It’s kind of hard to miss, considering it happens to us all. Well, not all of us. Those with nerve damage actually don’t prune!
This was discovered after a man fell through a glass door and cutting his wrist pretty badly.
After a few weeks he noticed that only some of his fingers were becoming wrinkled under water. He brought this up to doctor and they found that they were the same fingers that had sensory defects.
This isn’t just something that’s interesting to know and that’s it. It can be helpful in the real world. It can be used to test whether further, surgical exploration into a wound is needed without having to actually slice into the patient. It can be used as a quick assessment for doctors.
This discovery is further evidence to the recently proposed reason for skin wrinkles. For a long time it was thought that our skin swells when in water for a sustained period, but that seems to be wrong.
Instead, it’s an evolutionary trait that allows us to grip better in wet environments. The fact that nerve damage affects the wrinkles definitely helps this case.
