Ask someone who has no toes, like a friend of mine a while ago.
Though they appear relatively useless, they are basically your primary balance control on your foot. The flat of your foot is no good for actually walking, it’s just a large leg with a single articulation at the ankle, and you don’t want to walk on your ankles. The toes provide a lot of the balance information, as well as make the foot grip the floor, especially if it’s uneven, and also provide a ton of assistance when you’re walking rather than standing. Watch any close-up video of someone’s foot when they walk, male or female, and you’ll see that you spend an awful lot of time on your toes and with toes propelling you that last few inches.
When running, they become even more important.
Someone without toes will tell you – they can be almost wheelchair bound and find it very difficult to walk. Standing is not so bad, but walking is problematic. It’s one of the biggest issues with prosthetic legs – it’s not the leg or the foot that matters – we had “peg-leg” prosthetics for centuries, if not millennia. But you’re always going to struggle because the toes are either not assisting, or they do not flex out of the way on the stride and either catch (like constantly stubbing your toe) or trip you.
Toes are as important to the foot as fingers are to the hand, their smaller size doesn’t make them any less important.
Raise your toes and then try to walk without your toes touching the floor. Unless you waddle (in the classic “waiting for my nail polish to dry” walk) it feels very wrong and becomes tiring.
In fact, women can learn to run in high-heels where effectively *ONLY* their toes are touching the floor. But trying to run where your toes don’t touch the floor at all is actually really difficult.
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