People are only just realising why everyone’s fingerprints are unique and they’re baffled
PEOPLE are only just realising why everyone's fingerprints are unique - and they're baffled.
It's common knowledge that each person on earth has a different set of fingerprints - including identical twins.
And you're bound to have heard that, as a result, the unique patterns play an integral role in identifying people - whether that's for solving crimes or travelling between countries.
But, what's not common knowledge is how the swirls form and why they're unique.
It's a fact you could go your whole life without knowing, but many recently took to Twitter to flesh out the details.
And multiple users were spreading incorrect information - claiming fingerprints are formed from the baby touching the inside of its mother's womb.
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However, the truth is far less sentimental and sweet.
While fingerprints do start forming in the womb, they're a result of layers of skin growing at different speeds.
This sees the skin "buckle and fold" into the swirls you see on your hands today.
According to , when a fetus starts off with a smooth layer of skin.
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It continued: "But after about 10 weeks, a deeper layer of skin, called the basal layer, starts growing faster than the layers above it, which makes it 'buckle' and fold.
"The expanding lower layer ends up scrunched and bunched beneath the outside layer.
"These folds eventually cause the surface layers of the skin to fold too, and by the time a fetus is 17 weeks old – about halfway through a pregnancy – its fingerprints are set."
Genes are said to also play a part in the process - and the shape and size of blood vessles in your skin.
While no two sets of fingertips are exactly alike, they do all form in three 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.
And, the only people in the world who have the same fingerprints are those with none at all.
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There is a rare condition called adermatoglyphia where a person is born without fingerprints.
Recently a high school divided opinion after it introduced touch pads to scan students' fingerprints outside the bathrooms to tackle vandalism.
