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What Type of Fingerprints
Do You Have?
• About 5 percent of all fingerprints are arches.
• About 30 percent are whorls.
• About 65 percent are loops.
Arches
Loops
Whorls
Fingerprints
T
ake a close look at the tips of your fingers. Can you
see swirling lines? These lines are made by ridges and
furrows in your skin. The ridges help you grip objects.
Without them, things might slip from your hands. Everyone
has these ridges. They are your
fingerprints
. Your
fingerprints grow larger as your body grows, but they do
not change in any other way. Your fingerprints are unique.
No one else has exactly the same design. Not even identical
twins have fingerprints that are exactly the same. The
Chinese started using fingerprints as marks of identification
around 200 BCE.
The shape of a fingerprint is called its pattern. Fingerprints
can be separated into three general patterns. They are
arches
,
loops
, and
whorls
. Ridges in an arch start on one side of a
finger, rise and fall in the center of the finger, then end on
the other side of the finger. Ridges in a loop also start on one
side of the finger. But they rise and curve back to end on the
same side they started. A whorl is a set of circles inside each
other, formed by ridges.
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