You Cannot Remove Your Fingerprints With Pineapple

2009-03-15

[public] 2.94M views, 161K likes, 1.34K dislikes audio only

http://www.tomscott.com - You Cannot Remove Your Fingerprints With Pineapple. Thanks to Jess and Val on camera, and to QI for the inspiration.

Did you really do this?

Yes. Pretty much as you see here.

Did it really hurt that much?

Yes, it did.

Wimp.

Possibly. Try giving yourself first-degree burns and then scouring them with acidic fruit gunk every day. (Don't actually do this.)

Why didn't you stop earlier?

I'm stubborn.

How did you do that final shot?

I added the red glow in later. It's the only part of this that isn't genuine.

Hang on, how are you cutting that pineapple on Day 8?

Good spot — but if you look closely, I'm holding the knife and pineapple mostly with my palms and the lower parts of my fingers. It's amazing how quickly I adapted to not being able to use my fingertips. Plus, I mentioned in the previous shot that I was only scouring last thing at night, and at that point it was helping — at the time I was cutting that pineapple, it had been about 24 hours since the last scour, so it wasn't too bad.

Is it possible to remove your fingerprints, though, if you maybe spend every hour of the day doing gentle work with pineapple?

Possibly, but the only evidence for bromelain actually removing fingerprints so far seems to be anecdotal. If anyone can find any journal articles, though, I'll happily update this. Please don't try it yourself.

* Music credit: "A Palo Seco", from Todo lo bueno muere joven by Caminos del Sonido, licensed under CC by 3.0