If you place your fingertips in water for a few minutes, they begin to look wrinked. Why?

The skin on the surface of your fingers and toes is different from the skin covering the rest of your body. It’s thicker due to constant contact, abrasion, and pressure. Your fingertips and toetips contain networks of dense, tough connective tissue. This tough tissue anchors the outer skin to the underlying layers known as the “dermis.”

If you soak in water long enough, protective oils get depleted from your skin. Water can leak in to your skin after awhile.

Instead, the regions of skin that are most heavily anchored from below will remain lower than the more softened and swollen regions. The result – those temporary wrinkles on your fingers and toes. Other parts of your skin don’t have the same densely-reinforced design – so, no matter how much you soak, the rest of your skin tends to stay smooth.