Huh. You learn something new everyday. I'd put my dead-man's fingers down to simple old age, but maybe there's another explanation.
I was at Wolf's Pit the other week, and a woman asked me to take her photo, and recoiled in horror when I took the phone off of her. She actually said something along the lines of 'Oh my god what's happened to your fingers?'
It's one of the reasons I moved to bib magnets - I was forever putting pins through my fingers without noticing.