• Question: why do we have 5 fingers and toes? do it help us or is it just a waste of bones

    Asked by to Del, Catherine, John, Krishna, Mo Rassul on 17 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Catherine Mansfield

      Catherine Mansfield answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Having 5 fingers helps us lot. Our fingers can make lots of different types of movement using different muscles and therefore we use them for many different tasks, for example, holding holding a mug uses different fingers and muscles to reading a book and to unscrewing a bottle top.
      Having 5 toes is not quite so useful as we only really use them for balance when walking. In our ancestors they would have been more useful when climbing trees, but we don’t do this now which is why they have reduced in size.

    • Photo: Krishna Mohan Surapaneni

      Krishna Mohan Surapaneni answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Fingers are some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body, and they are the richest source of tactile feedback, and have the greatest positioning capability of the body; thus the sense of touch is intimately associated with hands.

      AND

      The 5 toes in foot assist the human being in walking, essential for balancing, for weight-bearing, and thrust during the gait.

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