I got asked a really interesting question on Facebook earlier: I wonder whether every cats’ paw print is unique?
Well is it? Naively one might think that every animal would have unique wrinkles to their skin, but … do they?
It appears that no-one really knows for certain. But grubbing around with Google I have discovered:
The nose print of a dog is as unique as a fingerprint, and your dog can be positively identified the same way. Reference.
It is known that gorillas and other primates do have fingerprints, of special interest however, is that our closest relative, the chimpanzee does not. Koala bears also have fingerprints. Individual fingerprints appear to be restricted to humans and gorillas. Reference.
US scientists and criminal justice investigators have developed a technique designed to more accurately track and conduct a census of some animals. The research focuses on the fisher, a member of the weasel family and the only carnivore known to develop fingerprints. Reference.
The only reference I can find to cats’ pawprints is this, which sounds like a school project.
But then are human fingerprints actually unique?
It is often assumed, but has never really been proven, that fingerprints are unique, in humans or other animals. The history of this apparently involves an assertion (early in the 20th century, as I recall) that they were unique, this assertion was accepted by a court, and they’ve been pretty much never really been analyzed thoroughly beyond that. (It’s not clear to me how you’d go about proving it anyway, since the pattern of fingerprints for any individual is a function of his environment during gestation (yes, identical twins do have different fingerprints..). So the best you could hope to do is to prove the odds of an interference are vanishingly small. Reference.
Which is worryingly true. Human fingerprints have never been subjected to scientific and forensic scrutiny in the way that DNA profiling has been. This article in The Register summarises a New Scientist report (hidden behind a paywall) of an official report. Conclusion: fingerprints have never been scientifically scrutinised properly.
As for cats … Well in their usual inscrutable way, only they know!
Oh and here’s today’s piece of gratuitous pornography. 🙂

![[27/52] Cat's Paw by kcm76](https://farm7.static.flickr.com/6134/5917720179_4099ac38a3.jpg)

About a week ago David Marsh wrote a brilliant article in the Guardian about the peculiar torture of 
A Self-Cleaning House. Yep this was Kate’s first choice and I’ll go along with her on this. In fact I’d suggest that everything should be self-cleaning. Nothing (including us!) should be allowed on the market unless proven to be fully and properly self-cleaning. Instant improvement in just about everything.
Japan. I find Japan a fascinating country. I’d really love to see all those Buddhist, Taoist and Shinto temples; Kanamara Matsuri, the annual Shinto fertility “Festival of the Phallus”; the koi carp farms; the unspoilt mountainous country; zen gardens; Mount Fuji; and the bullet train. What a photographic experience it would be. We have friends in Japan, so we should be able to do this easily; and as our friends are in topical Okinawa islands we’d get some great music and wonderful beaches too. But I won’t go to Japan on principle because of their intransigent stance on whaling. And I don’t much relish a 12-14 hour flight.
Iceland. Land of glaciers, volcanoes, geysers and geothermal hot water. The country looks frighteningly beautiful; Earth in the raw; new land still very much being built by plate tectonics. Visiting should be easily achievable (there are endless package tours) and a wonderful photographic experience, but again it’s a land I won’t visit because of the whaling issue.
Norway. Like Kate I’d love to see the Aurora Borealis. The midnight sun. The fjords. And to go to Hell. (Yes, there really is a place called Hell). And Noreen has friend who lives on a tiny island off the south coast. Again it should be easily achievable. But again it is off-limits for me because of the whaling. (Why is it that my top three picks are all off-limits because of whaling? It really wasn’t designed that way!) Although we could achieve a lot of that by visiting (friends in) Sweden; which we might yet manage — at least do keep talking about going to Sweden!
Tibet. It must be one of the poorest countries on Earth, but it’s hard to find out because it has been assimilated into China. But it’s a land of rugged mountains, high plateaus and curiously interesting Buddhist monasteries. But it is another place I’m unlikely ever to visit: it is so hard to get to and I won’t go on principle because of the way China has occupied it and largely destroyed the culture and the people. Again it would be just such a wonderful photographic experience. One really should have done this when young and fit.
The Amazon. I’d love to see the Amazonian fishes and parrots (not to mention Jaguars) in the wild. And for once I have no moral objections to going there other than tourism beginning to impact the environment, although nowhere nearly on the scale of Africa. Again I can’t help feeling this is travel one should have done when young and fit.
