November 29, 2012 • 31 mins
Why do we have fingerprints? Why are the human versions generally more complex than those of other animals? Join Robert and Julie as they delve into whorls and swirls, exploring the theories behind why we have these strange patterns on our fingertips.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Douglass.
Your fingerprints, right, most of us do, pretty much all
of us do unless something has come along to a
change that matter. But I don't think I really have
(00:24):
to explain what these are. You have these fingers, you're
blows right at the end of each one, you find
these curious designs, little trenches and whirls forms, this little pattern,
and uh, from a very early age, we all know
that these signify who we are. Right, put it in
an ink, put it on a page. There's your fingerprint.
(00:47):
It's a part of like kindergarten art classes. You know,
you make a turkey with your hand. That turkey is
a is a blueprint of who were, not real blueprint,
but it is a signature of who you are. No
one's Thanksgiving handpay turkey is the same as another individual's
Thanksgiving hand paint turkey. They're unique and really they should
be what we should use, in my opinion, as signatures
(01:08):
on all official documents. You think, yeah, it's you know,
just with the turkey design is in specific Yes, yeah,
like Kofe anon Um, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, I don't
care who they make an official document. At the bottom
of it, they've put their hand down with paint and
then trace around it and then make a Thanksgiving turkey. Well,
and of course you're bringing this up because it's thought
(01:30):
that the fingerprint is unique to this unique biometric that
we've got, nobody else has it. And uh, that's one
of the things we're gonna get in today, that the
fingerprint as an identification tool. And we were generally that's
where our minds go when you talk about fingerprints. You
think of C. S I and all this stuff, and
they know their prints left here, Prince left there, and
those prints that the police are supposedly going to collect
(01:52):
and solve a crime with. But we often overlook the
underlying question why do we have them? To begin with?
What are they right? And we're going to discuss at
as well fingerprints the why of fingerprints from various standpoints.
That's the episode today. Well, here's the deal. Many mammals
have them, but humans are the only ones to have
really complex patterning. And there's a general flow to fingerprints, UM,
(02:17):
especially to what we call the ridges that translate into
one of three major pattern types. So we're talking about
a whirl, a loop, or an arch. And it's possible
to have just one, two, or all three pattern types
among your ten fingers. And here's a little tidbit about
that six of the world's population has loops, five percent,
(02:40):
only five percent of the world world's population has arches,
and thirty five percent of the world's population has whorls. Yes,
and I can tell you that I've already detected a
couple of whorls on my fingertips. But why why do
we have these fingerprints? Well, one theory why why, Robert,
why are we cursed with these things? Well when one
(03:00):
reason that is often brought up and theorized about, uh,
and certainly it makes it seems to make a lot
of sense on the surface of things, is that we
use them for grip. It's like, because you look at it,
it's like it's like you got some ridges there, and
I think of like gloves that are made for gripping things,
and they tend to have some sort of a ridgid
ridge ridge based surface there, weightlifting gloves, weight lifting gloves,
(03:22):
things like that. So maybe we have them to lift them.
Maybe it's so that if we're picking up a glass
of milk or swinging a battle axe, whatever you need
to grip the groove. Prints improve the friction rate between
finger and object. But not so, according to a team
of researchers at the University of Manchester, they looked into
this make on the whole idea is just a bunch
(03:44):
of hooey. There's a two thousand nine study Journal of
Experimental Biology, and the menu team measured the friction rate
between flesh and objects can discovered only a marginal increase.
They also discovered that printed finger pads actually come into
contact with an acriolic class already three less than completely
smooth finger pads, and in some cases the prints actually
(04:05):
reduce our grip rather than improve it. Okay, so that
is out. We don't eat them for grip. Yeah, okay,
So there are a couple other theories um in play here,
and maybe that they allow our skin to stretch and
to form more easily, protecting it from damage. Yeah. The
idea here. I like to think of men's slacks, like,
(04:25):
what are the least style of slacks a guy can wear?
Big balloon Khaki's right it's like a big balloon crotch
that anytime you sit down it looks like, um, some
sort of like automobile protection device has gone off in
your pants. Yes, it is. That's balloon balloon crotch in
khaki pants. And I used to have to wear khaki
pants to my job at a newspaper, and so that
(04:47):
I was always having to deal with that, and it's awful.
But I'm pretty if your pants are that baggy, you're
pretty much guaranteed not to rip them, right, It's kind
of like yoga pants or hammer pants. There's a lot
of room to move around, you're not gonna rip them.
But if you're wearing say some nice stylish skinny jeans,
some like really narrow drain pipes, and you try and
do anything, Heaven forbid, you try and do the splits,
(05:08):
or even bend over and pick something up, you're gonna
tear something. Hopefully you'll tear the pants. But but I
like to think then of this theory is that the
fingerprints are rigid. Fingerprints are kind of the uh, the
balloon pants, the hammer pants of skin. Okay, so those
ridges are kind of like the hammer pants, and that
they could expand and deform onun will if they need.
(05:29):
There's also this idea that fingerprints may allow water trap
between our finger pads and the surface to drain away
and improve surface contact in wet conditions. Kind of makes sense, right,
Other researchers have suggested that the ridges could increase our
finger pads touch sensitivity. Yeah, that's a really cool one. Uh.
And this is the the idea that when you're you're
(05:49):
feeling particularly fine features, such as a single human hair
on a desktop, your sense of touch depends on skin
vibrations that arise as your fingertip moves across the desk.
So when two thousand nine, a team of French researchers
looked into this, and they found that a rigid fingertip
moving across the surface produces vibration frequencies that are detected
by special nerve endings called Bassinian corpuscles, and these nerve
(06:12):
endings then passed this information onto sensory neurons that signal
the brain. So the idea here is those without those ridges,
if you burn them off with battery acids so that
you can commend more crimes or what have you, you
would not be able to feel as as as easily
you would not be able to feel those tiny fine
details and things, which is really cool. Yeah, so here's
(06:33):
this idea. Can you be born without them? Here's this question?
You can? You can? You really well do explain. This
was discovered when a twenty nine year old Swiss woman
of the U. S Border was made to wait for
hours as puzzled officers tried to make sense of her
missing prints, and as a result, this has been dubbed
(06:56):
the immigration delay disease. I kuld you not really. It's
very very rare and has only been documented in four
families across the world. So they had no prints. They
had no prints. Yeah, so you could argue they had
identical prints then since that the prints that they had
were non existent. Question. Yeah, I was gonna say, it's
(07:18):
maybe a different question. But genetically it is able. It's
possible for you to be born without prints. Again, very rare,
and I think that the calling it a disease is
even kind of a bit specious because it's like, well,
you know what, what was the problem other than not
having maybe you can't feel very fine surfaces. Well, see
(07:39):
that's that's the only thing they say. Typically, the pores
of sweat glands lie along the tiny ridges that make
up our fingerprints. So for people with this mutation, the
ridges don't even form to begin with interfering with sweat glands, okay,
and as a result people actually they sweat less on
their hands, so the body makes up for it. Now
(08:00):
you can get rid of them, your fingerprints, if you've
ever wondered um that some people have gone to some
crazy links to do so, but repeat exposure to some
chemicals can can remove them or modify them as well
as callouses. So if you're doing a certain type of work,
you could actually have your fingerprints pretty much smear to nothing,
or the traditional method in crime family just to let
(08:22):
a turtle chew them off. You put a little you
smear a little meat paste on each on each of
your fingerprints, preferably a baby box turtle or a pack
of them, and then you let them chew on the
fingertips until you're satisfied, and then you get to get
This is the Paliocci crime family method. Yeah, well, okay.
