Reuniting with birth siblings after an international adoption is a challenging — and emotionally charged — mission. Here are stories from four families.
The answers involved career choices, sleep habits, dog greetings — and bologna eating (although to be fully transparent, we must note that was a quirk shared by an uncle and his niece).
As part of our series on "the Science of Siblings," we looked at how some brothers and sisters are best friends. Here are some of the stories you shared of close ties with siblings.
After initiation rites – including circumcision – the boys leave their families to take charge of the herds, driving them high into the mountains. It's a way of life that climate change is testing.
Sam and John Fetters, 19, are identical twins on different ends of the autism spectrum. Sam is a sophomore at Amherst College and runs marathons in his free time. John attends a school for people with special needs and loves to watch Sesame Street in his free time. Identical twins like Sam and John pose an important question for scientists: How can a disorder that is known to be highly genetic look so different in siblings who share the same genome?
Earth, Mars and Venus all looked pretty similar when they first formed. Today, Mars is dry, cold, and dusty; Venus has a hot, crushing atmosphere. Why did these sibling planets turn out so different?
Siblings — especially twins — sometimes share the strangest traits, like throwing a ball with their head or picking up keys and crayons with their toes. Researchers want to know what's up with that.
It's not unusual for siblings to quibble over ownership of something — a cherished toy, a coveted seat in the car — or whose fault something is. If you're Mercedes Sheen, you not only spent your childhood squabbling with your sister over your memories, you then turn it into your research career. Mercedes studies disputed memories, where it's unclear who an event happened to. It turns out these memories can tell us a lot about people — they tend to be self-aggrandizing — and how the human brain remembers things.
Some birds kill their siblings soon after hatching. Other birds spend their whole lives with their siblings and will even risk their lives to help each other.
Plenty of people go to couples therapy — why not siblings therapy? Experts say the long, complicated relationships between siblings are worth exploring and tending to.
Researchers have found that a warm, close bond with a sibling in early adult life is predictive of good emotional health later in life, with less loneliness, anxiety and depression.
Over the past few decades, psychologists have begun to understand how parents across many cultures teach their children to build deep, fulfilling relationships with their siblings.
Thousands of years ago, there was a ceremony to bind close friends together as sworn siblings. Could the practice be resurrected today to strengthen modern friendships? Two women did just that.
Our sun was born in a cosmic cradle with thousands of other stars. Astrophysicists say they want to find these siblings in order to help answer the question: Are we alone out there?
It's National Siblings Day! To mark the occasion, guest host Selena Simmons-Duffin is exploring a detail very personal to her: How the number of older brothers a person has can influence their sexuality. Scientific research on sexuality has a dark history, with long-lasting harmful effects on queer communities. Much of the early research has also been debunked over time. But not this "fraternal birth order effect." The fact that a person's likelihood of being gay increases with each older brother has been found all over the world – from Turkey to North America, Brazil, the Netherlands and beyond. Today, Selena gets into all the details: What this effect is, how it's been studied and what it can (and can't) explain about sexuality.
Interested in reading more about the science surrounding some of our closest relatives? Check out more stories in NPR's series on The Science of Siblings.
