ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Fingerprint ridges allow primates to regulate grip.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Review of Robotic Surgery: Engineering Considerations and Future Directions From Surgeons' Perspectives.The international journal of medical robotics + computer assisted surgery : MRCAS · 2026Review
- Multiscale Geometric Characterization and Discrimination of Dermatoglyphs (Fingerprints) on Hardened Clay-A Novel Archaeological Application of the GelSight Max.Materials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Synthetic Tactile Sensor for Macroscopic Roughness Estimation Based on Spatial-Coding Contact Processing.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Enhanced wet grip with North American river otter paws.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2024Article
- Structural and molecular characteristics of weight-bearing volar skin can be reconstituted by micro skin tissue column grafting.FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology · 2024Article
- Stimuli-responsive mechanically interlocked polymer wrinkles.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Healing Function for Abraded Fingerprint Ridges in Tactile Texture Sensors.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Review
- Fast grip force adaptation to friction relies on localized fingerpad strains.Science advances · 2024Article
- An individual's skin stiffness predicts their tactile discrimination of compliance.The Journal of physiology · 2023Article
- Article
- Article
- Epidermis as a Platform for Bacterial Transmission.Frontiers in immunology · 2021Review
- Article
- Fingerprint ridges allow primates to regulate grip.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fingerprints are unique to primates and koalas but what advantages do these features of our hands and feet provide us compared with the smooth pads of carnivorans, e.g., feline or ursine species? It has been argued that the epidermal ridges on finger pads decrease friction when in contact with smooth surfaces, promote interlocking with rough surfaces, channel excess water, prevent blistering, and enhance tactile sensitivity. Here, we found that they were at the origin of a moisture-regulating mechanism, which ensures an optimal hydration of the keratin layer of the skin for maximizing the friction and reducing the probability of catastrophic slip due to the hydrodynamic formation of a fluid layer. When in contact with impermeable surfaces, the occlusion of the sweat from the pores in the ridges promotes plasticization of the skin, dramatically increasing friction. Occlusion and external moisture could cause an excess of water that would defeat the natural hydration balance. However, we have demonstrated using femtosecond laser-based polarization-tunable terahertz wave spectroscopic imaging and infrared optical coherence tomography that the moisture regulation may be explained by a combination of a microfluidic capillary evaporation mechanism and a sweat pore blocking mechanism. This results in maintaining an optimal amount of moisture in the furrows that maximizes the friction irrespective of whether a finger pad is initially wet or dry. Thus, abundant low-flow sweat glands and epidermal furrows have provided primates with the evolutionary advantage in dry and wet conditions of manipulative and locomotive abilities not available to other animals.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.