In the nineties, kidnapper Theodore Handsome Jack Clutus took a
(08:46):
knife to his fingerprints, and that was the first documented
case of finger mutilation. And then the notorious bank robber
John Dillinger dipped his fingers in acid. Obviously that's the
somehow that sound like a in wins at that one,
like with the slicing, but are actually pretty terrible, right,
But somehow the burning of the prints off seems not
(09:08):
so crazy, but surely it hurts. Well. I guess the
thing is we can relate. Everyone has cut their fingers,
or most of us, I feel like they've cut their
their fingers one there, like peeling potatoes or something, so
we have a frame of reference for that, whereas being
scalded by battery acid and maybe not so much. I
just feel like if you're going to cut the fingerprints
off of your hands, that you're already bringing more attention
(09:30):
to your fingers anyway. So we were like, hey, why
why why do you have cut fingertips? Oh? I don't know,
no reason. And then you know, of course in that
day and age are probably like, that's the dude with
the strange missing fingertips. Do you think something's up with him? Yeah?
I don't know. It just any kind of self inflicted flame,
whatever your purpose, it's just weird. I'm just saying it's
not subtle. I did just think it was a bad
(09:51):
way to go, all right, So how do finger prints
form in the first place. Well, it's it's it's interesting
because it's not something we are, it's not in our genes.
It's not necessarily genetic thing really going on here. This
is something that forms in the womb. And what happens is, uh,
the outer epidermist and the inner subcutaneous tissue sandwich the
(10:14):
dermal cell layer between them, like a slice of cheese
between two slabs of bread, and as the pressure builds,
the slice of cheese again, that's the dermal cell layer
compresses in buckles, erupting into random surface patterns. I love that. Yeah, yeah,
And I wanted to give some more detail on that too,
because some of how that's done actually influences the pattern
(10:36):
that you get. Um, we have these friction ridge skin
covering the surface of our hands, and that's what comprises
the ridges and the furrows. So, as you say, in
those um, during those weeks I think it's ten through
fifteen weeks, the fetus develops smooth vallor pads. These are
raised pads, and the fingers, poems and feet because of
(10:56):
swelling mess and kimmeled tissue, which is a precursor for
blood usseles and connective tissues. And then around week ten,
the volor pads stop growing, but the hand continues to grow,
and then as a result, over the next few weeks,
the volor pad is absorbed back into the hand. This
is what you're talking about, um. During this stage, the
first signs of the ridges begin to appear, and the
spacing and arrangement of these early ridges is a random process,
(11:20):
but it's dictated by the overall geometry and the topography
of the volar pad. So if the ridges appear while
the volar pad is still uh quite pronounced, and the
individual will develop a world pattern. And then if the
primary ridges appear while the volar pad is less pronounced
than the person will get a loop pattern on their fingers.
(11:40):
And then if finally in the if the primary ridges
appear while the volor pad is nearly absorbed, then the
individual will develop an arch pattern. And I love how
they talk about it is topography because it really does
kind of remind me of the only the Earth's own
surface and the various elements going on to create causes
(12:02):
mountains to rise and valleys to deepen. Yeah, yeah, and
this is going on in the womb. It's so cool.
So could one Olsen twin frame the other for murder? No? No,
no fingerprints No, because even the Olsen twins, as identical
as they are, they do not have the same fingertip patterns. Now,
(12:25):
they may have similar patterns because the patterns that you
do get are genetic, but they will have a unique
marker in theirs. So it's kind of like if one
twin were slapped in the face by the same person
in the exact same way, they still wouldn't get the
exact same bruise on their face, necessarily because it's something
that's being done to the twin rather than something that's
(12:47):
purely emerging from their genetics. That's right, Yes, all right,
We're gonna take a quick break, and when we return,
we will get into this idea of fingerprints is identification.
To what extent is this a fabulous the idea to
what extent is that deeply flawed? All right, we're back
(13:12):
before we start talking about how unique fingerprints are and
bringing that into question. You know, I didn't want to
mention that ridge characteristics may indicate genetic predisposition of certain diseases,
and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually performed
research in two thousand and five that investigated these rich
characteristics as a genetic roadmap for the predisposition of certain diseases.
(13:36):
In particular, people with diabetes found UH. They found actually
that these people have a much higher ridge count than
those with normal glucose tolerance. So it's kind of interesting
that that they actually do tell us something just nonsense
that happens. It's not like a nonsense password that doesn't
mean anything in and of itself, but is unique well,
(13:58):
and I kind of think of palm ream reading in
this Sensemancy, if you want to get fancy well truromancy,
it is uh, and that you could be able to
tell something about yourself through these fingerprint patterns. So the
idea that a fingerprint is unique and could be used
as a biometric, They could be used as something on
our body that identifies who we are. The idea itself,
(14:21):
you find this an ancient Japanese and Chinese civilization. They
recognized pretty early on that this is something that's unique
and we can use this essentially to put our signature
on things. But for the most part, in the modern world,
especially in the Western world. It goes back to Sir
Francis Galton nineteenth century. Polly Math is one of these
guys by poly math of corpse of meaning. He was
into everything. He was just a learned man who love
(14:45):
to experiment, love to read about things, research things, and
figure out how the world worked. And uh, you know
it wasn't necessarily a specialist in any particular field, but
just was ready to just go all in on whatever
he was studying. And he was also the cousin of
Charles Darwin. Incidentally ran in the family. Yeah, ran in
the family. I guess the brilliance and all. But he's
(15:06):
the one who really pushed this idea that fingerprints are
such a unique identifier and then they're a great biometric
and that the idea of two individuals possessing the same
fingerprint were so slim that it was virtually flawless. I
believe he said that the chances of two people and
this was this was his math. Uh, the chances of
(15:27):
two people possessing a matching fingerprint were one in sixty billion,
which back then would have seemed pretty reasonable, right in
terms of the chances of someone else possessing the same fingertips,
and so that was a good case to try to
use this as a biometric right, but what does that
mean today? Like, just just on on the math level,
(15:48):
it's interesting. There's a guy. There's a fingerprinting expert, Professor
Edward im Winkle Reed, which is a great last name.
