It’s just an average Wednesday… only we think that science may have solved one of humanity’s biggest questions.
Science is getting that bit closer to explaining the prune-like, wrinkly fingers and toes we all get when we sit in a hot bath for too long.
UK researchers at Newcastle University have confirmed wet objects are easier to handle with wrinkled fingers than with dry, smooth ones.
So there is a reason to getting wrinkly fingertips after a long bath?!
They suggest our ancestors may have evolved the creases as they foraged for food in wet vegetation or in streams.
Their experiments are reported in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
These involved asking volunteers to pick up marbles immersed in a bucket of water with one hand and then passing them through a small slot to be deposited by the other hand in a second container.
Volunteers with wrinkled fingers completed the task faster than their smooth-skinned counterparts.
The team have suggested that the wrinkles have a specific function, and that’s to improve our grip on objects under water.
For a long time, it was assumed that the wrinkles on our fingers were simply the result of the skin swelling in water, but recent investigations have actually shown the furrows to be caused by the blood vessels constricting in reaction to the water, which in turn is a response controlled by the body’s sympathetic nervous system.
That this active system of regulation is at work in our bodies has scientists thinking there must be some deeper evolutionary justification for the ridges.
US-based researchers were the first to propose that the wrinkles might act like the tread on tyres, but the Newcastle team were the first to confirm that these prune-like patterns on our fingers make it easier to grip wet objects.
