Early contender for the 2026 Ig Nobel prize.

Now it makes sense why they're called carpal joints, although I guess the metacarpal bones are closer to home on this one...but only the most anal would care about that.

I swear, we gotta be part of some higher-level organism's weird science project

i'm gunna get some weird looks at my next party....

Every butthole is a fingering opportunity

I knew there was a reason my fingers are always drawn to them

Try finger but hole

Let's take a moment to honor the uncountable horrors birthed oh so briefly into this world who's combinations of ass and appendage genes weren't so fortunate.

Wonder if this has implications for regrowing fingers.

Yeah no, fingers are for grabbing things that aren't salmon assholes actually

Spiders Georg all over again smh

So not "butter-fingers", it's actually "butt-fingers".

This is the best out-of-context headline I've read all month.

The Nature article in case you want to skip the pop science and get to the good stuff.

Because Hoxd gene regulation in the mouse urogenital sinus relies on enhancers located in this same chromatin domain that controls digit development, we propose that the current regulatory landscape active in distal limbs was co-opted as a whole in tetrapods from a pre-existing cloacal regulatory machinery.

⊂( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞ >-;;⁠;⁠;€ᐷ

What a coincidence, a fish butthole is why I don't have fingers anymore.

I would feel awful finding out I genetically modified a fish to not have a butthole.

That’s fucked up.

That's a brand new sentence right there

I love how so much science ultimately boils down to putting creatures in a giant magnet and seeing what lights up.

So when I was eating fish fingers as a kid in the uk, what was I really eating???!

And here I thought me sticking my fingers up fish buttholes was the reason they existed.

So holding hands is obscene!

Some people, in fact, still have hands growing out of their ass

I'm looking at my fingertips .... realizing that they could have become something else.

That sounds like something AI would say

Mmmmm, butterfingers are my fave.

Fish fingers and custard!

me walking in with 10 fish on my hands

"OMG you're not gonna beleive this..."

I goatsee what you did there.

Buttfingerer

HIGH FIVE!

It's why I have fingers... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 🐠

I was prepared for this to be a story about how we used to compare who could finger a fish the deepest and the winner got to mate with the girl and now I’m kinda sad but also really relieved.

So just to be clear here.

Scientists bread mice with no fingers to hunt food. Fair enough but poor mice.

And fish with no arseholes, so they can eat but never crap.