There is a crime committed and all you can find are some finger prints. That is usual but the scene of crime was in the jungle and there were no other human beings present! But then you are in Australia and the crime was just stealing of some food and eucalyptus leaf! and all you see are these cute bear like creatures hanging around!
Same thing happened some years back!
The police took fingerprints from six chimpanzees and two orangutans housed at zoos in England. They weren’t just looking for a unique souvenir; they were testing to see if any unsolved crimes could be the fault of these banana-eating miscreants!
Now while these primates ended up being as innocent as they seemed, the police did determine that their fingerprints were indistinguishable from a human’s without careful inspection!
A few years later, in 1996, a different type of mammal came under police suspicions!The same animal seen in Australia!
Yes! The Koala Bear!
The word “koala” comes from the Dharug gula, meaning ‘no water’. Although the vowel “u” was originally written in the English orthography as “oo” (in spellings such as coola or koolah — two syllables), the spelling later became “oa” and the word is now pronounced in three syllables, possibly in error!
While it makes sense that orangutans and chimpanzees would have fingerprints like us, being some of our closest relatives, these other mammals are evolutionarily distant from humans. It turns out that fingerprints are an excellent example of convergent evolution, or different species developing similar traits independently from each other!
Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last common ancestor of those groups. The cladistic or technical term for the same phenomenon is homoplasy.
The recurrent evolution of flight is a classic example, as flying insects, birds, pterosaurs, and bats have independently evolved the useful capacity of flight. Functionally similar features that have arisen through convergent evolution are analogous, whereas homologous structures or traits have a common origin but can have dissimilar functions. Bird, bat, and pterosaur wings are analogous structures, but their forelimbs are homologous, sharing an ancestral state despite serving different functions.
The opposite of convergence is divergent evolution, where related species evolve different traits. Convergent evolution is similar to parallel evolution, which occurs when two independent species evolve in the same direction and thus independently acquire similar characteristics; for instance, gliding frogs have evolved in parallel from multiple types of tree frog!
Now all you have to do is go to Australia, find a Koala whose fingerprints match yours and do the crime and blame it on the Koala! Alternately you can simply not do the crime! As how even the birthday celebrity Shahid Kapoor while acting in series like Farzi will finally say, “Crime does not pay”!
Now wipe your fingerprints from the crime scene and sleep!
Shubh Ratri!
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