Koala Fingerprints

By Anupum Pant

Several hundreds of million years ago, humans and koalas started their own evolutionary journeys. But even after millions of years of independent evolution, even when both the species have almost nothing in common, there’s one thing Koalas have that have been troubling forensic experts for years (or potentially troubling).

Koalas have fingerprints that are eerily similar to human fingerprints. They are so similar that a koala could easily fool a forensic expert if it ever came down from a tree to a crime scene before they came in for collecting evidence.

Certainly other closer cousins have fingerprints like that of humans too. Chimps and Gorillas do, but then they are far too close to humans, genetically. That’s not very hard to believe. However, Koalas, who split pats several million years ago and evolved completely independently having them is something that stuns evolutionary biologists till date.

koala fingerprintsvia [io9]

 

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