3mo ago

TIL identical twins don't have identical fingerprints

Why do identical twins have different fingerprints? - BBC Science Focus Magazine

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At birth my fingerprints were the same as his. Mom did that thing where she mixed us up and had to take us back to the GP for ID.
I can still unlock his phone 50-50 with my melon but not as often with the fingers.
Fingerprints are epigenetic traits. Twins usually have very similar but not identical fingerprints. They can often be confused for each other, but generally they can be told apart on closer inspection.
- Can phones tell the difference?
Faces are really the only identifying feature of our bodies that's genetic.
- But why does our fingerprint grow back the same way when we damage our outer skin layer on our fingers? Or does it not?
  
  Because it's just the outer layer, and the print is still there. Your new outer skin is just the old under layer.
  If you damage your skin enough to remove the fingerprint, it doesn't grow back. There are lots of people without fingerprints due to the types of work they do
  
  They do, but they also might not.
  The part of your skin that actually causes your fingerprint is relatively deep into your skin. So it'd need to be a pretty serious injury to permanently change your fingerprint at all.
Not so identical then eh?
Picture you have two cake ingredient sets parsed out. Now you bake them. You will get two almost identical cakes, but they will still end up slightly different.
That's the same with twins and growing up. Same blueprints, but the environment factors, while similar, caused minor changes along the way.

12 comments