My own science editor Alison louder Milk, who also has
a great last name, she kept emailing me back responding
about this guy's name. She's like, oh my god, this
is the greatest name I've ever heard, because it's there's
a little it sounds like he should be abducted by
(16:09):
by little people. There's a little bit of rumple still say,
it sounds a bit of a children's story name. Yeah,
but as much as we we love his last name,
uh in Winkle Read is a fingerprinting expert, and he
argues that since world population now exceeds six point four
billion and most of us possess ten digits, we have
more than sixty four billion prints out there to bump
(16:31):
the odds of having any two individuals share a single print. Well,
she argues it's just one of the reasons why multiple
fingerprints are important, and that we really need to consider
reforming fingerprinting as a biometric. That's one of his big causes,
or has been over the last several years, is that
we really need to rethink how much we can trust
fingerprints as an identified her So, okay, then that problem
(16:54):
actually would become more pronounced as more people come online. Right,
so we've talked about adding the three point billion people
by the year, so that we will now be nine
point five billion people. Yeah, but even when you if
you disregard that as just pure number high jinks, you
still get down to the question why did we buy
Why did we buy into this idea that that that
(17:15):
fingerprints are are so perfect? And according to statisticians Stephen M. Stigler,
uh twentieth century reliance on fingerprints had less to do
with science and reliability and more to do with courtroom
drama and a fortunate lack of pattern repetition in prints.
So the argument here is that, all right, you have
a trial going on that fingerprint. It looks really cool
(17:36):
up there on the screen. For the most part, if
all things created equal, it's pretty reliable. And I mean
it's as we'll discuss here, there there's a lot of
reliable things about the fingerprint. It's still pretty unique, but
it's not flawless. In fact, since evaluations of fingerprinting labs
by collaborative testing services UH, those evaluations have discovered fingerprinting
(18:00):
error rates ranging from three to So when you get
into regardless of how how much you can trust fingerprintings,
you get into the flawed potentially flawed nature of human
fingerprinting biometrics and how we record them and keep track
of them, interpret them, and then press charges with them,
you can get into like upwards failure rate, chance that
(18:22):
you're gonna have flawed results. That gets pretty big, I mean,
and that's why if you look at some of the
rather lofty figures, I think it's like three and one.
We're up to as of this recording, three one individuals
cleared by the Innocence Project, individuals who had been convicted
largely based on based on a number of things, but
fingerprinting is a part of that, and then they were
exonerated via DNA evidence. Well, you know, previous to it
(18:45):
seemed like the gold standard, and it's you know, historically
between nineteen nine five and now, there really hasn't been
that much time that has passed, so obviously a lot
more reform needs to happen, especially when you consider um
that you know this was this was the way that
they began to identify criminals in the nineteenth century and
that was really helpful technology then, right. And I wanted
(19:08):
to mention too that that this has its beginnings in
eighteen fifty eight when an Englishman named Sir William Herschel
was working at this the chief magistrate at the Hookley
District in Singapore, India, and in order to reduce fraud,
he had the residents record their fingerprints when signing business documents.
So again that has a pretty big tradition back in
(19:31):
Japanese culture as well and before that. But as you said,
this is a This is such a dramatic way to
I d someone and to say this is the person
that you can see how it's been in use for
so long. But now, of course we are in a
different age where we have so many different biometrics to
work with. Yeah, and people like in Winkle Reed and
(19:52):
the Staggler, they're not they're not arguing that we should
just abandon fingerprints, but rather that we should become smarter
about how we used them and we should not depend
on him as a soul biometric. However, that again, fingerprints
are great and they can be very useful, and I
think it's really interesting to how useful fingerprints can be
not only immediately after death, but after a certain amount
of decay has occurred. I found this interesting BBC news
(20:14):
story that interviewed Alan Bale, who is the author of
the UK's standard police manual on dead hands, which is
some great expertise there. And this is also something that
you'll find you'll find in the US and other countries
forensics manuals. So when he goes to cocktail parties to see,
say I'm an expert on dead hands, I hope so
I hope he does, because these are great. This is
the kind of stuff I'm gonna have to share the
(20:35):
next cocktail pate party I go to. Because he talks
about how, quote, if a hand is found in the water,
you will see that the epidermist starts to come away
from the dermist like a glove. This sounds gruesome, but
if a hand has been badly damaged, I cut the
epidermis off and put my own hand inside that glove.
And by glove he means the flesh off that hand.
(20:57):
And then try to fingerprint it like that. So even
though the outer layer of your head, of your the
flesh in your hand has come off like a glove,
like a loose glove, from the rotting remnants of the
rest of your hand, this guy and other friends it
professionals can then come along and just slip their own
hand into your flesh glove and start rolling some prints out.
(21:17):
They'll just buffalo bill of that. They'll just game's gum
that bet Yeah. All right, um, that's comforting. That's really comforting. Well,
all right, let's talk a little bit about the future
of fingerprints, because I found this really interesting. Um. There's
a Huntsville, Alabama company called i Dare, and it has
(21:41):
developed a system that can scan and identify a fingerprint
from about twenty ft away, and coupled with other biometrics,
it could soon allow security systems to grant or deny
access from a distance without requiring users to stop and
scan a fingerprint or swipe an I d card. Now,
the aren't customer for this is the military, but it
(22:02):
has possibilities obviously in the marketplace and in fact as
being beta tested in a gym right now. But the
hope by the maker is that they can merge this
technology with financial data, so you could simply scan your
fingerprint rather than relying on credit card data and an
r F I D chip or a credit card itself. Yeah,
(22:22):
that would that would be great. I've I've undergone a
fair amount of fingerprinting lightly and it is even even
in the when you're not using the the actual ink,
when you're using the scanning method, it's still it's quite
an ordeal to go. But my mind instantly goes to
RoboCop with this, because I can imagine RoboCop arriving on
the scene holding out the gun, making the perpetrators put
(22:43):
their hands up, and then in that instant instantly scanning
their fingerprints and getting and checking the database to see
if they match up with known perpetrators or wanted. I
mean this, this kind of technology just kind of goes
wild with your mind, doesn't it, because you can just
imagine all sorts of implicate sations on that. I also
wanted to mention ears this is the new fingerprints, Yeah,
(23:05):
because we know we have other biometrics. We have UM
voice fingerprints D and a fingerprints IRUs and retinal scans. Yeah,
and like retinal scans, especially that's been used to death
and sci fi and and even non sci fi just
slightly futuristic stuff on TV. So we get that we
we were already this hammered into our minds that retinal
scans would be useful. But the ear thing that caught
(23:26):
me by surprise. But when you when when I read it,
I'm like, well, obviously, yeah, everyone's ear is going to
be a little different. But I never thought of it
as a biometric, a true biometric before. Yeah, because when
you're born, that's the ear you get, right, you know,
doesn't change much other than length or things that you
do to it. Do you get to like some piercing?
