It's Friday
night, you decide to have a nice long relaxing bath with lovely scented bubbles
and soothing candles. Suddenly you realize that your toes and fingers have
wrinkled up like prunes! Have you ever wondered why this happens? Well, now
you're going to find out.
Our toes
and fingers contain oils that essentially make them waterproof - cool right?
These oils help lubricate and protect our fingers and toes. This is why having
a quick shower or washing your hands does not have any affect on them. However
if they spend too long submerged underwater they will start going all wrinkly.
What's happened is that the water has temporarily washed off this oily layer
and has been absorbed by the outer layer of skin.
The skin on
our fingers and toes contain more dead cells than any other part of our body.
As a result water is soaked up by these dead cells like a sponge. When you're
fingers are wrinkly this means they are waterlogged, in other words they are
completely saturated with water. The epidermis pulls on live skin layers
beneath as it begins to swell. The deeper layers are firmly attached to fibers
in your skin and therefore do not swell. This is what causes the appearance of
wrinkles after you’ve spent some time in the bath.
There is
however another theory to explain why these wrinkles appear. According to
scientists it is all a part of evolution. Puckered skin gives better grip which
would have been useful to our ancestors when performing tasks such as foraging
for food or being more sure-footed in the rain.
McA
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