A quarter of all the bones in your body are in your feet. Your feet have 52 bones, 26 in each foot and 33 joints. Your body has a total of 206 bones, which includes the bones in your feet for that total. So by using simple mathematics you can see that a little over a quarter of the bones in your feet are in your body. But that obviously begs the question. Why are there so many bones in the feet?
The human skeleton is a marvelous piece of engineering. Every bone and every joint has been manufactured pretty much perfectly to sustain life for a considerable amount of time. If you think about it, I mean really think about it, every bone serves a specific purpose. But one of the most amazing aspects about the human skeleton is its uneven distribution of bones. For instance, did you know that a quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet? While the top half, arguably the important half, consists of a considerably lesser number of bones? Even the hands which perform complex movements and functions contain far fewer bones.
Why are a quarter of the bones in the feet?
A quarter of the bones of your body are in your feet because your feet are a complex and highly evolved mechanism. They can support your entire weight, while also performing rigorous tasks. Such tasks include, but are not limited to jumping, running and climbing. The structure of the feet with the many bones and joints allow the feet to absorb and release energy in an extremely efficient way. This efficiency has allowed humans to not only survive, but flourish. It’s also one of the reasons that we can outrun just about any animal in an endurance race, such as a marathon.
