The Men In This Family Have No Fingerprints indiatimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from indiatimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A family in Bangladesh appears to have no fingerprints due to a genetic mutation so rare it is thought to affect only a small number of people in the world.
Apu Sarker, 22, and the men in his family share the condition which leaves the pads of their fingers smooth and devoid of the unique ridges that make up fingerprints, the BBC s Mir Sabbir reported.
Where having no fingerprints caused few problems for Sarker s grandfather, the same can t be said decades later.
Fingerprints are now used for everything from passing through airports to opening smartphones.
In Bangladesh, providing fingerprints is also a necessary step in applying for National ID cards, passports and driver s licenses.
The Men in This Bangladeshi Family Have No Fingerprints
In a world where fingerprints are the most collected and used biometric data, having no fingerprints is both a blessing and a curse, as the men in the Sarker family can attest.
For several generations, Sarker men have been born with completely smooth fingertips, and while that may not have been a huge deal a generation or two ago, nowadays, when the swirling patterns on the tip of our fingers are used as the main way to identify individuals, it’s an issue. For example, some of the men in the Bangladeshi family have been unable to obtain a driving license because of their lack of fingerprints, while others have been reluctant to travel for fear of getting in trouble at airports, for the same reason.