How many fingers are there in the world

Why this ancestral tetrapod had specifically five digits is still a mystery, though, according to Dr Justin Adams, a palaeontologist at Monash University. Were five digits simply better than any other number? Curiously, many tetrapods have lost some of the five, such as horses, whose hooves are large, single digits, and cats and dogs, which have five digits on their front paws, but only four on their back paws.

Not so in primates, where the dexterity of five digits comes in handy for picking things up, so losing a digit would be detrimental. Our flexible thumb makes working with tools incredibly easy and probably helped early humans develop rudimentary technology. Some other mammals, like koalas and possums, also have opposable digits, which they use to keep a firm grip on tree branches. Sign out. Previous Next Show Grid.

Previous Next Hide Grid. Why not six? Or more? Or just four? Here's why. In China, they count from one to five in the same way as the US, but six to 10 are represented symbolically. Six is shown by extending the thumb and pinky, while 10 is either a closed fist or crossing the index and middle fingers.

And the ancient Romans also used a clever but difficult to master symbolic system that allowed them to count into the thousands. Bender says that finger counting can be richly varied and researchers may have barely scratched the surface of the multitudes of ways different cultures do it.

Her group is about to start on a much bigger survey to try to document finger counting around the world in much more detail. Cognitive scientists like Bender are beginning to show that there is still much to discover about the relationship between gesture and language learning. For example, gestures can change how we hear words.

But we don't know whether the gesture informs the choice of word or vice versa. How do children who grow up with different representations for numbers learn counting? At some point, probably hundreds of thousands of years ago, our ancestors started to count and developed different counting systems, concludes Bender. Not only can finger counting reveal where in the world you come from, it may also shed light on how we learned to understand the concept of number — as children and even as a species.

Even though counting on your hands feels as easy as one-two-three, in reality it's not so simple. Join one million Future fans by liking us on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter or Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. How finger counting gives away your nationality. Share using Email. By Anand Jagatia.

Many people around the world learn to count on their fingers, but we don't all do it in the same way. Could there be a better method?

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