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Asked by anon-257649 on 22 Jun 2020.
Question: is it possible to have 23 toes
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Roy Drissen answered on 22 Jun 2020:
I can honestly say I have never questioned this myself. Some people are born with more toes (or fingers) than you would expect. It is called polydactyly. However, if this happens in the first place, it often means just one extra toe or finger. To be born with 23 toes, I suppose may theoretically be possible, but sounds extremely unlikely to me.
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Ailith Ewing answered on 22 Jun 2020:
This sounds unlikely! As Roy says, some people are born with extra fingers or toes (polydactyly) but usually this means that they have an extra thumb or little finger. There are some conditions that run in families that mean people can have extra fingers and often these are symmetrical so they may have an extra thumb on both sides so that would be 22 but I think 23 is unlikely but probably not impossible. Interestingly one of the main genes that controls the number of fingers/toes that we have is called Sonic Hedgehog (Shh)!
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Anabel Martinez Lyons answered on 22 Jun 2020: last edited 22 Jun 2020 2:30 pm
Great answers already – in short, yes it is possible, but as the others have said, it would be very unlikely. Your genetic code (which is the particular sequence of DNA inside your cells that make you ‘you’) allows for some amount of ‘error’, such as polydactyly as the others have mentioned where you get one extra finger on each hand or one extra toe on each foot, but to have larger-scale developmental changes becomes more and more rare because there have to be more errors with your genetic code. That said, it is definitely ‘unlikely’ but not ‘impossible’! Just in case you’re curious, the largest number of toes ever recorded on one person is 20, so not far off your ’23’: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-fingers-and-toes-(polydactylism)-at-birth. Hope that helps answer your question :-).
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