Boy with 15 fingers and 16 toes to have surgery

A boy in China who has 31 fingers and toes - a world record - is to undergo surgery to remove the extras digits.

The 6-year-old boy, from the city of Shenyang in China's northeastern Liaoning province, has a total of 31 fingers and toes - 16 toes, and 15 fingers (although one of those fingers is incomplete, being a fork at the end of the right thumb.) Three fingers on each hand are fused together. That beats the current world record of 25, held jointly by two Indian children, Pranamya Menaria and Devendra Harne, who both have 12 fingers and 13 toes.

But the boy will go under the surgeon's knife to remove the additional digits. The boy has a condition known as polydactyly, in which one of a variety of genetic disorders - which can be inherited, or new mutations - gives rise to the supernumerary digits.

Most commonly, the extra digits appear on the little finger side of the hand - but this boy appears to have the much rarer condition of central polydactyly, in which the middle fingers and toes are duplicated.