six-fingered man

1 Chronicles 20:

"And yet again there was war at Gath, where was a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six on each hand, and six on each foot: and he also was the son of the giant."

• The biblical Goliath was said to have 6 fingers on each hand.


• Antonio Alfonseca, the 6'5, 238-lb Dominican relief pitcher for the Florida Marlins, has 6 fingers on each hand.


• Pandas have 6 fingers on each paw.


• There is a secluded Amish community in rural Pennsylvania in which an inordinately large percentage of the population is six-fingered.


• Anne Boleyn, ill-fated wife of Henry VIII, was said to have had six fingers on one hand.

6-fingeredness, or hexadactyly, is often "corrected" early on, when detected in babies, by the tying off of the extra finger or toe.

To avoid hexadactyly in the first place, according to medical professionals, one had ought to merely avoid engaging in intimate relations with one's own first cousins. Food for thought.

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/Art.asp?li=MNI&ArticleKey=7756
http://www.life.uiuc.edu/animalbiology/199/gene/drift.html
http://www.pemberley.com/pemb/adaptations/pp2/messages/19632.html