A paper by myself, Romann Weber, Ritesh Kotecha and Joseph Palazzo just appeared in Brain, Behavior and Evolution. Its title is “Are Wet-Induced Wrinkled Fingers Primate Rain Treads?” We provide evidence that the wrinkle morphology on pruney fingers has the expected signature features for a drainage network, designed to efficiently squirt away water during grip.
See this TED video for an introduction.
The paper has, for a time, been given free access by the publisher.
News stories on our research have appeared widely, including Nature, NPR, MSNBC, Discovery, PBS News Hour, Gawker, NY Times, Washington Post, Innovation News Daily, Life’s Little Mysteries, Science Illustrated and FOX News. I also wrote a piece on it at Forbes, and another at WIRED UK.
Also… comics.
See the update, after another team does a new behavioral study showing converging evidence.
…and new press in 2013 coming out of this… NPR’s Science Friday, Bite Sci-zed video, Geek Beat TV, Smaller Questions, AOL, Robert Kurzban, Guardian, Scientific American, Science News, io9, WIRED, New Statesman, Le Monde, Eos Wetenschap, Oggiscienza, Origo, Scinexx, Humanistischer Pressedienst, 21 Stoleti, Heilpraxisnet, NY Times, Atlantic, Star Tribune, The Scientist, Jezebel, National Geographic, BR, C&EN, Science News, Courier, French students on pruney fingers.
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Mark Changizi is Director of Human Cognition at 2AI, and the author of The Vision Revolution (Benbella Books) and the upcoming book Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man (Benbella Books).
Changizi Blog 
