Excellent post by Mark Changizi:
"When you are next in the shower, take a look at your wrinkled fingers. They aren't pretty to look at, but they help make you smart. Pruney fingers are not an accidental side effect of getting soaked as is typically believed, but are, instead, highly efficient rain treads that help us primates grip the world when it is wet (something we've recently been studying in the lab).
Without wrinkled fingers you would need to possess two categories of behavior, one for dry conditions, and one for wet. That would require more brain space than you can spare. Lucky for you, you can get by with just one set of behaviors ("all-weather-behaviors") because your fingertips and feet "know" when to change from race-tire-smooth to rain-tire-wrinkled.
Your wrinkles do a great job for your brain despite the fact that they are not smart in and of themselves -- they are inflexible, automatic switches, only knowing to do two things: wrinkle when wet, unwrinkle when dry."
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