As a diver, you can be thankful they get all pruney during a dive.
It could be an adaptation that gives us better grip underwater.
Fingers and toes wrinkle in water after about five minutes due to
the constriction of blood vessels. This reduction in volume pulls the
skin inward, but as the skin's surface area cannot change, it wrinkles.
A study in 2011 showed that wrinkles form a pattern of channels that
divert water away from the fingertip - akin to rain treads on tires. The
team thought that this could aid grip. To find out, Tom Smulders and
his team at Newcastle University in the U.K. timed people as they
transferred wet or dry objects from one box to another, both with and
without wrinkled fingers. With wrinkles, wet objects were transferred
about 12 percent faster than with unwrinkled fingers. The time it took
to transfer dry objects was the same regardless of wrinkles.
So why aren't our digits always prune-like? "With wrinkles, less
of your skin surface touches the object, so there may be issues of sensitivity,"
Smulders suggests.
- - New Scientist, January 12, 2013