Extra Digits

Friday night the Pirate and I took the girls to see the new Harry Potter movie, and I was reminded of something I've noticed before. Michael Gambon, a wonderful actor who plays Dumbledore, has the most freakishly long hands I've ever seen. They're unnaturally long and skinny and always make me think that they've been digitally re-touched, except that there was nothing in the books that mentioned Albus Dumbledore having foot-long fingers.

Then I got to thinking about what it would look like if everyone had really long hands. But not just the requisite three joints, each joint just being a bit longer. What if you had four joints on each finger? And then I realized that if you had four joints on your fingers the only way you'd be able to make a fist is if you had another joint in the middle of your hand - effectively, another set of knuckles in the middle of your palm so that your hand was jointed in the middle.

How would that change things like basketball, where everyone would be able to palm the ball? How would it change the layout of typewriters? If all your fingers are another inch longer, would keyboards look the same? How about things with handles? Everything would have to be larger, because gripping slender things wouldn't work. You could make things into spirals to make them easier to grasp, though.

What would hand implements like pencils and screwdrivers and forks look like? How about things that require both finger strength and dexterity? The further out you go, the smaller the muscles and the less strength the joint has (the shoulder is stronger than the bicep, which is stronger than the forearm flexors, which are stronger than the thenar muscles of the hand, which are stronger than the tiny muscles of the fingers, which get smaller the higher up on the finger they are). Add another joint, and while you still have fine motor control, you lose some of the strength of the fingers. Manual typewriters, for example, would be very different.

Hmmm...I'm going to be thinking this one over for a while.