Why water on my fingers wrinkles are formed

Committed a new study, the results were printed on January 9 in the journal "Biological notes of the Royal society" (Biology Letters by the Royal Society), scientists from Newcastle University announced that the wrinkles on the fingers give us some advantages. "We came to the conclusion that wrinkled fingers help you better grip wet surface – this works because the spikes on the tires that provide better grip tire and road," said Tom Smulders ' from the Institute of neuroscience at Newcastle University.





Researchers have always believed that the appearance of wrinkles on the fingers is due to osmosis (a phenomenon of percolation of the solutions through a permeable organic partitions). If water in the upper layers of the skin, the water entails swelling and creates these wrinkles.

But in actual fact it is an active process, controlled by the vegetative nervous system: due to the constriction of blood vessels varies the skin of our fingers. If you claim that it is an active process, come to the conclusion that it process happens for a purpose.

"Maybe once the wrinkles that form on the fingers in humid conditions, could help our ancestors to gather food in wet vegetation or in flowing water, according to Smulders'.

 




To test this theory, researchers asked 20 people to shift 45 wet or dry objects, wrinkly or normal fingers.

Move dry objects with wrinkled fingers or normal skin takes the same amount of time, but to move wet objects in both cases had 17% more time. Moving wet objects with wrinkled fingers took 12 percent less time than the same procedure in the usual fingers.

Scientists have concluded that the wrinkled skin makes a better grip of wet objects, but is not effective when working with dry objects.

The Smulders ' reports: "the question Arises, why the skin of our fingers is not stored permanently wrinkled, and we want to figure it out during our subsequent research."

Source: /users/413

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