Touch ID just got a new wrinkle!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Isn’t it yucky when your fingers look like raisins after a pool day? Scientists wondered if wrinkly fingertips “prune” the same way each time.
Rachel Laytin and Guy German from Birmingham State University collected prints!
Three participants immersed their right hands in water for thirty minutes. Using before-and-after pictures, researchers mapped out the wrinkles on each digit. Everything was repeated the next day to see if anything changed!
Turns out, fingertips DO wrinkle in a consistent pattern! Though this work is early, researchers suggest that pruney fingers could be another form of identification.
And I would’ve gotten away with it too if it weren’t for… my pruney prints.
Reference: Laytin, R., & German, G. K. (2025). On the repeatability of wrinkling topography patterns in the fingers of water immersed human skin. Journal of the mechanical behavior of biomedical materials, 165, 106935. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmbbm.2025.106935