• Question: why do we only have 5 fingers on each hand and 5 toes on each feet ? why not more ?

    Asked by emilyscott to Alastair, Emma, Hywel, Keith, Vicki on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Alastair Sloan

      Alastair Sloan answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hi Emily

      Mainly because we only need that many. Its down to evolution so as we have developed and evolved and learnt to grip things and use tools, our hands and fingers changed accordingly. As for toes on the feet, it gives us stability and balance

    • Photo: Keith Brain

      Keith Brain answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Having fingers allow us to do dextrous thing, like searching for small berries in brambles. However, our hands are only of a certain size, so the more fingers you have the thinner each will be, and hence the more fragile. So, having too many fingers will lead to them being weak and fagile. So, over the process of evolution people have been selected to have 5 fingers, which suggests that 5 is about the optimal number, at least for the conditions occuring througout most of our evolutionary history. It might be now that 6 fingers would be better, and there are people born with this. Perhaps in time people with 6 fingers will have the greatest evotionary fitness, due to their superior guitar playing, and the population will steadily change so that having 6 fingers is normal.

    • Photo: Vicki Stevenson

      Vicki Stevenson answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      sorry Emily – Biology is definitely my weak spot and I don’t know why we only have five. Maybe it would be too complicated to have more, or they’d be in danger of getting damaged?

    • Photo: Hywel Vaughan

      Hywel Vaughan answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Well, if we had many more Emily than none of our gloves would fit!
      It comes down to evolution really – we have that number because it what we have evolved to need. Perhaps though in the modern technology driven world we live in, more fingers would be much better for pushing buttons! Toes give us balance and a lot of the power we need to run and jump – again I believe it is all down to evolution. That and gloves. 😉

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