THAT'S THE WHY:It's something we have probably all wondered at one time or another.
And if you are a young kid, it’s a question you may be asking your parents several times a week.
Why, when you soak in the bath for a long time, do your fingers and toes go all wrinkly and pruney?
It seems the funny-looking digits are partly down to water absorption.
The top layer of skin on your fingers and toes contains relatively large amounts of a protein called keratin.
Keratin likes water and absorbs it from the bath. But, according to a 2001 piece in Scientific American by dermatologist Laurence Meyer of the University of Utah, the insides of the fingers and toes don’t swell. So the swollen outer layers of skin gather and pucker, like a skirt.
Researchers have even gone to the trouble of using a computer model to predict how keratin fibres might be arranged in the skin layer that wrinkles in water, publishing details this month in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
A 2004 paper in Clinical Autonomic Research also suggests that water could enter the skin through the sweat ducts and change the balance of salts.
This could affect how nerve fibres fire and result in blood vessels constricting, which, in turn, results in a pulling down on the skin that distorts it.
Now you have some answers for the kids.
