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Scientists Wonder What Fingerprints Are For
Hugh Pickens writes "The BBC reports that scientists say they have disproved the theory that fingerprints improve grip by increasing friction between people's fingers and the surface they are holding. Dr Roland Ennos designed a machine which enabled him to measure the amount of friction generated by a fingerprint when it was in contact with an acrylic glass at varying levels of pressure. The results showed that friction levels increased by a much smaller amount than had been anticipated, debunking the hypothesis that fingerprints provide an improved grip. Ennos believes that fingerprints may have evolved to grip onto rough surfaces, like tree bark; the ridges may allow our skin to stretch and deform more easily, protecting it from damage; or they may allow water trapped between our finger pads and the surface to drain away and improve surface contact in wet conditions. Other researchers have suggested that the ridges could increase our fingerpads' touch sensitivity."
If it takes an equal amount of resources for the body to grow a finger without fingerprints then it makes sense that they not meant for anything. Not everything has to have a purpose.
Sounds about right. Such micro-ridges, I think, WOULD increase grip on rougher surfaces, which is what we would run into in daily life. Also, if those ridges - generally the top layer of skin - would rip off or shred, the damage done to the hand would be less than were it smooth, I would guess. IOW, maybe a safety feature?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
It's more likely for something used this much to have functional features than not. Fingers and claws have been around for quite a while. It's hard to imagine them not evolving useful properties. Of course, this can go too far. Try peeling a gecko from a wall, you need to call the Hulk to help.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
Throughout history, there have been lots of questions that science has not been able to answer. But science is not static. Over time, it has been able to answer more and more questions and close more and more of the 'gaps.'
For any theist, the 'God of the Gaps' defense is pretty weak. Just because we don't understand something doesn't require a God (or gods) to explain it.
This is not a rejection of theism, but simply a comment on science - just because we don't have an answer now doesn't mean we won't have an answer in the future. And not having an answer does not imply that there is a (or many) God(s).
There are probably multiple reasons for the fingerprints.
The skin has to be both flexible and durable at the same time, and gripping on moist surfaces should also be safe.
A flexible skin is also allowing for better dexterity and a finer resolution when sensing surfaces.
...to suppress the knowledge of a designer, particularly with such a stupid idea as evolution!
Maybe they work like treads on car tires... let there be someplace for liquids to move *away* from to improve grip. Or, maybe having "with oil" and "without oil" surfaces that can be selected by varying grip allows gripping different types of surfaces.
Also, grip isn't the only thing hands do. Wiping or scrubbing with your fingers requires some level of abrasiveness.
I suspect that there may be a connection between building calluses and having prints. Possibly, prints are just the way we make "tough" skin that is more resistant to injury.
More grip, larger surface, which means more flexibility, more nerve-endings - more sensitivity, better warmth-exchange, 'folded-up-ness', which means more protection from wounds, easier to clean (like footprints, the mud just falls out), 'little bits that stick out' - meaning more sensitivity again.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
With articles such as this, it's hard to tell whether we're being subjected to bad science or bad journalism. Both the summary and TFA quite categorically state that the "myth" of fingerprints being used to improve grip has been disproven. They then go on to describe how this experiment tested whether fingerprints helped when grasping an extremely smooth surface, and found out that they didn't (well okay, actually they did, but not by very much).
Finally, some alternate hypotheses as to why fingerprints evolved are posited, the first of which is: they may improve grip on rough surfaces. Not acrylic glass or anything, but those other kind of surfaces - you know, the type that actually occur in nature.
I'm pretty sure I don't know much more now than I did before I read the article.
Most mutations that get kept are somehow beneficial. Not all, but most.
Well the main route for evolution to occur (survival of the fittest) is pretty much dead.
Aetheism is a religion.
most evolutionary features get kept that do not kill the person/animal having it, and which does not put it at a disadvantage in reproducing. There are many more evolved features that do nothing that have been kept than you think.
