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The thumb also has three joints, but the Proximal joint is farther up, embeded and mostly concealed in its muscles. That third [base joint] is what allows you to move the thumb to the left or right. NO. If you consider the thumb to have three joints you must be including the carpometacarpal joint which is (as far as i remember) a double saddle synnovial joint. This is the joint that joints the bone of the thumb that is concealed in the hand to the bones of the wrist. Within the visible thumb there is only two joints, the first being between the metacarpal and the proximal phalanx and the second being between the proximal and dislat phalanges. The other digits have and extra bone in the middle of these phalanges called the middle phalanx, giving it a third joint in the visible digit, or if you are including carpometacarpal joints as the original answer does with the thumb then you must do so for the fingers also which means they would have 4 joints each. And to answer the question the presence of a third joint in the thumb is simply unnecessary thanks the range of movement. The other digits require the extra joint so that the tips can come to meat close to the base of the visible digits so that before thumbs had evolvfed we could grasp small thin objects. The thumb has such a range of movement that this extra joint would be more effort to supply than its worth.

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