I mean, that's the thing. The ear is one obviously
not the most commonly mutilated parts of the human body
(23:48):
well and also grown right under the skin of the arm.
Was the woman who had the tissue for her ear
that she grew under her arms. I don't know that
you're not thinking of the artist though, No, I'm thinking
about something else. Uh anyway, scrap that. The point is
is that there are biometrics that are geared towards the ear,
And this is from Wired Science from Dave Mosher. He says,
(24:10):
that a new shape finding algorithm called image ray transform,
which boasts six percent accuracy according to a study by
the i E Fourth International Conference, UH could use the
outer ear to identify people. And it works by unleashing
a ray producing algorithm on an image to seek out
(24:31):
curved features. And when a ray finds, when the software
draws over the part and repeats the analysis, and in
a few hundred or a thousand cycles, that cleanly paints
the ear more than any other face structure. Of course,
there are palms here which I think you've already idicated
earmuffs all all with no idea who they were. Well,
(24:54):
what happens to you when you when you get older
the cartage, Yes, your ears fall off because the cartilage
in your ear begins to stretch right, or you get
a bunch of piercings or tribal things. You know. Well,
that's the other limitations of the system, because you could
have also have hair covering in the ears. Again, as
you get older, there's less than ideal lighting conditions. And
(25:15):
then the big one is the different I D s
generated from different angles that it's taken from. So there
you have it fingerprints what they are? Why we have them,
how we use them to I D people and single
out our uniqueness among so many other humans. Hopefully we
got to give you a little more food for thought.
The next time you're you're rolling that print around in
(25:36):
some ink, or yeah, if you're getting booked, you know,
take a take a moment just to see what sort
of pattern you have. Yeah, or if you're you're eating
some pudding, just take a moment to roll it around
in there and then go up to a nice white
wall and just stick it pudding. Yeah, all right, Yeah,
preferably chocolate. That's gonna show up better than yeah, you're
vanilla or butterscotch. Okay, let's call the robe it over
(25:58):
and do a little listener mail before we head out.
This first one comes to us from Camilla. Camilla writes
to us on Facebook and says, Hi, guys, let me
start my message with an obligatory ego massage. Your podcast
is awesome. I listened to it in the gym and
my friends always think it's strange that I burst out
laughing while running. Thanks for that. And you know, we
(26:19):
just did an episode on laughter and yeah, an exercise,
so yes, if you are laughing while running, they may
think it's weird, but you were getting you might be
getting a better exercise and a more healthy exercise than
they are. So let's doorphins are going to the roof. Yeah,
every time we we say something funny. Uh So anyway,
(26:39):
she continues, thanks for that. After your three podcasts on maps,
I couldn't help but feeling frustrated. I think the the
area of my brain is broken. Seriously, every time I
come out of a shop, I have no idea which
direction I came from and where I should go. I'm
a little better when reading maps, but creating mental maps
seems just near impossible. Anyway, I'm sure you've got many
messages about people and or animals with excellent sense of direction,
(27:02):
and I thought I'd share the other end of the spectrum.
Blindfold me and twirl me around twice, and I wouldn't
find my way home. Keep up the great work in
congratulations on your success. Um. Yeah, that the whole subject
of one's ability to orient orientate yourself in a complex
or even familiar environment is a is a very interesting
area of study. Yeah, and you can also increase your
(27:25):
map sense too. You can actually, um, you know, try
to exercise that part of your brain and train it
to increase your abilities. I find with myself because I'm
kind of bad at maps, and some of that comes
from the reliance on on on these various map tools
that we have, such as GPS, such as printing out
(27:46):
a map and just knowing you know how many turns
to take. And and also I'm I'm terrible at remembering
the names of streets, which doesn't help that. Like every
street in Atlanta is called Peachtree, uh, which isn't just
a joke. It's like every street Almo, it seems it's
name Summer avenues and streets are It's like there are
(28:06):
only so many street names that people were allowed to
use in every city, and you have to use those.
Whereas I think we should have crazier street names. We
should name them after you know, I don't know, like
Sandworm Avenue, I'd go for that. Who would ever forget
sand Worm Avenue? Wouldn't. Well, I've always wanted to do that, honestly.
And I thought about it more in terms of subdivisions,
because subdivisions always have these great like falling oaks. Yeah,
(28:28):
And I was like, what about just calling that subdivision
or that street fallen woman? Yes? Broken Dreams. Yeah, or
how about Cloaca Avenue. I like that that would be
a good one. That's one that I think I would
have that I'd have to steal it and put in
my home. Yeah. If it doesn't it, maybe it exists
that I hope that it will exist. Please please exist.
(28:51):
Um So anyway, Kamala, thanks for riding in and giving
us a little food for thought in that area. It
is a very interesting area of study there. There was
one really cool episode of I believe it was a
radio Lab where they were talking about individuals who have
a particular anomaly that makes them extra prone to becoming
disoriented in setting. So look that one up. But I
(29:12):
believe I shared it on the Facebook. Recently. We also
heard from a listener about the name of Valerie. Valerie
rights in from Austin, Texas and says, Hi, Robert and Julie.
I was listening to the episode about bats, and it
made me think about when I was a kid. I
grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For the first
part of the year, we have a few Mexican freetailed bats.
They come through town on their migration south. One of
(29:32):
those bats decided that our porch was an awesome place
to use as a temporary home. We went and talked
to the local Animal Information center and asked what we
should do. It was a time of year that the
bat was either mading, birthing, or something else that needed
to not be disturbed. Since the bat needed to not
be disturbed while I was living here, we had to
stop using our front door. We had to go out
our back door, through our backyard and through the gate
(29:54):
in the back. That worked moderately well for the for
some of the time. For most of that entire summer,
we also had to have anyone who visited our house
stop using our door. Now that I look back on it,
it seemed like a lot of the time, a lot
of time to just stop using our front door. But
at the time my parents made it seemed like a
really cool thing we were doing for a summer, So
that was that was That's really interesting. I remember at
(30:17):
one point the house my family lived and had a gazebo,
and there's a bat that took refuge up in there,
and so it's kind of neat we had a local bat. Uh.
And as I've discussed before, I've tried to get bats
to move into the bat house in my home or
my previous home, and they wouldn't do it, so it
makes me sad. Well, but now Valerie is in Austin
(30:37):
that central right the Conquer Street bridge. Oh yes, that's
right where they all cluster. Every all right, Well, if
the rest of you have anything you would like to
share about bats, or about directions, or certainly about fingerprints,
we would love to hear from you. Do you have
some sort of unique fingerprint? Do you have no fingerprints?
Let us know. We would love to have some perspective
(30:58):
on that, for sure. I'm certainly about the the history
of fingerprints or simply taking a corpse's hand flesh and
slipping it on like a glove and typing. We would
love to know about that as well. You can find
us on Facebook, you can find us on tumbler. We
are stuff to blow your mind on both of those pages,
and we go by the handle blow the Mind on
the old Twitter, and you can always drop us a
(31:18):
line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Douglass.
