My foot in one of my favorite pairs of shoes
Along with some others in my family, I have what you might call an anti–foot fetish. We can't stand seeing people touch their feet and find those toe shoes that are all the rage nauseating. Herewith, some FootFacts as I try to replace disgust with fascination):
* 1/4 of the body’s bones—52—are in the feet, along with a quarter million sweat glands, 66 joints, and 200+ muscles, tendons & ligaments.
* During the first year of a child’s life their feet grow rapidly, reaching almost half their adult size.
* The first foot coverings were probably animal skins, which Stone Age peoples in northern Europe and Asia, 5 million years ago, tied around their ankles.
* The Romans were the first to construct distinct left and right shoes. Before that, shoes could be worn on either foot.
* Butterflies taste with their feet, gannets incubate eggs under their webbed feet, and elephants use their feet to hear—they pick up vibrations of the earth through their soles.
* The average person will walk some 115,000 miles in a lifetime—the equivalent of more than four times around the earth.
* Like Stalin, Dan Aykroyd, and Ashton Kutcher, my husband has syndactyly, better known as webbed feet. Nope, doesn't do anything for his swimming.
* 1/4 of the body’s bones—52—are in the feet, along with a quarter million sweat glands, 66 joints, and 200+ muscles, tendons & ligaments.
* During the first year of a child’s life their feet grow rapidly, reaching almost half their adult size.
* The first foot coverings were probably animal skins, which Stone Age peoples in northern Europe and Asia, 5 million years ago, tied around their ankles.
* The Romans were the first to construct distinct left and right shoes. Before that, shoes could be worn on either foot.
* Butterflies taste with their feet, gannets incubate eggs under their webbed feet, and elephants use their feet to hear—they pick up vibrations of the earth through their soles.
* The average person will walk some 115,000 miles in a lifetime—the equivalent of more than four times around the earth.
* Like Stalin, Dan Aykroyd, and Ashton Kutcher, my husband has syndactyly, better known as webbed feet. Nope, doesn't do anything for his swimming.