CatersIt’s the latest body oddity taking the internet by storm: the man with the five-inch thumb.
The world wide web has no shortage of weird and wonderful things, but 20-year-old Jacob Pina’s right opposable went viral after his TikTok followers noticed just how massive it is.
To put it into context his thumb is roughly the same length as a £10 note, an iPhone 8 screen, a can of coke and the width of a piece of A5 paper.
To see what it’s like for someone to live with such a massive finger (all thumbs are fingers, not all fingers are thumbs), check out the video below:
Pina, who has since been dubbed ‘Thumb Boy’, has now amassed almost 150k followers on the video-sharing app, with one of his videos achieving two million likes.
In an interview with the MailOnline, Pina said the thumb – which he says is closer to 4.5 inches long – has its perks, such as never losing a thumb war. Who’d be foolish enough to even attempt it?
CatersPina told the MailOnline:
And I’m pretty good with Xbox. I’m really good at Rainbow Six Siege. I was like top ten in the world for probably 10 seasons straight.
The sophomore student at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, has been completely flabbergasted by the response online. ‘I can’t believe the number of likes I’ve got’, he said.
— 𝒥𝒶𝒸𝑜𝒷 (@PinaR6S) August 5, 2019
Pina said he first realised his anatomical blessing while in his freshman year at Bishop Connolly High School in Fall River, Massachusetts, when students started to point it out.
Pina explained:
I was sitting with my friend Alec and this kid named Cameron and he said: ‘Wow, look at this kid’s thumb.’
I said: ‘What do you mean, my thumb?’ And he called over his friends and they were like ‘whoa, whoa, whoa’ and basically that’s when I realized. It wasn’t bullying, just they’d never seen anything like it before.
There’s pros and cons, Pina told the MailOnline. ‘Even in frigid New England winters, gloves pose a problem, for instance. I can’t wear them. Well I can, but it gets sore, there’s always pressure on my thumb.’
CatersWhile Pina says his grandfather’s hands are ‘pretty weird’, he has no idea where his jumbo thumb came from. As it turns out, his left thumb is a similar length – but ‘it’s curved normally… it doesn’t stick out quite the same’.
As much as it’s strange, Pina loves the fact he’s different and enjoys showing it off in social situations.
Pina said:
When people see my thumb, they freak out and measure it next to their own thumb, I feel great about it.
It’s always great to be different and embrace your own essence.
I vote that we track down someone else with an enormous opposable, and organise the greatest thumb war the world has ever seen.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.