Why Do We Wrinkle When Wet?
Why do your fingers and toes get wrinkly when they've been in the water too long? Short answer: Your nerves. Longer answer: Evolution. Hosted by: Michael Aranda ---------- Dooblydoo thanks...
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Whether you’re swimming or washing the dishes or just taking nice, long, well-deserved bath --- if you’re immersed in water for longer than 10 minutes, chances are your fingers and toes will emerge looking like raisins. So what’s up with the wrinkled digits? For years, scientists thought the phenomenon was the result of a type of osmosis, caused by water passing into the dry outer layer of skin. The influx of water, the thinking went, would expand the skin’s surface area, but not the tissue below it, so the skin would bunch up and wrinkle. But in 1935, a pair of doctors noticed that this effect didn’t happen in their patients with nerve damage. One patient, for example, was a boy who had lost the feeling in three of his fingers. The researchers fo...
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Whether you’re swimming or washing the dishes or just taking nice, long, well-deserved bath --- if you’re immersed in water for longer than 10 minutes, chances are your fingers and toes will emerge looking like raisins. So what’s up with the wrinkled digits? For years, scientists thought the phenomenon was the result of a type of osmosis, caused by water passing into the dry outer layer of skin. The influx of water, the thinking went, would expand the skin’s surface area, but not the tissue below it, so the skin would bunch up and wrinkle. But in 1935, a pair of doctors noticed that this effect didn’t happen in their patients with nerve damage. One patient, for example, was a boy who had lost the feeling in three of his fingers. The researchers fo...
