8 Body Parts Other Than Fingerprints That Make You Unique

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Fingerprints and facial recognition have always been the standard procedure behind identification ^[1] . There are other body parts too like your ears, toes, eyes, etc., which are unique and can differentiate you from others in a crowd.

New technologies are emerging that can identify an individual by their physiology without them ever knowing that they have been spotted. Face and iris recognition systems are commonly used by the government to detect criminals.

There are also other unique body parts that can identify people with more accuracy. Read on to know which are those and how do they help in identifying people.

1. Iris

The iris is a ring-shaped membrane located behind the cornea of the eye. It is responsible for controlling how much light enters the eye. The colour and structure of the iris are determined by your DNA, but the pits, rifts, furrows, and swirls of the iris are different in each individual. This makes every iris unique ^[2] .

2. Ear

The bumps, shapes and ridges of the outer ear are very unique and they can differentiate a person from the other. According to biometrics expert Mark Nixon from the University of Southampton, studies have shown that nearly there is 99.6% accuracy when ears are scanned ^[3] .

3. Voice

Voice is easy to detect by determining its frequency and intensity. However, there are other ways to identify a person's voice such as tightness, nasality, lip rounding and vowel pronunciation which differ from person to person ^[4] .

4. Tongue

The size and shape of the tongue differ from person to person which makes your tongue unique. Your tongue has small bumps that contain more than 10,000 taste buds and each of them are filled with microscopic hairs called microvilli. According to a research study, tongue prints can serve as a biometric and potential forensic tool ^[5] .

5. Toes

The toes are another body part that can help in recognition. During the foetus development, the lines develop in the toes and fingers at the same time. These lines are different from one person to another. A study published in the International Journal of Science and Engineering found that the naked footprint is a credible biometric feature to identify people ^[6] .

6. Walk

Gait is a person's way of walking. No two people have the same walk and gait is a very secure and reliable way to verify or identify people. Biometric gait is grouped into 3 categories - machine vision-based, wearable sensor-based, and floor sensor-based ^[7] .

7. Lips

The pattern of wrinkles in your lips is as unique as your fingerprints. The investigation technique that employs the use of lip print to identify humans is called cheiloscopy. The lip crease pattern is on the vermilion border of the lip and one's lip print may vary in appearance according to the pressure, direction and method used in making the print ^[8] .

8. Teeth

According to a study, dental features such as tooth morphology, variations in shape and size, pathologies, missing tooth, crowding of the teeth, colour and position of the tooth give every individual a unique identity ^[9] .