Your fingerprints, right, most of us do, pretty much all
of us do unless something has come along to a
change that matter. But I don't think I really have
(00:24):
to explain what these are. You have these fingers, you're
blows right at the end of each one, you find
these curious designs, little trenches and whirls forms, this little pattern,
and uh, from a very early age, we all know
that these signify who we are. Right, put it in
an ink, put it on a page. There's your fingerprint.
(00:47):
It's a part of like kindergarten art classes. You know,
you make a turkey with your hand. That turkey is
a is a blueprint of who were, not real blueprint,
but it is a signature of who you are. No
one's Thanksgiving handpay turkey is the same as another individual's
Thanksgiving hand paint turkey. They're unique and really they should
be what we should use, in my opinion, as signatures
(01:08):
on all official documents. You think, yeah, it's you know,
just with the turkey design is in specific Yes, yeah,
like Kofe anon Um, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, I don't
care who they make an official document. At the bottom
of it, they've put their hand down with paint and
then trace around it and then make a Thanksgiving turkey. Well,
and of course you're bringing this up because it's thought
(01:30):
that the fingerprint is unique to this unique biometric that
we've got, nobody else has it. And uh, that's one
of the things we're gonna get in today, that the
fingerprint as an identification tool. And we were generally that's
where our minds go when you talk about fingerprints. You
think of C. S I and all this stuff, and
they know their prints left here, Prince left there, and
those prints that the police are supposedly going to collect
(01:52):
and solve a crime with. But we often overlook the
underlying question why do we have them? To begin with?
What are they right? And we're going to discuss at
as well fingerprints the why of fingerprints from various standpoints.
That's the episode today. Well, here's the deal. Many mammals
have them, but humans are the only ones to have
really complex patterning. And there's a general flow to fingerprints, UM,
(02:17):
especially to what we call the ridges that translate into
one of three major pattern types. So we're talking about
a whirl, a loop, or an arch. And it's possible
to have just one, two, or all three pattern types
among your ten fingers. And here's a little tidbit about
that six of the world's population has loops, five percent,
(02:40):
only five percent of the world world's population has arches,
and thirty five percent of the world's population has whorls. Yes,
and I can tell you that I've already detected a
couple of whorls on my fingertips. But why why do
we have these fingerprints? Well, one theory why why, Robert,
why are we cursed with these things? Well when one
(03:00):
reason that is often brought up and theorized about, uh,
and certainly it makes it seems to make a lot
of sense on the surface of things, is that we
use them for grip. It's like, because you look at it,
it's like it's like you got some ridges there, and
I think of like gloves that are made for gripping things,
and they tend to have some sort of a ridgid
ridge ridge based surface there, weightlifting gloves, weight lifting gloves,
(03:22):
things like that. So maybe we have them to lift them.
Maybe it's so that if we're picking up a glass
of milk or swinging a battle axe, whatever you need
to grip the groove. Prints improve the friction rate between
finger and object. But not so, according to a team
of researchers at the University of Manchester, they looked into
this make on the whole idea is just a bunch
(03:44):
of hooey. There's a two thousand nine study Journal of
Experimental Biology, and the menu team measured the friction rate
between flesh and objects can discovered only a marginal increase.
They also discovered that printed finger pads actually come into
contact with an acriolic class already three less than completely
smooth finger pads, and in some cases the prints actually
(04:05):
reduce our grip rather than improve it. Okay, so that
is out. We don't eat them for grip. Yeah, okay,
So there are a couple other theories um in play here,
and maybe that they allow our skin to stretch and
to form more easily, protecting it from damage. Yeah. The
idea here. I like to think of men's slacks, like,
(04:25):
what are the least style of slacks a guy can wear?
Big balloon Khaki's right it's like a big balloon crotch
that anytime you sit down it looks like, um, some
sort of like automobile protection device has gone off in
your pants. Yes, it is. That's balloon balloon crotch in
khaki pants. And I used to have to wear khaki
pants to my job at a newspaper, and so that
(04:47):
I was always having to deal with that, and it's awful.
But I'm pretty if your pants are that baggy, you're
pretty much guaranteed not to rip them, right, It's kind
of like yoga pants or hammer pants. There's a lot
of room to move around, you're not gonna rip them.
But if you're wearing say some nice stylish skinny jeans,
some like really narrow drain pipes, and you try and
do anything, Heaven forbid, you try and do the splits,
(05:08):
or even bend over and pick something up, you're gonna
tear something. Hopefully you'll tear the pants. But but I
like to think then of this theory is that the
fingerprints are rigid. Fingerprints are kind of the uh, the
balloon pants, the hammer pants of skin. Okay, so those
ridges are kind of like the hammer pants, and that
they could expand and deform onun will if they need.
(05:29):
There's also this idea that fingerprints may allow water trap
between our finger pads and the surface to drain away
and improve surface contact in wet conditions. Kind of makes sense, right,
Other researchers have suggested that the ridges could increase our
finger pads touch sensitivity. Yeah, that's a really cool one. Uh.
And this is the the idea that when you're you're
(05:49):
feeling particularly fine features, such as a single human hair
on a desktop, your sense of touch depends on skin
vibrations that arise as your fingertip moves across the desk.
So when two thousand nine, a team of French researchers
looked into this, and they found that a rigid fingertip
moving across the surface produces vibration frequencies that are detected
by special nerve endings called Bassinian corpuscles, and these nerve
(06:12):
endings then passed this information onto sensory neurons that signal
the brain. So the idea here is those without those ridges,
if you burn them off with battery acids so that
you can commend more crimes or what have you, you
would not be able to feel as as as easily
you would not be able to feel those tiny fine
details and things, which is really cool. Yeah, so here's
(06:33):
this idea. Can you be born without them? Here's this question?
You can? You can? You really well do explain. This
was discovered when a twenty nine year old Swiss woman
of the U. S Border was made to wait for
hours as puzzled officers tried to make sense of her
missing prints, and as a result, this has been dubbed
(06:56):
the immigration delay disease. I kuld you not really. It's
very very rare and has only been documented in four
families across the world. So they had no prints. They
had no prints. Yeah, so you could argue they had
identical prints then since that the prints that they had
were non existent. Question. Yeah, I was gonna say, it's
(07:18):
maybe a different question. But genetically it is able. It's
possible for you to be born without prints. Again, very rare,
and I think that the calling it a disease is
even kind of a bit specious because it's like, well,
you know what, what was the problem other than not
having maybe you can't feel very fine surfaces. Well, see
(07:39):
that's that's the only thing they say. Typically, the pores
of sweat glands lie along the tiny ridges that make
up our fingerprints. So for people with this mutation, the
ridges don't even form to begin with interfering with sweat glands, okay,
and as a result people actually they sweat less on
their hands, so the body makes up for it. Now
(08:00):
you can get rid of them, your fingerprints, if you've
ever wondered um that some people have gone to some
crazy links to do so, but repeat exposure to some
chemicals can can remove them or modify them as well
as callouses. So if you're doing a certain type of work,
you could actually have your fingerprints pretty much smear to nothing,
or the traditional method in crime family just to let
(08:22):
a turtle chew them off. You put a little you
smear a little meat paste on each on each of
your fingerprints, preferably a baby box turtle or a pack
of them, and then you let them chew on the
fingertips until you're satisfied, and then you get to get
This is the Paliocci crime family method. Yeah, well, okay.
