Wet Marbles
A group of researchers put the theory to the test, letting twenty volunteers soak their fingers in warm water for 30 minutes to get them good and pruney, then testing exactly how long it took them to move wet glass marbles and fishing weights from one container to another. On average, pruney-fingered participants moved wet marbles 12 percent more quickly than when they were tested with unwrinkled fingers. When the same test was performed with dry marbles, the times were roughly the same. Thus, it seems, the hypothesis was proved: pruney fingers do help us grip better.
From the Smithsonian magazine.
Now I’m going to have to keep some marbles next to the bath. For science!
Rubbish! Pruney fingers never work in the bath when I drop the soap.
Obviously we need thousands of test subjects sitting in bathtubs for extended periods while trying to grip a wide range of household objects and popular brands of soap. Just to be sure the effect isn’t confined to wet marbles and fishing weights.
You monster!
Damn, I was hoping that was finally settled. We’re still agreed on opening eggs from the little end, right?
Great work, scientists! And yet, I still don’t have my flying car or personal jet pack… *sulks*
Note the obligatory conjectural link to evolution that gives a requisite intellectual lustre to the project and forestalls any suggestion these scientists have lost their marbles.