Here's an interesting question. What if human evolved with five fingers and a thumb, and six toes each, for a total of twelve digits each? How does this affect mathematics, history, life, etc?
It would not cause many butterflies, although we may see minor cultural changes, perhaps instruments a bit more suited for those extra digits, or music fitting the ability to play more notes at the same time.
(Dimebag Darrell would have a fit)
Polydactyl cats have very few differences to behavior beyond the usual individual difference from cat to cat. There would be little else, IMO.
Here's an interesting question. What if human evolved with five fingers and a thumb, and six toes each, for a total of twelve digits each? How does this affect mathematics, history, life, etc?
Not very much.
Mathematics OTL was born in base 12
Your biggest problem is that 5 digits is incredibly conservative in tetrapods. LOSING digits is easy, gaining them is tough.
Why that's the case, I'm sure I don't know, especially given that polydactylly in cats is not all that uncommon - as mentioned above. However, AFAIK, there is not a single (wild) tetrapod species (from amphibians on up) that ever had 6+ digits/limb, so there must be some constraints.
Your biggest problem is that 5 digits is incredibly conservative in tetrapods. LOSING digits is easy, gaining them is tough.
Why that's the case, I'm sure I don't know, especially given that polydactylly in cats is not all that uncommon - as mentioned above. However, AFAIK, there is not a single (wild) tetrapod species (from amphibians on up) that ever had 6+ digits/limb, so there must be some constraints.
There were ancient tetrapods that had more than five digits. This one had eight fingers and eight toes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthostega but of course the elephant in the room is that if the default tetrapod mode becomes six fingers instead of five that could well butterfly away archosaurs, let alone the primates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyly said:The extra digit is usually a small piece of soft tissue that can be removed. Occasionally it contains bone without joints; rarely it may be a complete, functioning digit. The extra digit is most common on the ulnar (little finger) side of the hand, less common on the radial (thumb) side, and very rarely within the middle three digits. These are respectively known as postaxial (little finger), preaxial (thumb), and central (ring, middle, index fingers) polydactyly. The extra digit is most commonly an abnormal fork in an existing digit, or it may rarely originate at the wrist as a normal digit does.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyly#cite_note-1
I think this would have to be established very early on in human origins, perhaps during one of the early population bottlenecks which have been proposed to have occurred in human evolution.
Biological Adam in Humanity somehow has that mutation as well as Mitochondrial Eve (they lived at different periods as genetic evidence shows).
I always thought it would be cool if we had 4 fingers and two thumbs on each hand. One thumb next to the index finger and the other on the other side of the pinky. I bet it would be easier to do a lot of things if we had an opposable thumb on each side of our hand.