Body & HealthFact
Pruney bath fingers aren't water damage.
The old story was that skin soaks up water and puckers. But fingers with severed nerves don't wrinkle at all. Wrinkling is an active response: the nervous system constricts blood vessels under the skin, the tissue shrinks and the epidermis folds. It starts after about 5 minutes in water. One hypothesis: the grooves channel water away like tyre treads.
Useful: Clinicians use this: missing wrinkling can be a sign of nerve damage.
Source: doi.org