Play with water for some time and you are bound to have those wobbly, wrinkly fingers.

Have you ever wondered why the skin gets so?

Let’s find out

When you soak your body in water, your nervous system sends a message to your blood vessels to shrink. Your body responds by sending blood away from the area, and the loss of blood volume makes your vessels thinner. The skin folds in over them, and this causes wrinkles.

People often assume that wrinkling is the result of water passing into the outer layer of the skin and making it swell up. But researchers have known since the 1930s that the change is an involuntary reaction by the body’s autonomic nervous system — the system that also controls breathing, heart rate, and perspiration.

In fact, wrinkling is caused by blood vessels constricting (becoming narrower or tighter) below the skin.

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