In the nineties, kidnapper Theodore Handsome Jack Clutus took a
(08:46):
knife to his fingerprints, and that was the first documented
case of finger mutilation. And then the notorious bank robber
John Dillinger dipped his fingers in acid. Obviously that's the
somehow that sound like a in wins at that one,
like with the slicing, but are actually pretty terrible, right,
But somehow the burning of the prints off seems not
(09:08):
so crazy, but surely it hurts. Well. I guess the
thing is we can relate. Everyone has cut their fingers,
or most of us, I feel like they've cut their
their fingers one there, like peeling potatoes or something, so
we have a frame of reference for that, whereas being
scalded by battery acid and maybe not so much. I
just feel like if you're going to cut the fingerprints
off of your hands, that you're already bringing more attention
(09:30):
to your fingers anyway. So we were like, hey, why
why why do you have cut fingertips? Oh? I don't know,
no reason. And then you know, of course in that
day and age are probably like, that's the dude with
the strange missing fingertips. Do you think something's up with him? Yeah?
I don't know. It just any kind of self inflicted flame,
whatever your purpose, it's just weird. I'm just saying it's
not subtle. I did just think it was a bad
(09:51):
way to go, all right, So how do finger prints
form in the first place. Well, it's it's it's interesting
because it's not something we are, it's not in our genes.
It's not necessarily genetic thing really going on here. This
is something that forms in the womb. And what happens is, uh,
the outer epidermist and the inner subcutaneous tissue sandwich the
(10:14):
dermal cell layer between them, like a slice of cheese
between two slabs of bread, and as the pressure builds,
the slice of cheese again, that's the dermal cell layer
compresses in buckles, erupting into random surface patterns. I love that. Yeah, yeah,
And I wanted to give some more detail on that too,
because some of how that's done actually influences the pattern
(10:36):
that you get. Um, we have these friction ridge skin
covering the surface of our hands, and that's what comprises
the ridges and the furrows. So, as you say, in
those um, during those weeks I think it's ten through
fifteen weeks, the fetus develops smooth vallor pads. These are
raised pads, and the fingers, poems and feet because of
(10:56):
swelling mess and kimmeled tissue, which is a precursor for
blood usseles and connective tissues. And then around week ten,
the volor pads stop growing, but the hand continues to grow,
and then as a result, over the next few weeks,
the volor pad is absorbed back into the hand. This
is what you're talking about, um. During this stage, the
first signs of the ridges begin to appear, and the
spacing and arrangement of these early ridges is a random process,
(11:20):
but it's dictated by the overall geometry and the topography
of the volar pad. So if the ridges appear while
the volar pad is still uh quite pronounced, and the
individual will develop a world pattern. And then if the
primary ridges appear while the volar pad is less pronounced
than the person will get a loop pattern on their fingers.
(11:40):
And then if finally in the if the primary ridges
appear while the volor pad is nearly absorbed, then the
individual will develop an arch pattern. And I love how
they talk about it is topography because it really does
kind of remind me of the only the Earth's own
surface and the various elements going on to create causes
(12:02):
mountains to rise and valleys to deepen. Yeah, yeah, and
this is going on in the womb. It's so cool.
So could one Olsen twin frame the other for murder? No? No,
no fingerprints No, because even the Olsen twins, as identical
as they are, they do not have the same fingertip patterns. Now,
(12:25):
they may have similar patterns because the patterns that you
do get are genetic, but they will have a unique
marker in theirs. So it's kind of like if one
twin were slapped in the face by the same person
in the exact same way, they still wouldn't get the
exact same bruise on their face, necessarily because it's something
that's being done to the twin rather than something that's
(12:47):
purely emerging from their genetics. That's right, Yes, all right,
We're gonna take a quick break, and when we return,
we will get into this idea of fingerprints is identification.
To what extent is this a fabulous the idea to
what extent is that deeply flawed? All right, we're back
(13:12):
before we start talking about how unique fingerprints are and
bringing that into question. You know, I didn't want to
mention that ridge characteristics may indicate genetic predisposition of certain diseases,
and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually performed
research in two thousand and five that investigated these rich
characteristics as a genetic roadmap for the predisposition of certain diseases.
(13:36):
In particular, people with diabetes found UH. They found actually
that these people have a much higher ridge count than
those with normal glucose tolerance. So it's kind of interesting
that that they actually do tell us something just nonsense
that happens. It's not like a nonsense password that doesn't
mean anything in and of itself, but is unique well,
(13:58):
and I kind of think of palm ream reading in
this Sensemancy, if you want to get fancy well truromancy,
it is uh, and that you could be able to
tell something about yourself through these fingerprint patterns. So the
idea that a fingerprint is unique and could be used
as a biometric, They could be used as something on
our body that identifies who we are. The idea itself,
(14:21):
you find this an ancient Japanese and Chinese civilization. They
recognized pretty early on that this is something that's unique
and we can use this essentially to put our signature
on things. But for the most part, in the modern world,
especially in the Western world. It goes back to Sir
Francis Galton nineteenth century. Polly Math is one of these
guys by poly math of corpse of meaning. He was
into everything. He was just a learned man who love
(14:45):
to experiment, love to read about things, research things, and
figure out how the world worked. And uh, you know
it wasn't necessarily a specialist in any particular field, but
just was ready to just go all in on whatever
he was studying. And he was also the cousin of
Charles Darwin. Incidentally ran in the family. Yeah, ran in
the family. I guess the brilliance and all. But he's
(15:06):
the one who really pushed this idea that fingerprints are
such a unique identifier and then they're a great biometric
and that the idea of two individuals possessing the same
fingerprint were so slim that it was virtually flawless. I
believe he said that the chances of two people and
this was this was his math. Uh, the chances of
(15:27):
two people possessing a matching fingerprint were one in sixty billion,
which back then would have seemed pretty reasonable, right in
terms of the chances of someone else possessing the same fingertips,
and so that was a good case to try to
use this as a biometric right, but what does that
mean today? Like, just just on on the math level,
(15:48):
it's interesting. There's a guy. There's a fingerprinting expert, Professor
Edward im Winkle Reed, which is a great last name.
