The Monstrefact: Marvel’s The Thing

The other humans aboard the experimental spaceship would become Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman and human Torch, and of course now we're talking about the thing all together, they're the Fantastic four. Grim's skin is encased in plates of stone, reminiscent of the epidermal scales or scoots found on various birds and reptiles, but more importantly for our discussions here on a few mammals,

namely the extant armadillo and the extinct glyptodoct. Though with Marbles the thing, these plates are not keratin, but some form of indestructible rock It's the perfect body armor for the sort of superhero who regularly throws down with the likes of Doctor Doom, Frankenstein's Monster, and the Incredible Hulk. But I didn't decide to do this episode on the Thing based purely on Ben Grimm's rocky skin. It was actually his fingers that attracted me to the big luck.

I don't think I'd ever noticed this myself before. But while human Grim of course had five digits on each hand, Thing has only four, you know, like Mickey Mouse or Carter on the Simpsons. In the excellent book marvel Anatomy by Mark Sumerek and Daniel Wallace with illustrations by Jonah Loege, the authors point out that on occasion, special circumstances allowed Grim to retain his human form, including all four original fingers, only to lose one in the transformation back to the Thing.

The authors and illustrator here speculate that beneath his armor plating, his ring and pinky fingers are fused together into a single digit, and that X ray imagery would reveal all the bones of two fingers in things outermost digit. I love this detail, but of course, what does it mean? Perhaps nothing, but It's interesting to note that most of us non superheroes can't move our pinky finger without also moving our ring finger, and the reason for this is

that the nerves for these digits are intertwined. Perhaps this anatomical fact has something to do with things tetradactyly. It makes it harder for Grim to use normal devices, but perhaps the fused finger aids him in grappling monsters and hurling debris during superhero battles. A natural world form of this fusing, known as syndactyly, occurs infrequently in humans, but is a common feature of some organisms, such as the Siamang,

a primate native to Sumatra in the Melee Peninsula. They have naturally occurring webbing between their second and third toes, and sometimes the fourth and fifth toes are also webbed together as well. The purpose of syndactyly in the Ciamang, however, remains elusive, as pointed out by Weisbecker and Nielsen in a two thousand and eight article published in BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Past hypotheses have explored the possibility that the web digits are adaptive for the creatures are boreal lifestyle or for use in grooming. But the authors find these hypotheses unconvincing and stress that it might not be a functional adaptive trait at all. A true explanation remains elusive. Thing's fingers are not merely webbed, however, but tightly fused into a single digit reminiscent of say, a whale's flipper, so the

comparison is perhaps less than illuminating. We might well compare it, however, to cases of complex syndactyly in the natural world, in which the bones are fused together as well as the flesh. The kangaroo is a great example of this, with its middle toes fused together. According to John Simons in the twenty thirteen book Kangaroo Quote, this seems to have been driven by a change from tree dwelling to ground dwelling,

but is now marvelously adapted for hopping. By the way connecting to our core stuffed to blow your mind episodes on the horse, you might find it interesting to know that the extinct short faced kangaroo, including the giant Procoptodon, actually evolved to feature hoofed single digits on their toes as well with the thing. However, Hmmm, I'm gonna have to stand by my own hypothesis regarding the fuse digits that somehow this is aiding Ben Grimm in collaborating time.

But I would love to hear from anyone out there if you have a hypothesis regarding the curious hands of the thing. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact as Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.