Your fingers ‘prune’ the exact same way each time

Everyone knows that your fingers get wrinkly after spending too long in the bath, but it turns out that those wrinkles form in the same way every time.

- JESS THOMSON

According to a new study published in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, the exact pattern of the wrinkles on your fingertips, also known as their pruning, is unchanging. The wrinkles were long thought to occur as a result of water entering the skin by osmosis and causing our fingertips to swell. However, researchers in the 1930s discovered that people with nerve damage in their fingers didn't form the wrinkles, suggesting that it wasn't the passive movement of water causing these patterns, but an active response of the body's sympathetic nervous system, an unconscious part of our nervous system associated with the 'fight-or-flight' response.