Which animal has fingerprints so similar to ours that they can be confused at a crime scene?

Koala fingerprints are so close to human ones in pattern that they are difficult to distinguish under a lens, complete with loops, whorls and arches. What makes this remarkable is that koalas are marsupials, only distantly related to us, and the primates in between show nothing comparable. This is convergent evolution: the same solution reached independently because the same problem was posed. Ridged fingertips improve grip on curved surfaces and help the skin sense texture and small movement, and a koala spends its life gripping branches and selecting particular eucalyptus leaves by feel, which favours exactly the arrangement that suits a primate hand. The similarity is real but the practical worry is often overstated, since koalas and crime scenes rarely coincide. The wider lesson is the useful one for a quiz: when two unrelated animals share a fine detail of anatomy, look for a shared way of life rather than a shared ancestor.

Koalas sleep for most of the day because eucalyptus leaves are low in energy and mildly toxic.