stream of consciousness
Jan. 26th, 2019 01:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enemyofperfectThe other day I was wondering why most humans have five fingers. I mean, it seems like a lot, doesn't it? I can see why you'd want at least two, so you can grasp things between them, and maybe sometimes you want to get a little fancier, so sure, throw in a couple more. But five, really?
Then I got to thinking about why other animals, like the noble wolf for example, have any toes at all. It's not like most of them do anything with them individually; a wolf isn't out there knitting or playing piccolo. So why have digits and not just merge them all into some kind of unified foot?
What do they even use their toes for? I asked myself, and answered: Finding purchase on the ground while running, probably, or digging sometimes. But couldn't you do that with sort of a flattened spade-like foot object as well?
No, you could not, I realized. It's harder to dig a shovel into the ground than it would be a garden fork. Narrowing the cutting edge of the foot to individual points concentrates the force applied to each of them, ensuring greater traction and/or clawing capacity. This satisfied me. I had answered the question of why toes exist.
But seriously, why five?
Then I got to thinking about why other animals, like the noble wolf for example, have any toes at all. It's not like most of them do anything with them individually; a wolf isn't out there knitting or playing piccolo. So why have digits and not just merge them all into some kind of unified foot?
What do they even use their toes for? I asked myself, and answered: Finding purchase on the ground while running, probably, or digging sometimes. But couldn't you do that with sort of a flattened spade-like foot object as well?
No, you could not, I realized. It's harder to dig a shovel into the ground than it would be a garden fork. Narrowing the cutting edge of the foot to individual points concentrates the force applied to each of them, ensuring greater traction and/or clawing capacity. This satisfied me. I had answered the question of why toes exist.
But seriously, why five?
