Sixth Digit

I’m shocked it took me over four months to come across this article. My usual news sites somehow didn’t alert me! The article is open-access so you can read it for yourself.

While uncommon, I have in my lifetime met at least two people with six-fingered hands. But in both those cases, the extra fingers were non-functionary appendages that were much smaller than the normal fingers. And just a couple of months ago, I was having a conversation with my 11-year-old nephew where I described this phenomenon. Clearly, I hadn’t been reading the latest science, and was just relying on my rather limited anecdotal experience. Humph! What non-scientific behavior on my part.

Turns out there are people who have functional and independent sixth fingers. When I first saw the picture above (in the paper), my automated system blared the message “photoshop”! Even now when I look at it, part of me still thinks it looks like a photomanipulation, but I doubt this article would have made it to Nature Communications if it was faked. The extra finger in this case is a supernumerary. That’s a fancy way of saying “in excess of the normal number”. But it sounds super!

The subject was trained to single-handedly manipulate the controls of a video game which would have taken a regular five-digit-handed fellow the use of both hands. Now that’s a truly single-handed feat. Okay, okay, I know that I’m just looking for punny excuses. But how often do you encounter something seemingly alien. It makes me think that TV or movie CGI folks can collaborate with scientists to better understand how six-fingered aliens exhibit surpassing hand-manipulative skills. Would related everyday objects look different in a world of sixth digit aliens? What about seven digits? Come to think of it, whenever I’ve watched sci-fi, you might have weird-looking aliens with different appendages, but they all seem to still operate in an environment built for homo sapiens, even when they’re not on or invading planet Earth. I see some room for a new vision of creativity here – moviemakers, take note!

Can’t say that we chemists do any better. When imagining the microscopic world, I think of blobs bumping into other blobs. Sometimes new blobs are made. Sometimes blobs rearrange themselves. Maybe I can come up with something visually more exciting – I’m sure the students would appreciate it. The last time I remember doing something remotely exciting along these lines was end of Spring semester when describing polydentate molecules such as EDTA. Cation scavengers! Maybe I need to figure out how to bring molecular machines into my classroom discussion. Call it nano-something. And no, I don’t know where this blog post is going.