It seems pretty clear to me why we have 1 thumb and 4 others: once our ancestors developed an opposable digit, the mission of grabbing branches was accomplished, so there was no evolutionary need to get another. Accidents that caused a loss of thumb were rare and perhaps fatal eventually, anyway.
But in a modern setting, having 2 thumbs can be quite beneficial. Or rather, a hand plan of (2+3), where 2 fingers are separated from the other 3 - by that time the 2 thumbs might have different names and shapes. Come to think of it, the plan will help with many slipping incidents, and the 4 similar fingers are pretty redundant, anyway.
People can hold a pen with 2-3 fingers, and a pair of chopsticks with 3-4. On top of your head, could you name some activities that absolutely require our hands to be in the current, specific (1+4) plan? What are some of the new possibilities with (2+3)?
I can type pretty well with a thumb and 4 fingers on each hand. I doubt having an extra thumb or two on each hand would have made matters better, however typing will likely disappear in the future, so there’s that.
If you look carefully at the geometry of your hand, your little finger is already semi-opposable to mostly-opposable. If you don’t beleive me, try this:
Touch the flat of your outstretched thumb to the flat of your outstretched little finger over the middle of your palm and see how similar those two digits are versus the very different vector of the other 3 intermediate digits.
If the little finger was a bit beefier, it could easily be the more important digit versus the thumb.
For sure any activity you might name that involves man-made stuff leads to the obvious tautology. Our tools and built environment are designed for our hands, not vice versa. If our hands were different, so would be our tools.
A slap is better with 4+1 but a punch might be better with 3+2 as it would be the same amount of force but over a smaller surface area.
Depending upon where the second thumb is it might be better or worse; something where you’re going for surface area it would be better with a second thumb on the pinky side but worse on the thumb side. Waitressing or busing tables, moving across something fragile - with more surface area you’re less likely to break thru thin ice (I was in an ice rescue class last weekend, so that comes to mind)
If you’re clinging for your very life to a gutter several stories above the street, you might be grateful to have as many fingers as you can call into play.
Could you provide a demo? I’m not sure my attempt of touching the planes of the nails together is correct. Anyway, my take is that it is easier to match nails of thumb and little, but mostly because of the larger distance. Haven’t been able to see the difference between little and the other 3.
Agree. That plan would be 1+3+1. I also thought a bit of 2+1+2. With this, the strongest finger would actually be placed where it’s easier to reach under and support whatever we’re holding from below.
True for that situation. On the other hand (ugh, no pun), any plan with more stronger, opposing fingers will make locking hands very secure. I’ve watched many folks like James Stewart who managed to reach for that outstanding hand, only to slip from it and fall to their death.
I meant Touch the fingerprint of your thumb to the fingerprint of your little finger.
Another demo is to make the 2-pairs-of-2-fingers-together Vulcan salute and note the maximum angle you can make between middle and ring finger is rather small, versus the much larger angle between thumb & index finger.
Now do the same salute but put the finger gap between ring and little finger instead. Note the maximum angle you can generate between ring and little finger is 2-3x larger than the ring-middle gap of the regular Vulcan salute. Note that the axis of the thumb and the axis of the little finger are within about 20 degrees of parallel.
On my own right hand the difference is more like 10 degrees, but I may be unusually flexible with that hand due to lots of work involving gripping odd things at odd angles. My left is more like 20-25 degrees.
You want to land the punch on the knuckles of your index and bird-flipping fingers. So a second thumb wouldn’t change the surface area of where the force is applied.
Wow, perhaps it’s only me, but the angle between my mid & ring fingers at a Vulcan salute can be almost as big as that between my ring & little.
And touching the fingerprints actually produces a less impressive result than my faulted attempt. Though I can see that the fingerprints are easier to overlap when matched between the thumb and the little, it’s more because of distance and the little being the outermost without any obstacle on 1 side, than the little being semi-opposable. It’s too weak to count, and it can’t oppose any of the other 3, that’s for sure.
And if I touch the pads of various fingers and the thumb together, the angles are closest on the middle two fingers; and it’s most difficult to make the match with the little finger.
Well, me, I dunno much 'bout thumbs.
But I do think that we need something else which evolution has cheated us out of:
A TAIL.
Now, ya see, a tail could be really useful . I was laying under my car yesterday with two wrenches in my hands…and I realized that I needed the screwdriver. Which was laying right there on the floor, but just beyond reach. If I had a tail, I couldda grabbed it.
Ooh. Very techy. Though I guess it’ll be a very big pain until the next century or so, for the scientists to figure out a good way to grow the controlling nerves in the brain for the 6th finger.
The easier way seems to be altering the physical structure of the current 5, people will use it very efficiently within a generation.
It would, of course, be nice to have an extra opposable thumb on each hand. But more importantly, we humans need opposable mandibles and a fused labium or proboscis included as mouth-parts in our anatomy, like insects. Hopefully, genetic engineering will make this a reality one day soon. We don’t need the insect’s labrum or maxilla, though, because that would be icky.
Opposable mandibles would allow us to hold onto and manipulate food as we chew, while our hands remain free to do other important things. Think how “handy” this would be when, for example, you go to McDonalds and order a Big Mac. Your mandibles could hold onto the burger and manipulate it into your mouth, while you type on your laptop. Productivity would skyrocket!
Your proboscis would allow you to drink your Diet Coke, without the need for a straw. That’s one good way to help declutter Earth’s landfills!
And last, but not least, the possibilities for foreplay and oral sex are endless.
When I was in electronics school, having a couple of extra hands would have made soldering circuit boards so much easier: one hand to hold the circuit board, one hand to hold the electronic component I’m inserting, one hand to hold the solder, and one hand to hold the soldering iron. As it was, I had to awkwardly clamp things and hope they didn’t move.
How the %€*^^|| are you getting a look at my sketchbooks?!!
