Man with extra fingers and toes
Heramb Ashok Kumthekar, 22, of Goa, India, has twelve fingers and 14 toes. However, a technicality prevents him from holding the official Guinness World Record. From The Telegraph:
Polydactylism (The Telegraph)...Some of his fingers are technically attached, even though they have separate bones.
The official Guinness honour belongs to his fellow countryman Devendra Harne, a 13 year old boy from Kolkota, who has 12 fingers and 13 toes on his feet.
However, there is some consolation for Heramb as he is included in the Indian equivalent of the Guinness Book of Records, the Limca Book of Records.
the latest
latest episodes
"That piece can only be played with twelve [fingers]."
Also, a quick snip of the surgeon's blade and he could have the Guinness record -- settling all those bar bets about who really had the most phalanges.
"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya..."
Shame on you, Mister Ried. I came here for that.
Polydactylism is actually dominant in humans (all great apes?) but anything more than 5 fingers is suppressed when fingers are formed in the womb.
I can't remember the actual science, but there are multiple recessive expressions that combine for this to happen, suppressing the dominate 6-digit form. 7 or more digits is rarer, and is an actual genetic mutation.
Again, this is all from distant memory.
Hound Dog Taylor supposedly had a sixth finger on each hand. You can find photos of his fretting, sliding left hand with the sixth finger. The story is that he cut off the vestigial sixth finger on his right hand because it got in the way of picking.
http://images.google.com/images?q=hound+dog+taylor+hand&um=1&hl=en&rlz=1T4ADBF_enUS236US236&sa=2
Yep, dominant. Rumor has it that there used to be areas of Europe where folks with extra fingers were not uncommon. These days it's generally surgically "corrected" at birth, since obviously it makes using mass-produced goods -- from gloves to tools -- a bit more difficult, and the extra fingers are generally about as useful as pinkies (not remarkably dexterous).
Still, I find myself pondering what a keyboardist could do with additional fingers on each hand.
)
Runs in my dad's family. I only had little stubs that were removed at birth, but my brother kept one finger for a year. Too bad, he could have been first in his class to count to 11...
#7: ...without getting sent to the principal's office...
I once went on a date with a guy with funky-shaped thumbs, and it turned out that he had funky-shaped feet as well. He'd had extra toes on both feet, amputated in infancy.
The weird appendages had nothing to do with the decision to not have a second date.
I also once dated a guy with clinodactylism: short pinkies where the tips were bent inward toward the ring finger at a 45 degree angle.
Antonio Alfonseca, former pitcher for several major-league baseball teams and current free agent, is nicknamed "The Octopus" because he's got six fingers per hand and six toes per foot. According to Wikipedia, it doesn't affect his pitching because the extra finger doesn't touch the ball.
#5: Yes-- first thing I thought of was Hound Dog Taylor as well. I recall how some musicians in the 50's thought they had to do heroin to sound like Charlie Parker, and I imagine them grafting their small toes onto their fretting hands in order to sound like the Hound.
#11: Given that Taylor was a slide player, I wouldn't think the extra finger would help much, unless the weight of it balances his hand somehow. When the slide is in play, other fingers are usually off.
Then again there's Django Reinhardt. I hope there haven't been too many of his devoted fans over the years burning their hands to achieve his sound.