The possibility of two people seemingly unrelated look exactly like each other. Is it very common or a rare occurrence? Is there a scientific explanation to that if so?

Question

The possibility of two people seemingly unrelated look exactly like each other. Is it very common or a rare occurrence? Is there a scientific explanation to that if so?

In: Biology

Answer 1

I can’t name a study, but I would hazard that it’s uncommon, but not rare. My reasoning: There are about seven billion people, most of them have all their facial features and limbs, plenty of them are within the same height (4-6) age (10-100) and weight (90-200) range, most of them wear clothes and haircuts that are shared by other humans of their appearance.

If you lined up everybody in the world and put them adjacent to the two people who looked the most similar to them you would not have difficulty finding practically identical partners with any average, unremarkable looking person. With very distinctive people, who possess unique combinations of features, nonstandard bodyplans and faces, and/or bizarre fashion sense, it would be drastically harder to place them, but you would still have a reliable continuity from one person to another.