We now have the tech to fingerprint babies – but should we?

That's the age of one participant in a recent study looking at ways to take the fingerprints of infants. "The pattern is there at birth," says Anil Jain at Michigan State University in East Lansing. But it is hard to capture. Now Jain and his colleagues are developing a device that could be up to the task. Taking fingerprints from very young children – even newborns – is part of a drive in developing countries to monitor the health of infants, who often lack other forms of identification.