My own science editor Alison louder Milk, who also has
a great last name, she kept emailing me back responding
about this guy's name. She's like, oh my god, this
is the greatest name I've ever heard, because it's there's
a little it sounds like he should be abducted by
(16:09):
by little people. There's a little bit of rumple still say,
it sounds a bit of a children's story name. Yeah,
but as much as we we love his last name,
uh in Winkle Read is a fingerprinting expert, and he
argues that since world population now exceeds six point four
billion and most of us possess ten digits, we have
more than sixty four billion prints out there to bump
(16:31):
the odds of having any two individuals share a single print. Well,
she argues it's just one of the reasons why multiple
fingerprints are important, and that we really need to consider
reforming fingerprinting as a biometric. That's one of his big causes,
or has been over the last several years, is that
we really need to rethink how much we can trust
fingerprints as an identified her So, okay, then that problem
(16:54):
actually would become more pronounced as more people come online. Right,
so we've talked about adding the three point billion people
by the year, so that we will now be nine
point five billion people. Yeah, but even when you if
you disregard that as just pure number high jinks, you
still get down to the question why did we buy
Why did we buy into this idea that that that
(17:15):
fingerprints are are so perfect? And according to statisticians Stephen M. Stigler,
uh twentieth century reliance on fingerprints had less to do
with science and reliability and more to do with courtroom
drama and a fortunate lack of pattern repetition in prints.
So the argument here is that, all right, you have
a trial going on that fingerprint. It looks really cool
(17:36):
up there on the screen. For the most part, if
all things created equal, it's pretty reliable. And I mean
it's as we'll discuss here, there there's a lot of
reliable things about the fingerprint. It's still pretty unique, but
it's not flawless. In fact, since evaluations of fingerprinting labs
by collaborative testing services UH, those evaluations have discovered fingerprinting
(18:00):
error rates ranging from three to So when you get
into regardless of how how much you can trust fingerprintings,
you get into the flawed potentially flawed nature of human
fingerprinting biometrics and how we record them and keep track
of them, interpret them, and then press charges with them,
you can get into like upwards failure rate, chance that
(18:22):
you're gonna have flawed results. That gets pretty big, I mean,
and that's why if you look at some of the
rather lofty figures, I think it's like three and one.
We're up to as of this recording, three one individuals
cleared by the Innocence Project, individuals who had been convicted
largely based on based on a number of things, but
fingerprinting is a part of that, and then they were
exonerated via DNA evidence. Well, you know, previous to it
(18:45):
seemed like the gold standard, and it's you know, historically
between nineteen nine five and now, there really hasn't been
that much time that has passed, so obviously a lot
more reform needs to happen, especially when you consider um
that you know this was this was the way that
they began to identify criminals in the nineteenth century and
that was really helpful technology then, right. And I wanted
(19:08):
to mention too that that this has its beginnings in
eighteen fifty eight when an Englishman named Sir William Herschel
was working at this the chief magistrate at the Hookley
District in Singapore, India, and in order to reduce fraud,
he had the residents record their fingerprints when signing business documents.
So again that has a pretty big tradition back in
(19:31):
Japanese culture as well and before that. But as you said,
this is a This is such a dramatic way to
I d someone and to say this is the person
that you can see how it's been in use for
so long. But now, of course we are in a
different age where we have so many different biometrics to
work with. Yeah, and people like in Winkle Reed and
(19:52):
the Staggler, they're not they're not arguing that we should
just abandon fingerprints, but rather that we should become smarter
about how we used them and we should not depend
on him as a soul biometric. However, that again, fingerprints
are great and they can be very useful, and I
think it's really interesting to how useful fingerprints can be
not only immediately after death, but after a certain amount
of decay has occurred. I found this interesting BBC news
(20:14):
story that interviewed Alan Bale, who is the author of
the UK's standard police manual on dead hands, which is
some great expertise there. And this is also something that
you'll find you'll find in the US and other countries
forensics manuals. So when he goes to cocktail parties to see,
say I'm an expert on dead hands, I hope so
I hope he does, because these are great. This is
the kind of stuff I'm gonna have to share the
(20:35):
next cocktail pate party I go to. Because he talks
about how, quote, if a hand is found in the water,
you will see that the epidermist starts to come away
from the dermist like a glove. This sounds gruesome, but
if a hand has been badly damaged, I cut the
epidermis off and put my own hand inside that glove.
And by glove he means the flesh off that hand.
(20:57):
And then try to fingerprint it like that. So even
though the outer layer of your head, of your the
flesh in your hand has come off like a glove,
like a loose glove, from the rotting remnants of the
rest of your hand, this guy and other friends it
professionals can then come along and just slip their own
hand into your flesh glove and start rolling some prints out.
(21:17):
They'll just buffalo bill of that. They'll just game's gum
that bet Yeah. All right, um, that's comforting. That's really comforting. Well,
all right, let's talk a little bit about the future
of fingerprints, because I found this really interesting. Um. There's
a Huntsville, Alabama company called i Dare, and it has
(21:41):
developed a system that can scan and identify a fingerprint
from about twenty ft away, and coupled with other biometrics,
it could soon allow security systems to grant or deny
access from a distance without requiring users to stop and
scan a fingerprint or swipe an I d card. Now,
the aren't customer for this is the military, but it
(22:02):
has possibilities obviously in the marketplace and in fact as
being beta tested in a gym right now. But the
hope by the maker is that they can merge this
technology with financial data, so you could simply scan your
fingerprint rather than relying on credit card data and an
r F I D chip or a credit card itself. Yeah,
(22:22):
that would that would be great. I've I've undergone a
fair amount of fingerprinting lightly and it is even even
in the when you're not using the the actual ink,
when you're using the scanning method, it's still it's quite
an ordeal to go. But my mind instantly goes to
RoboCop with this, because I can imagine RoboCop arriving on
the scene holding out the gun, making the perpetrators put
(22:43):
their hands up, and then in that instant instantly scanning
their fingerprints and getting and checking the database to see
if they match up with known perpetrators or wanted. I
mean this, this kind of technology just kind of goes
wild with your mind, doesn't it, because you can just
imagine all sorts of implicate sations on that. I also
wanted to mention ears this is the new fingerprints, Yeah,
(23:05):
because we know we have other biometrics. We have UM
voice fingerprints D and a fingerprints IRUs and retinal scans. Yeah,
and like retinal scans, especially that's been used to death
and sci fi and and even non sci fi just
slightly futuristic stuff on TV. So we get that we
we were already this hammered into our minds that retinal
scans would be useful. But the ear thing that caught
(23:26):
me by surprise. But when you when when I read it,
I'm like, well, obviously, yeah, everyone's ear is going to
be a little different. But I never thought of it
as a biometric, a true biometric before. Yeah, because when
you're born, that's the ear you get, right, you know,
doesn't change much other than length or things that you
do to it. Do you get to like some piercing?
I mean, that's the thing. The ear is one obviously
not the most commonly mutilated parts of the human body
(23:48):
well and also grown right under the skin of the arm.
