• Question: Why are some people born with a extra toe or an ear or anything extra?

    Asked by FootballFred03 to Andrew, Jade, Jessica, Kevin, Lynn on 17 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Jess Wade

      Jess Wade answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      It’s a crazy condition called polydactlyism, meaning ‘lots of fingers!’. It happens because of our genes. Just like your dad being colour blind because of some codes he inherited from his parents, sometimes these codes mess up and start to mutate. Lots of genes come together to do something complicated like building a hand to tell the hand to form a palm and grow fingers and no accidentally form a foot. Changes to how any of these genes come together can lead to extra fingers or toes. If any of the genes accidentally get duplicated, another finger or toe can pop up.

    • Photo: Andrew Fensham-Smith

      Andrew Fensham-Smith answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      There are a few reasons why people might be born with extra or missing bits. Sometimes it’s genetic and in their DNA (the instruction set for how to make them) tells the cells to make more fingers or add extra toes and things like that. Often is people have a something wrong with their DNA they will die before they’re born – which is why you don’t see people with six arms or something like that! If the change is small and easily compensated for – like an extra finger – the body can easily adapt to that change.

      Other times it can be because of a chemical or environmental reason. In chemistry, if something causes babies to become deformed we call that a teratogen. If you’re pregnant, you want to stay away from these chemicals!

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