Yes. The little ridges that go on the tips of fingers.
It used to be, in the old 2019 days, we would wack out phones and *gasp* used it to unlock their iPhones? Scoff, how basic. Now we have facial recognition.
In case you’ve been living in a remote island off the coast of Antarctica, and all of your fingertips have frozen off, you might be aware of the fact that all fingerprints are unique and can therefore be used as identification- merely to test whether the owner of the fingerprint is a silent assassin. But perhaps you hadn’t understood really the in-depth qualities and sweeping analysis of fingerprints (I certainly wouldn’t blame you, considering that really only people who are oddly interested with the soft ridges on hands and feet would know these random facts about fingerprints).
1. Some people don’t have fingerprints.
Like many human phenomena, the root behind this is syndrome. There are several disorders that cause friction to be absent from any skin. Some side effects include not being able to sweat well (sounds like a good break from being drenched in salty water that comes out of your own pores) and harder to lose teeth (no more bragging that you have a wiggly tooth, Susan).
2. Fingerprints can dissapear
Ah, yes, fingerprints can unintentionally and intentionally be changed or dissapear. Chemotherapy, working with lime, and being a secretary (oh, the woes of handling paper) are ways that fingertips can vanish unintentionally. Why must I add the word unintentionally? Oh, perhaps just because there happen to be many psychopaths in the world who would mutilate their fingers so that the police can no longer identify them.
3. Fingerprints reveal the drugs you take
Despite knowing the good ol’ “Don’t do drugs, kids,”, the consequences may have been unclear (surprise, surprise). Now, however, if you have a quick brush-up with, oh, I don’t know, cocaine, you might be found out, through your fingerprint. Don’t do drugs, kids.
4. Koalas got ’em too
Koalas. They sleep in trees all day and eat (forgive my oversimplified description of koalas), but they have fingerprints (from sleeping- sorry, inadequate wording, hanging out– in trees all day). I’m looking forward to the day when some criminal blames their crime on a koala.
5. Fingerprint sensors might work for pets
Ah, yes, when us peasents still had phones that used fingerprint sensors, some chaotic weirdo (a writer- how typical) had too much time on their hand and lots of time to waste (and also a cat). With a formula like that, what would it equate to? It could only mean one thing- shoving your cat in front of your phone, hoping that it won’t look at any of the strange photos saved to your camera album, and testing the fingerprint sensor out on it. How good it is to know there are other equally strange children in the world.
But the cat got in, so that renders me unable to speak against it.
6. A 73-year-old bought a painting for 5$ at a grimy old thrift store (nothing against thrift stores), but found, through a fingerprint on it, that it was actually an unsigned John Pollock painting
Nothing much to explain here, considering that my entire explanation is the title.
7. If, in the case that you die, and your skin starts to slip off (because your dead body was left out for too long), forensic scientists would cut the skin around your wrist, take it off, and put it on their own hands, like a glove, to get the fingerprints.
Morbid. But interesting.
So, with all this speak of fingerprints… One might wonder- are fingerprints hereditary? (Or you might not be wondering that. In which case, apologies for assuming your levels of curiosity.)
Yes, they are. I would know, considering that my father and I both have very similar types of fingerprints. This is because we have DNA. Duh. DNA is (obviously) hereditary, but it also determines what fingerprints you are coded to have (or maybe no fingerprints, but that’s not very likely).
Here are my sources, where I learned the information (I’m not in the habit to practice plagiarism, thank you very much):
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/78169/15-unique-facts-about-fingerprints
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lose-your-fingerprints/