Was the woman who had the tissue for her ear
that she grew under her arms. I don't know that
you're not thinking of the artist though, No, I'm thinking
about something else. Uh anyway, scrap that. The point is
is that there are biometrics that are geared towards the ear,
And this is from Wired Science from Dave Mosher. He says,
(24:10):
that a new shape finding algorithm called image ray transform,
which boasts six percent accuracy according to a study by
the i E Fourth International Conference, UH could use the
outer ear to identify people. And it works by unleashing
a ray producing algorithm on an image to seek out
(24:31):
curved features. And when a ray finds, when the software
draws over the part and repeats the analysis, and in
a few hundred or a thousand cycles, that cleanly paints
the ear more than any other face structure. Of course,
there are palms here which I think you've already idicated
earmuffs all all with no idea who they were. Well,
(24:54):
what happens to you when you when you get older
the cartage, Yes, your ears fall off because the cartilage
in your ear begins to stretch right, or you get
a bunch of piercings or tribal things. You know. Well,
that's the other limitations of the system, because you could
have also have hair covering in the ears. Again, as
you get older, there's less than ideal lighting conditions. And
(25:15):
then the big one is the different I D s
generated from different angles that it's taken from. So there
you have it fingerprints what they are? Why we have them,
how we use them to I D people and single
out our uniqueness among so many other humans. Hopefully we
got to give you a little more food for thought.
The next time you're you're rolling that print around in
(25:36):
some ink, or yeah, if you're getting booked, you know,
take a take a moment just to see what sort
of pattern you have. Yeah, or if you're you're eating
some pudding, just take a moment to roll it around
in there and then go up to a nice white
wall and just stick it pudding. Yeah, all right, Yeah,
preferably chocolate. That's gonna show up better than yeah, you're
vanilla or butterscotch. Okay, let's call the robe it over
(25:58):
and do a little listener mail before we head out.
This first one comes to us from Camilla. Camilla writes
to us on Facebook and says, Hi, guys, let me
start my message with an obligatory ego massage. Your podcast
is awesome. I listened to it in the gym and
my friends always think it's strange that I burst out
laughing while running. Thanks for that. And you know, we
(26:19):
just did an episode on laughter and yeah, an exercise,
so yes, if you are laughing while running, they may
think it's weird, but you were getting you might be
getting a better exercise and a more healthy exercise than
they are. So let's doorphins are going to the roof. Yeah,
every time we we say something funny. Uh So anyway,
(26:39):
she continues, thanks for that. After your three podcasts on maps,
I couldn't help but feeling frustrated. I think the the
area of my brain is broken. Seriously, every time I
come out of a shop, I have no idea which
direction I came from and where I should go. I'm
a little better when reading maps, but creating mental maps
seems just near impossible. Anyway, I'm sure you've got many
messages about people and or animals with excellent sense of direction,
(27:02):
and I thought I'd share the other end of the spectrum.
Blindfold me and twirl me around twice, and I wouldn't
find my way home. Keep up the great work in
congratulations on your success. Um. Yeah, that the whole subject
of one's ability to orient orientate yourself in a complex
or even familiar environment is a is a very interesting
area of study. Yeah, and you can also increase your
(27:25):
map sense too. You can actually, um, you know, try
to exercise that part of your brain and train it
to increase your abilities. I find with myself because I'm
kind of bad at maps, and some of that comes
from the reliance on on on these various map tools
that we have, such as GPS, such as printing out
(27:46):
a map and just knowing you know how many turns
to take. And and also I'm I'm terrible at remembering
the names of streets, which doesn't help that. Like every
street in Atlanta is called Peachtree, uh, which isn't just
a joke. It's like every street Almo, it seems it's
name Summer avenues and streets are It's like there are
(28:06):
only so many street names that people were allowed to
use in every city, and you have to use those.
Whereas I think we should have crazier street names. We
should name them after you know, I don't know, like
Sandworm Avenue, I'd go for that. Who would ever forget
sand Worm Avenue? Wouldn't. Well, I've always wanted to do that, honestly.
And I thought about it more in terms of subdivisions,
because subdivisions always have these great like falling oaks. Yeah,
(28:28):
And I was like, what about just calling that subdivision
or that street fallen woman? Yes? Broken Dreams. Yeah, or
how about Cloaca Avenue. I like that that would be
a good one. That's one that I think I would
have that I'd have to steal it and put in
my home. Yeah. If it doesn't it, maybe it exists
that I hope that it will exist. Please please exist.
(28:51):
Um So anyway, Kamala, thanks for riding in and giving
us a little food for thought in that area. It
is a very interesting area of study there. There was
one really cool episode of I believe it was a
radio Lab where they were talking about individuals who have
a particular anomaly that makes them extra prone to becoming
disoriented in setting. So look that one up. But I
(29:12):
believe I shared it on the Facebook. Recently. We also
heard from a listener about the name of Valerie. Valerie
rights in from Austin, Texas and says, Hi, Robert and Julie.
I was listening to the episode about bats, and it
made me think about when I was a kid. I
grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For the first
part of the year, we have a few Mexican freetailed bats.
They come through town on their migration south. One of
(29:32):
those bats decided that our porch was an awesome place
to use as a temporary home. We went and talked
to the local Animal Information center and asked what we
should do. It was a time of year that the
bat was either mading, birthing, or something else that needed
to not be disturbed. Since the bat needed to not
be disturbed while I was living here, we had to
stop using our front door. We had to go out
our back door, through our backyard and through the gate
(29:54):
in the back. That worked moderately well for the for
some of the time. For most of that entire summer,
we also had to have anyone who visited our house
stop using our door. Now that I look back on it,
it seemed like a lot of the time, a lot
of time to just stop using our front door. But
at the time my parents made it seemed like a
really cool thing we were doing for a summer, So
that was that was That's really interesting. I remember at
(30:17):
one point the house my family lived and had a gazebo,
and there's a bat that took refuge up in there,
and so it's kind of neat we had a local bat. Uh.
And as I've discussed before, I've tried to get bats
to move into the bat house in my home or
my previous home, and they wouldn't do it, so it
makes me sad. Well, but now Valerie is in Austin
(30:37):
that central right the Conquer Street bridge. Oh yes, that's
right where they all cluster. Every all right, Well, if
the rest of you have anything you would like to
share about bats, or about directions, or certainly about fingerprints,
we would love to hear from you. Do you have
some sort of unique fingerprint? Do you have no fingerprints?
Let us know. We would love to have some perspective
(30:58):
on that, for sure. I'm certainly about the the history
of fingerprints or simply taking a corpse's hand flesh and
slipping it on like a glove and typing. We would
love to know about that as well. You can find
us on Facebook, you can find us on tumbler. We
are stuff to blow your mind on both of those pages,
and we go by the handle blow the Mind on
the old Twitter, and you can always drop us a
(31:18):
line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how Stuff Works dot com
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