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Bite-size answers to commonly asked questions from inquiring minds
Did you know?
There are 45 miles of nerves in the skin of a human being.
The skin is the largest organ in our body and typically comprises 12-15% of out total body weight.
Source: Good Skin Health.
A. It can take some convincing to get my children into the bath but, once they are in, it can be very difficult to get them out again. Recently, after another long bathe, my five year old son asked me “Daddy, why do your fingers and toes go wrinkly in the bath?” So what’s the answer?
Well, there are in fact various theories as to why our skin wrinkles when it’s submerged in water. But many biologists currently think along the following lines...
Our skin is made up of an outer layer – called the epidermis – and an under layer known as the dermis (it’s a little more complicated than that and there is also a deeper third layer referred to as the subcutaneous tissue but that is out of the scope of this answer). The epidermis is actually comprised of dead dry keratin cells (keratin being a protein found in skin, nails and hair) which fall off us all the time, some of which makes up the dust in our homes! Anyway, although we can’t really see it on ourselves, it is covered with a special oily substance called sebum. This oil helps to lubricate the skin and also makes it a little bit waterproof. However, if we stay immersed in water for a length of time the sebum gets washed away and our outer skin starts to absorb water more easily.
This absorption leads the skin to expand and increase in surface area. Because the epidermis is attached or, if you like, ‘tied down’ to the dermis beneath, the only way for it to deal with this increased surface area is to wrinkle. But why is it only really noticeable in our fingers and toes?
Well, the skin on our hands and feet is actually thicker than around other parts of our body in order to help protect us. This is because we touch many more things with our fingers and toes and so the skin becomes thicker to help compensate. And because it’s thicker (and some say not so ‘tied down’), it absorbs more water making the wrinkling more conspicuous here.
So there we go! Now we know the answer to why do your fingers and toes go wrinkly in water.
Source(s): Kidshealth.org, Thenakedscientists.com, Daily Mail, Howstuffworks.com, Healthquestions.medhelp.org, Askabiologist.com