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