No two people have the same fingerprints, but some have speculated whether that’s the same for identical twins.
Fingermark detection expert Dr Scott Chadwick explains how fingerprints are formed on a recent episode of Crime Insiders:
When you look at your fingertips you might see whorls, loops or arches.
Whorls look like “little circles with larger circles coming from the centre”, Chadwick says, whereas loops come from one side of the finger and loop in the centre, and arches look like a little speed bump.
“If we recover a whorl at a crime scene and our particular suspect only has loops, we can exclude them from further investigation.”
Identical twins and even siblings may have the same type of pattern, but they develop distinguishing imperfections that make them unique. Chadwick explains: