system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: how do finger prints know to grow into the same shape

A bit of back story: I cut off most of the skin on the top of one of my fingers including about 85% of the finger print. I noticed as it grows back layer by layer that the new skin is having no trouble regrowing the original design of my finger print.  

  It made me consider that finger prints are probably encoded into DNA but it strikes me as such a chaotic shape to grow back as easily as it does. How does the body handle that, especially as easily as it does?
gpt
Fingerprint are not in your dna.  They're in a fat layer under your top skin layer.  If you cut your finger deep enough to damage the dermis layer, your new skin will not have your old fingerprint.

Fingerprint aka the fatty layer pattern are set in place in the womb when the fetus is developing.   The random fluid movements in the amniotic fluid cause the fat layer to deposit in a random way just like if you threw a handful of sand on the ground.  

Fingerprints are random, not unique.