Here are the amazing Facts About Fingerprints
Facts About Fingerprints – Almost all people have fingerprints and it is not just for unlocking smartphones and a sort of identification because there is a lot more about the prints on your fingertips.
You have had fingerprints since before you were born
The prints begin to form around 10 weeks of gestation. These totally unique patterns are fully formed around 17 weeks, based on the article in Reader’s Digest.
Start out like hair follicles
At first, they form looking like the same patches of cells that will go on to form hair follicles but they will continue to become ridges patterned in whorls and loops.
Play a key role in our sense of touch
The ridges in our fingerprints increase our tactile sensitivity and this is based on the study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
They follow the Turing pattern
British mathematician Alan Turing proposed the theory of arching, looping, and whorling fingerprint shapes. Denis Headon, a developmental biologist and senior research fellow at the University of Edinburgh explained that Turing theorized that “substances made by an embryo’s cells would promote the formation of a structure, but act with opposing substances that suppress the growth of such a structure.” There are three main patterns: whorl, loop or arch.
Same phenomenon as zebra stripes
Turing believes that the patterns that create our fingerprints are also responsible for other patterns occurring in nature, like zebra stripes and leopard spots.
Some people are born without fingerprints
This condition is called adermatoglyphia which is a genetic disorder, extremely rare, and causes the failure of ridge formations before birth.
May help prevent blisters
It is theorized that the dermal ridges that make up our fingerprints help prevent blisters.
Fingerprints don’t change with age
Your skin can change as you age but this change does not happen to your fingerprints. It will remain from the day you were born until you die.
During ancient Babylon, you could use a fingerprint to seal a contract. This suggested that people under the reign of Hammurabi understood the special nature of these patterns.