Make perfect criminals! Ha!
At least four extended families throughout the world are affected by a rare disease called adermatoglyphia, in which people are born without the ridges on fingerprints.
Beyond being born without fingerprints, the disease also affects palms, toes and soles. It may also might those affected to have an unusual number of sweat glands but isn’t harmful.
The condition is pretty much harmless, except it can make applying for a job that requires finger printing a lot more difficult.
A Virginia woman afflicted with the rare disease told National Geographic in 2006 hat technicians were perplexed after she applied for a job at a jail facility, explaining:
“I kept hearing, Of course you have fingerprints. And five or six different technicians were telling one another, You’re doing this wrong, let me do this. I have to tell them I was born without them.”
Not the most terrible condition to be born with, but definitely inneresting!
[Image via AP Images.]