4 Things That Makes You No 1 in 7.2Billion People

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Anyone who knows anything about crime knows one of the first things detectives look for at a crime scene is fingerprints, those unique markers left by the ridges on everyone’s fingers. These impressions have been used as personal signatures for thousands of years, going as far back as 300 B.C. in China, where letters would be sealed with clay and impressed with the authors fingerprint. And in the late 1800s, a medical missionary in Japan named Henry Faulds was the first to publish research in a journal about the uniqueness, and potential for individualization, of these ridges.

It was around this time that fingerprints, with their loops, arches, and whorls, became an identifying factor in criminal cases. Sir Francis Galton, a jack-of-all-trades in many things scientific, calculated that the probability of two whole fingerprints matching was somewhere around one in 64 billion — making your fingerprints uniquely yours out of the7.2 billion people around the world. While it’s debatable how accurate that is (not everyone’s had their fingerprints taken, obviously) and how well forensic scientists can identify a person with them, the general consensus is they’ve been more accurate than not.

But what about other parts of the body? Most of us like to believe in our individuality; surely there’s more to our bodies that make us one in 7.2 billion. Well, here are five things that are (most likely) especially you that you can be proud of.

Your Ears

Chances are you don’t think too much about your ears besides what they’re used for. But if you think about it, every person’s ears has rather unique curves and ridges, the most prominent of which is the helix — the ear’s rim. Unlike fingerprints, which can become scarred or worn down, the overall pattern of our ears’ ridges stays the same as we age, according to researcher from the University of Southampton.

The Iris

Along with fingerprint and retina scanners, iris scanners have become another useful tool for protecting highly secure information and areas. The iris is the muscle in the eye that controls the size of the pupil, and it also gives our eyes color based on the amount of melatonin within. (It shouldn’t be confused with the retina, which is a light-sensitive layer of tissue lining the back of the eye.)

Your Tongue

While a person’s teeth, and their bite marks, have been analyzed in courtssince the 1970s, the most unique part of the mouth might just be the tongue. As mentioned before, fingerprints can change slightly over time, but the tongue almost always stays the same, since it’s protected inside the mouth.

A report in the journal Advances in Biometrics suggests that the tongue may be a useful tool for identification, as it is “unique to each person in its shape and in its surface textures.”

Your Gait

How many people slouch in this world, or bounce on one foot while walking, or drag their feet. Everyone walks in their own way, and it’s not just how their legs move that counts; it’s how their entire body moves. This concept is known as a person’s gait, and researchers have found analyzingwhat seem to be 24 components of it could accurately identify a person.

Source; Medical Daily