The other thing we have in common with koalas may be weird, but at least it's not another painful disease. According to New Scientist, koalas have fingerprints that are all but identical to our own. But no koala fingerprint is exactly identical to any human's, of course. Like ours, each koala fingerprint is completely unique. Still, they are so similar to ours that it's possible that Australian police may have unidentified prints sitting in databases that actually belong to koalas, not humans. New Scientist reported this possibility in 1996, though the expert they consulted did say that the chances of koala prints being booked as evidence are "extremely unlikely."
The reason it's weird that koalas have human-like fingerprints is because our last link on the evolutionary tree lived over 100 million years ago. (Scientific American notes that our last common ancestor with chimps was at most 7 million years ago.) Scientists haven't been able to pin down exactly why koalas have fingerprints (or why we do, for that matter), but it is believed that the ridges of fingerprints help increase sensitivity. Famously picky eaters, Koalas could have evolved fingerprints to help them identify the best eucalyptus leaves by way of feeling their texture. Australian criminals may clearly see how the little bears' fingerprints can benefit them. Just blame it on the koala!
