快猫短视频

Melbourne

POLICE in Australia using fingerprint evidence to hunt criminals might
find they have a koala as their prime suspect. The fingerprints of koalas, it
turns out, are so similar to those of humans that they could easily be
confused.

鈥淎lthough it鈥檚 extremely unlikely that koala prints would be found at the
scene of a crime, police should at least be aware of the possibility,鈥� says
Maciej Henneberg, a biological anthropologist and forensic scientist at the
University of Adelaide.

Henneberg arrived in Australia last January from South Africa. While handling
koalas in the Urimbirra Wildlife Park near Adelaide, he noticed that their
fingers carry patterns known as dermatoglyphs, with ridges that form loops,
whorls and arches like those on a human hand. Henneberg was surprised to find no
reference to the patterns in the scientific literature. 鈥淚t appears that no one
has bothered to study them in detail,鈥� he says.

With his colleagues Kosette Lambert and Chris Leigh, Henneberg obtained three
male koalas that had been killed by cars, and a 46-year-old female chimpanzee
that had died in captivity. Using a scanning electron microscope, they compared
the koala and chimp prints with those from humans. Strangely, given that
chimpanzees are our closest relatives and themselves have human-like
fingerprints, the koala prints were even more like those of humans.

Henneberg says the findings are of evolutionary importance as well as
forensic interest. 鈥淢arsupials such as the koala split from the lineage of
primates about 80 million years ago,鈥� he says. 鈥淪o we have two lineages
independently developing the same trait.鈥� Henneberg believes that fingerprints
evolved as a device to improve grip when climbing.