I don't see why them being unique is so surprising. Faces are unique after all. All of us have a unique genome, apart from identical twins. Still even twins have different fingerprints and hair follicles and so on are in different places. I guess when embryos develop the process for skin folding and hair follicle development is slightly random - i.e. the genes encode the probability of a fair follicle, not its exact location.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
"I believe there is no God" is as much a statement of faith as "There is no God but Allah, Muhammad is his messenger". There is no scientific evidence to prove or disprove either statement.
Exactly -- why does it have to be for any particular use? More likely it's just an artifact of how skin develops. People forget that many traits didn't evolve for a specific purpose, but rather, were random mutations that were not selected against, becauee they did the species no harm.
The whole question also shows a profound ignorance of the rest of the animal kingdom:
Dogs have noseprints that are as unique as fingerprints (and in fact are legal ID for dogs in Canada). Why is this? Probably no reason at all, other than quirks of individual cell layout in the skin layer.
Chickens have similar uniqueness in the surface of their combs. Why? Likewise, probably no reason, other than it's just a trivial quirk of how the skin cells piled up in a given individual.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Although that seems like a good idea at first, if the treatment was powerful enough to remove his fingerprints, it could have caused some nerve damage as well, which could cause his diminished sensitivity. However, if he (and other such people) were to submit to tests and scans and general research, they would surely prove helpful in deciphering the mystery of the fingerprint.
"I believe there is no God" is as much a statement of faith as "There is no God but Allah, Muhammad is his messenger". There is no scientific evidence to prove or disprove either statement.
"I believe there is no Easter Bunny" is as much a statement of faith as "There is no Easter Bunny but Frank". There is no scientific evidence to prove or disprove either statement.
Can you honestly not see how asserting a positive without evidence is different from asserting a negative based on lack of evidence?
Hint: in the former case, like in your Allah example, one is ascribing specific properties to something that is unobservable, impossible to test, impossible to prove. There is another word for this: fantasy.
There is no scientific evidence for unicorns, but I believe they're out there anyway because I want to/an old book told me to think that/it's convenient to my laziness of intellect.
Thank you, I'm glad this is the first post listed.
Dr Roland Ennos designed a machine which enabled him to measure the amount of friction generated by a fingerprint when it was in contact with an acrylic glass at varying levels of pressure. The results showed that friction levels increased by a much smaller amount than had been anticipated, debunking the hypothesis that fingerprints provide an improved grip.
That's totally BS science. That disproves the hypothesis that fingerprints provide improved grip on acrylic glass, not that fingerprints provide improved grip on other surfaces.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
No it's not. Atheism is a belief: a belief in there not being a god.
Belief is not religion.
The statement "I believe in little green men" is not a religious statement. Neither is the statement "I don't believe in little green men."
So why should a belief in no god be a religious statement? By your logic, very few things are not religions.
Carl Sagan had a graph of scientific progress - basically very rapid in Ancient Greece and zero in the Dark Ages
Yeah. Articulated armor, steel long-swords, and crop rotation aren't science at all....
And it sure wasn't religion that got all of the Greek city-states to stop fighting every four years and come together for the olympics. Nope. Not that, either.
You're arguing from authority, and "noted atheist says religion is bad" is no more credible than "pope says modernism is bad."
Why presume they have a function? Evolution weeds out costly features. If fingerprints have little cost, it is wrong to assume they necessarily exist to serve some specific purpose.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Carl Sagan had a graph of scientific progress - basically very rapid in Ancient Greece and zero in the Dark Ages. As Christianity lost its grip in Europe science picked up again.
As if the plague had nothing to do with that. Or the breakdown of civility with the fall of the Roman Empire and rise of bands of knights in perpetual raids and gang wars for their lords.
Anyway, there was a lot of progress on science and math during the Middle Ages in the Muslim middle east, which was not exactly a bastion of atheism.
Dogs often use their noses like a jack-hammer... the nosepad is not particularly sensitive to touch. If your dog is too wiggly to get a noseprint (which one does with a paper-pad and roll-on ink, much as one would footprint a baby), chances are the dog needs more training, and you need lessons on how to be the pack leader, too.
(Disclosure: I am a professional dog trainer. :)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
And they also have lab techs performing interrogations, all of them seem to be happy with their hair in their face while they're searching for fibers on a mattress or gathering evidence from a crime scene.