People Are Only Just Realising The Incredible Way Our Fingerprints Are Formed
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock
Many people, including the humble writer of these words, are only just realising how our fingerprints are actually formed.
There are billions of people on this planet and every single one of them has their own unique set of fingerprints.
Even identical twins who would be indistinguishable in any other way could be told apart by those intricate patterns of lines and swirls.
Every single finger of every single person in the world is unique, no two people's fingerprints are the same and nobody's individual fingers have the same prints.
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In the modern world fingerprints are used more and more to identify people whether that be for catching criminals, spending money or just getting onto our phones every day.
The secret behind what actually causes our fingerprints to look the unique way they do is incredible and it's something people are only just learning it a long way into life.
Here's the science-y bit, when a foetus is about eight weeks old it starts to develop the little nubs which will eventually grow into fingers and be used to grab all sorts of things throughout life.
Before a baby is born it's kept safe inside the amniotic sac which is filled with fluid, a bit like being suspended in a balloon full of water.
While in the womb, the foetus's little fingers will be touching the walls of the sac around them and be subject to pressure from the amniotic fluid, with those connections producing little wrinkles on the developing skin.
This is where we get fingerprints from, tiny and intricate patterns marked onto the developing skin of the foetus while still in the womb.
This goes the same for the patterns you see on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet too, the movement within the womb before birth etching your skin with your own unique markings.
It's an incredible fact of biology that loads of people only learn later on in life, either they missed this bit off my biology lessons or I wasn't paying attention enough in school.
No two sets of fingerprints are exactly alike, though they do all conform to three basic groups of shapes.
Everyone's fingerprints are set out in either a loop, whorl or arch shape, and people can have different shapes on different fingers as no two prints are exactly the same.
While fingerprints may be formed in the womb, once they've properly developed they're going to stay that way for life as damage to the skin on your fingers will regrow in the same pattern that you had before.
The only people in the world who have the same fingerprints are those with none at all, as there is an incredibly rare condition called adermatoglyphia where a person is born without fingerprints.
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