People have long paid attention to the patterns of skin at their fingertips and even learned to use them to identify individuals, because each person has their own peculiarities and unique. Forensics uses this feature as a way to achieve the goal of proving the guilt of a suspect by taking fingerprints at the crime scene and comparing them with samples in the database or of a potential criminal.

When do fingerprints appear?

The pattern at the fingertips is formed during the fetal development. The skin consists of several layers, which, connecting together, form folds - papillary patterns.

What do they depend on?

Like everything in the human body, this pattern is determined at the DNA level. There are so many possible combinations of grooves and curls in the print that the probability of a coincidence of such a pattern in two people approaches zero. Moreover, the prints are different even for one person on different fingers.

Fingerprint uniqueness

For all its persuasiveness, the theory of the uniqueness of prints cannot be fully proved. Despite the fact that databases with millions of prints have been created, it is impossible to physically remove and preserve this pattern for every inhabitant of the planet, as well as compare the prints of living people with those who have long died. Therefore, the theory remains a theory, although it has found wide practical application.

Oddly enough, if you look, then each person is unique not only to fingerprints, but also to the structure of the hair, the location of the teeth and the color of the iris.But capturing and analyzing prints is the most convenient and easiest, since this process does not require the use of sophisticated equipment (as is the case with the retina). You just need to attach a finger with a special paint applied to the surface, and you can even compare different prints with each other visually.

Today, there are many fairly accurate and complex methods for identifying a person, based on the analysis of various indicators called biometrics.