Question: Why do your fingers go wrinkly after being in water?

Hayley Clissold answered on 15 Jun 2015:

Great question!

The current view is that wrinkly fingers actually provide us with better grip in wet conditions. A study was carried out where people had to pick up wet and dry objects with wrinkly fingers or with non-wrinkly fingers. It turned out that people could pick up wet objects much more quickly with wrinkly fingers than with non-wrinkly fingers.

Scientists believe that a reason why our skin does this could have been an evolutionary advantage when humans many many years ago tried to catch food (e.g. fish) by hand from rivers and streams. If wrinkly fingers allows us to grip wet objects more easily, then that would have meant more fish could be caught for us to eat.