Hedgehogs have the most similar fingerprints to humans

[Michelle C]

Hello all,

Apparently Mercedes-Benz have the following statement in their new radio advert:

'Hedgehogs have the most similar fingerprints to humans'.

I got asked about this in a mock court today and although I know about primates, monkeys and koala bears having friction ridge skin, I am at a loss to as whether hedgehogs do!

I have just searched it on the internet and there are a number of websites quoting this as a weird fact!

Does anybody know if this is true??? And if it is could they point me in the direction of more information!!!!!

Thanks

Michelle

[Kasey Wertheim]

Can any of our active, posting latent print examiners get a hold of a naturally deceased hedgehog?

[Pat A. Wertheim]

Several years ago I was trimming the nails on our pet ferret, Taz, and noticed that the little animal's volar pads had crude ridges, unlike the "wart-like" skin on the volar pads of a cat or dog. Subsequently, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek article for a regional ferret publication, referencing Inez Whipple's 1904 paper. Much to the delight of other ferret owners, I'm sure, I concluded that ferrets are more highly evolved than cats or dogs. But I concluded further that in spite of what the ferrets themselves may think, human ridge detail proves that we are more highly evolved that they are. Now I want to compare a hedgehog's paw to a ferret's.

[John Vanderkolk]

I still like studying the ridges, ridge units, textures and edges, and sweat pores on the muzzles of dogs, cows and sheep. For Pat, did I just see a commercial of two ferrets opening a refrigerator to get their dinner? Seemed like smart little critters. I forget what the commercial was trying to sell. John V.

[David Fairhurst]

I would say that simply the difference in size between a human finger and a hedgehog toe would prove this to be wrong.
Especially since I remeber there being on the wall of one of the corridors at New Scotland Yard, 2 prints, of one human and one gibbon, which could not be reliably attributed to their respective donor species by any of the examiners who took time to look at them.

Hedgehogs or koalas may be the subject of these myths but no-one can dissuade me from the belief that to find the most similar fingerprints to humans you must look for the most similar morphology and function of the hand; ultimately the chimps and gorillas are the only real candidates.

Oh and by the way...

"You can afford a Mercedes" ?
On a fingerprint examiner's salary?
I'd be more likely to be sending an officer out to arrest a hedgehog.