Why aren’t our fingers the same size? Like how come most people are born with the ring finger splitting the difference between the index and middle? I know it’s like natural selection and stuff but why did it benefit us for our fingers to be how they are?!
In: Biology
Grabbing.
Grab a ball or an orange. Your fingers are splayed around it to spread your grip around its surface.
Now, pretend you’re holding onto a broomstick, or a chin up bar, the handle of a knife, or something of that shape. Notice that your fingers all now line up nicely.
[removed]
An interesting parallel is the amount of brain area that is dedicated to the control of each finger. The thumb probably has as much brain driving it as the rest of the hand. The index finger is next in line.
Perhaps from time when we were swinging from tree branches? This helps grab on various shapes for the branches.
The ratio of a man’s ring finger to his pointer finger is proportional to the amount of testosterone received in the womb. The longer the ring to the pointer, the more test.
A researcher was able to calculate ratios and use this information to accurately predict who would win in a short foot race between healthy males of similar age.
[removed]
One theory is that different finger length and size enables us to make a fist.
Hold your hand in front of you, palm facing you. Then bend your fingers over, towards you. Now the ends are aligned. When you make a fist, your fingers tuck cleanly into the palm. If our fingers were the same length when outstretched, they wouldn’t fit so precisely into the palm and some minor (mid-finger) knuckles would stick out, raising the likeliness of injury when punching.
Of course, this is just a theory, but it sounds much more plausible to me than the grasping theory.
Because they are not mass-produced in a factory, so there is really no advantage for them to be all the same :-]
Latest Answers