The ‘Simian Crease’
Palmistry is an amusing pseudoscience, partly because you can perform the guesswork yourself with the aid of palmistry guide and partly because, like a Myers-Briggs test or a Cosmo quiz, it tells you something about your personality and fate. My right palm is as average as they come, so I couldn’t care less about reading what my lines mean there. My left hand, on the other hand (no pun intended), features what is known as a single palmar crease or “Simian crease” (called like that because apes display such a line in their palms too). A second line below joins this straight line and a third almost does as well, forming what looks like a cup. I always enjoyed amusing myself with the thought that this arbitrary physical characteristic made me special, especially because I don’t know anybody outside the internet who also has one. Nonetheless, the internet proved to me that it’s not that uncommon: up to 10% of the general population has a single palmar crease; hundreds of single palmar creases can be found on social media.
Despite the commonality and harmlessness of having a single palmar crease, I encountered several websites that claimed having one could be a bad omen. Beyond the silliness of astrology and related fields, people went as far as claiming single palmar creases were common among neurotics. Medical literature associates this physical feature with Down’s syndrome and other chromosomal conditions. I’m not bothered by doctors stumbling upon a pattern, but I do question the utility or meaning of such a finding. No one was able to explain why people with such conditions tended to have single palmar creases at higher rates than the general population. It was just a red flag that new parents had to watch out for, apparently.
It’s not uncommon to link less common physical features with something else. The talk of single palmar creases being related to other conditions reminded me of the belief among some in the medical community that digit ratio can predict a number of traits, including being gay or trans, having heart disease or becoming an alcoholic. I find it amusing and slightly odd that someone noticed such a pattern. Could this be the scientific version of palmistry? Using seemingly arbitrary physical features to predict one’s vulnerability to certain illnesses or to discover one’s sexual orientation or gender identity does have an astrological ring to it — but let me not question science now. Perhaps, however, some quirks in our bodies are just neutral features that don’t tell us much other than making us feel special every now and then.
