By: Akanksha
When we talk about human resemblance, we often think about chimpanzees and monkeys. We often watch them on social media; for instance, Oliver, who showcased bipedalism — the ability to walk upright on hind legs — no longer shocks us. Humans share around 98.8% of their DNA with our distant relatives.
There’s absolutely no denying that apes and chimpanzees have human-like qualities, including tool making and usage, complex social personalities, and showing off for attention.
But nature plays quiet tricks on those who are intrigued enough to look beyond what they can see — one such intriguing discovery is of the resemblance between the fingerprints of humans and koalas.
The same koalas that nap for hours, cling to eucalyptus trees lazily and chew leaves with so much patience. Nothing suggests that they can resemble humans so closely that Australian police once feared they could cause confusion at a crime scene.
The story started in 1975 when British police carried out an unusual raid on the apes’ houses at Twycross Zoos and London. It took place at a time when unsolved crimes were piling up and becoming a bigger problem in the country, resulting in the fingerprint analysis of “half a dozen chimpanzees and a pair of orangutans,” according to the report in The Independent. None of the accused animals were found guilty of any wrongdoing.
According to Steve Haylock from London police fingerprint bureau, the confusion arose because the police officers tended to refer to unclear or smudged fingerprints as “monkey prints.” He added that if they passed a chimpanzee print to a fingerprint office and claimed that it came from a crime scene, examiners would not question whether it was from a human or not.
According to the report in The Independent, Maciej Henneberg, a forensic scientist and biological anthropologist at the University of Adelaide, Australia, said, “It appears that no one has bothered to study them in detail… although it is extremely unlikely that koala prints would be found at the scene of a crime, police should at least be aware of the possibility.”
Some researchers also believe that even after carefully inspecting the fingerprints under a microscope, specialists would not be able to differentiate human prints from those left behind by a koala. Their closest relatives, like kangaroos and wombats, don't have fingerprints, suggesting that koalas evolved independently, and more recently in comparison to primates.
However, the forensic risk should not be overstated. While koala fingerprints can closely resemble human fingerprints, later commentary from Australian fingerprint experts suggested that trained specialists can distinguish between them, and there is no documented case establishing that a koala print actually led investigators to misidentify a crime-scene print. 5
The initial paper that discussed these similarities put forth the common need to grasp objects as the primary reason. The researchers stated in their paper, “Koalas … feed by climbing vertically onto the smaller branches of eucalyptus trees, reaching out, grasping handfuls of leaves and bringing them to the mouth… therefore the origin of dermatoglyphic [fingerprints] is best explained as the biomechanical adaptation to grasping, which produces multidirectional mechanical influences on the skin. These forces must be precisely felt for fine control of movement and static pressures and hence require orderly organization of the skin surface.” 1
For a very long time, researchers struggled to understand why the fingerprints evolved. These unique ridges fall into three major types, i.e., loops, whorls, and arches.
Fingerprints start developing before birth. Researchers discovered that these patterns develop from the epithelium (the other skin layer) and start a process that resembles the formation of a hair follicle. The process then halts suddenly, stopping before the recruitment of the deeper “helper” cells that the skin would need to develop in order to form a complete hair follicle.
The overall pattern forms due to complex chemical signaling in the skin that produces repetitive patterns, similar to how a zebra gets its stripes.
Signals spread through the skin and interact in waves that start at particular spots on the fingers. As the waves move, meet, and merge, they form bands of fast-growing cells. Thus, the wave action sets the ridge directions and creates the fingerprint pattern.
Genetics also plays a role in the pattern, but minute variations, referred to as minutiae, develop uniquely in the womb. Amniotic fluid, fetal position, and touch are the major factors that shape these individual curves and ridges.
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Researchers for decades believed that fingerprints were just there to improve grip, assuming they were ideal for holding objects and climbing. In 2009, research by Roland Ernos showed that the ridge structure decreases surface contact that can reduce friction instead of increasing it.2
Studies later revealed a dual function that involves moisture. According to the findings, sweat seeps from pores and spreads along the ridges when fingers touch a surface, balancing moisture and preventing both excessive dryness and slippage.3
Mike Adams explained in an Earth.com report that this dual mechanism for managing moisture has provided primates with an evolutionary advantage in dry and wet conditions — granting them manipulative and locomotive abilities not available to other animals.
Also Read : Can 'Grip Strength' Exercises Actually Help You Live Longer?
Fingerprints also enhance one’s sense of touch; the ridges amplify the vibrations when the finger comes in contact with a rough surface. These tiny waves reach the nerve endings, enabling an individual to feel minor differences between surfaces.4
This has inspired important innovations in touchscreen technology and prosthetic design.
Koalas and humans have not shared a common ancestor in over 100 million years. Thus, the fingerprints of koalas are a result of convergent evolution — the independent development of similar traits or physical features in unrelated or distantly related species.
Henneberg explained that koalas developed fingerprints for feeding and climbing. Koalas carefully pick delicate leaves while clinging tightly to tight eucalyptus branches.5
They can also balance themselves while gripping individual leaves, thanks to the friction and sensitivity provided by their fingerprints.
Just as sharks and dolphins evolved streamlined bodies for swimming, koalas and humans have too developed ridged skin for grabbing, entirely independently.
The similarity in their fingerprints serves as a gentle reminder that evolution can be both inventive and repeatable. Nature frequently comes up with similar solutions for problems that arise from completely different origins, driven by the universal need to survive.
References:
University of Adelaide. “Fingerprints.” Adelaide Research & Scholarship. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/items/ad4f9181-6877-4d5b-bcf9-55a0446bd65b
“Fingerprints Don’t Increase Friction.” Journal of Experimental Biology 212, no. 13 (2009). https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/212/13/i/18333/FINGERPRINTS-DON-T-INCREASE-FRICTION
University of Birmingham. “Fingerprints: Moisture-Regulating Mechanism Strengthens Human Touch, Study Finds.” 2020. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news-archive/2020/fingerprints-moisture-regulating-mechanism-strengthens-human-touch-study
Nature. “Fingerprints Don’t Increase Friction.” 2009. https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2009.68
Henneberg, Maciej, K. M. Lambert, and C. M. Leigh. “Fingerprinting a Chimpanzee and a Koala: Animal Dermatoglyphics Can Resemble Human Ones.” Proceedings of the Conference of the Australian and New Zealand International Symposium on the Forensic Sciences, 1996. https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/items/ad4f9181-6877-4d5b-bcf9-55a0446bd65b
(Rh/APC/MSM)
