laboratoryequipment:

Water-Wrinkled Fingers Hold Evolutionary Purpose

Wrinkly fingers caused by soaking them in water for a long time, such as in the bath or doing the dishes, have been shown to improve our grip on wet objects or objects under water. Scientists at Newcastle Univ. studied people taking objects out of water with wrinkled fingers and again without wrinkled fingers to explain why the effect occurs.

Author Tom Smulders, publishing the paper in Biology Letters says, “We have shown that wrinkled fingers give a better grip in wet conditions – it could be working like treads on your car tires which allow more of the tire to be in contact with the road and gives you a better grip. Going back in time this wrinkling of our fingers in wet conditions could have helped with gathering food from wet vegetation or streams. And as we see the effect in our toes too, this may have been an advantage as it may have meant our ancestors were able to get a better footing in the rain.”

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/water-wrinkled-fingers-hold-evolutionary-purpose

In my opinion, one of the best things humanity has captured on video. Done in 1979 by Voyager 1 as it approached Jupiter.