explain how they drive a car – a mundane task made extraordinary by their situation.
“I think we’re good drivers, said the girls in unison.”
Brittany explained: “We have two licenses and when we got our driver’s license we each had to take the test and we both passed.
“When we drive Abby is control of the gas and the brakes and we both steer, and I’m in charge of the blinker [indicator].”
Having to work in unison is one of the incredible feats of the popular twins, who have had to coordinate their movements and efforts since birth, learning how to crawl, clap and swim.
But the girls have very different characters, with Brittany preferring country life and Abby liking city living.
In the clip, the girls also explained how despite their shared torsos, they are often different temperatures.
Brittany even claimed that she overheats quickly, there is often a red line running down the middle of them, with her covered in sweat and her sister “totally fine”.
Another question that cropped up in the Q&A is how the girls cope when one of them feels unwell.
MOST READ IN NEWS
The girls explained that Brittany can only feel her right side, with Abby only able to feel her left.
But bizarrely, when it comes to stomach aches, the pain is felt by the opposing twin.
The girls each have their own heart, stomach, spine lungs and spinal cord but share a reproductive system, liver and large intestine.
