I can do it with both ring fingers, and both index fingers (but the index fingers shake a lot when I do it), and my right middle finger, by stiffening up the second joint and focusing on the first.
It is all in how the tendons are strung. And prior usage/training.
I saw a long flexible tube full of balls with channels on 4 sides such that long braided wires laid in the channels would permit controlling the bending and direction of bend of the tube. The designer got his idea out of a book on anatomy.
Yes, but I’m a freak.
Yes, last joint on all fingers and middle joint while keeping the last joint straight and I can also separate each toe individually and put them back together one by one, but I’d trade all of that enviable talent to be able to arch one eyebrow al la Mr. Spock…sigh…
Another yes I can chiming in here… all eight fingers at once and each one individually.
Nobody else that I know that I’ve ever shown this wondrous feat to can do it and they also think it’s (I’m) weird
I can do it, but with only one finger. The same finger that went thru a lawnmower. (Aha!) As a result of said encounter, I had a lot of “interesting things about fingers” chats with a lot of people. Saw a lot of people with the property the OP is asking about.
Not a majority of people, but not all that uncommon.
I can do the distal joint trick, with difficulty. Easiest with my middle and ring fingers, and believe it or not, my non-dominant hand (unless I learned to write with the wrong one) :eek:
Also I can do the proximal joint trick easily on all fingers, and the Spock eyebrow trick.
How come some people can bend their proximal thumb joint way out or way in and I can’t?
To all the fellow freaks/weirdos . Does it hurt if you do it for any extended period and does it sometimes feel stuck in that position? Or is that just me.
Hi,
I can- better on my right hand than my left, but with concentration can do both at the same time :). I can also lift my right eyebrow (but not my left) and snarl/lift up the muscle right along side my nose that brings up that side of my lip (but again not the left). I didn’t get very much celebrity out of that, but when I learned about flipping my eye lids inside out…
I can bend just the last joint on all my fingers. It’s just one of the many stupid human tricks made possible by some sort of hypermobility syndrome as yet undiagnosed, although looking more & more like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.
Other stupid human tricks:
-
thumb can actively (with help) touch wrist on both hands
-
fingers actively bend to more than 90 degrees backwards
-
most joints passively (without help) hyperextend – elbows to the point I could give my first boyfriend the willies
-
right shoulder sublexes, which means pops in and out, sometimes making a fun, loud noise
-
I’ve popped left shoulder, left hip and both elbows out, too, but fortunately they all went right back in
-
all finger joints and most feet joints sublex
-
I can palm the floor without warming up; with warming up I can palm the floor BEHIND my feet
-
I was darn near impossible to pin in Judo in college – nothing hurt enough for me to bother stopping it
Oh, and just because your body can move in these ways, doesn’t mean it should. I have a consultation with a Rheumatologist for this very reason.
Same here. But (with help from the other hand) I can bend my index and pinkie fingers all the way back so they touch and are almost parallel to the back of my hand*, so NAH! I used to be able to do that with my thumbs as well but it hurts too much now.
*I used to do this as an icebreaker in formal situations. Yeah, stupid, I know… but I made quite a few friends this way
I can do this on my index and ring fingers on both hands. I can’t do it with my pinkies or middle fingers. I can also bend the middle joint independantly on every finger.
Holy Crap In a Contortionist’s Box, Green_Bladder! I would love to see that. I’ve never met anyone more flexible than I.
My friends were always disgusted but yet intrigued with the shoulder sublexation thing and its corresponding sound, so I can see how your trick would be a hit as an icebreaker.
I’ve always wondered whether this extreme flexibility would make child birth harder or easier. Anyone with experience on this?
All fingers - yes. I can (warning-gross) also bend my pinky fingers backwards near 90 deg. at that joint on their own.
Also my middle fingers are turned sideways, so that the nail touches my ring finger. I can make the “OK” sign with my thumb and 3rd finger, leaving my index finger to poke through the center. Hand freak, I am.
I can do all eight fingers together and six of them individually. The ring fingers on both hands don’t want to do it alone though.
The only other semi-odd thing I can do is constantly pop my left ankle by rotating it in a clockwise motion. I’ve done this for half an hour or more before when really bored.
I actually “taught” some of my fingers this trick for martial arts … I didn’t have it until I was about ten years old. There’s a particular move where I went to school (tae kwon do) that calls for the fingers of the hand to have their last joints bend in. Well, after about six months I was able to get the last joint on my third finger to go a full 90 degrees from the other part of the finger. And a few others bend to differing degrees. But that one joint I can even get to “wave” at people. Funky stuff.
Yup, me too on the fingers, except for my pinkies now. I used to do this in school so everyone would go “Ewwww!” It does look kinda weird.
The other thing I could do that many people couldn’t was this:
Put your palms and fingers together, with fingers pointed up (think “little girl at prayer” posture.)
If you keep your palms together, almost everybody can get some space between their fingers if they try to stretch their fingers backwards.
I can keep my palms AND the bottom joint of my fingers pressed together and stretch my fingers back from that joint.
Alas, arthritis is starting to cut into my double-jointedness.
Just to chime in,
I can do this (bend the last joint) with 6 fingers (no pinkies.) Oddly, I cannot bend my left pinky without bending the ring finger. This is despite a massive effort to learn. Freak.
No.
I can do both on all my fingers except my left pinky. How odd! But not all at once.