Berita Hari Ini: Which finger has its own pulse?


	April 4, 2026

Original photo by PeopleImages/ Shutterstock

One finger has its own pulse.

If you've ever seen someone track their pulse (in real life or on a crime drama), you'll notice that the index and middle finger are always pressed on the neck's carotid artery, which is responsible for transporting blood to the brain. There's a fascinating reason why doctors (and actors who play doctors on TV) use these fingers and not, say, their thumbs.

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		Numbers Don't Lie

Beats per minute of a pygmy shrew's heart, the fastest pulse of any mammal

1,200

Number of times a human heart beats per year, on average

35 million

Rough number of years ago the opposable thumb evolved in early human ancestors

2 million

Release year of "Thumb Wars," a parody film that replaces "Star Wars" characters with thumbs

1999

Thumbs gave humans a significant evolutionary advantage.

Of the many biological advantages human evolution has brought us, two of the biggest are our brains and our thumbs. While the utility of our brain is pretty obvious, it's our opposable thumbs that do much of the work of day-to-day life. In fact, some scientists credit our thumbs as a driving force behind human culture. Around 3 million years ago, early hominids such as Australopithecines used primitive tools — basically just sticks and rocks — and possessed hands similar to a chimp's. A million years later, as our early ancestors began migrating out of Africa, increased manual dexterity thanks to improved opposable thumbs gave rise to more complex culture, because of the variety of tools these early species could now manipulate. Eventually, starting some 300,000 years ago or so, Homo sapiens began grasping all the tools that make modern life possible — whether a philosopher's quill, a carpenter's hammer, a warrior's weapon, or a TikToker's iPhone.