Stay on your toes!

LITTLE ROCK — Toes are among the active body’s least active parts.

For hundreds of years, people have squished their toes into tight shoes, stiff boots and other high-heeled and pointy-toed stumbles. The modern toe has barely a

chance to twitch.

Even so, practically every step on the track, court or

trail is thanks to people’s toes. Hard, lean and curvy leg muscles might claim all the credit, but no, not according to a report on the Nature magazine website nature.com.

A monkey’s big toe is like a thumb, made to grab things, the report says. A person’s big toe sticks out front to keep balance for walking on two feet, something a monkey can’t do so well.

“We’d fall over without toes,” says Stephanie Thibeault, associate professor and head of dance at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Ballet and modern dancers pay special attention to their toes, she says. They trade secrets of toe care - some that other people might find helpful, and some that most people probably wouldn’t try.

“Our main strategy is to make them really tough,” she says. “We build up calluses in a good way on the bottoms of

our feet.” A callus layer that other women might see as a job for the pedicurist’s pumice stone and shaver, the dancer sees as job security. A pair of high heels that might look dreamy on a movie star, the dancer sees as a plea for ingrown toenails.

Also, “we do lots of stretching and strengthening our feet,” Thibeault says. “We spend time working our feet, massaging our feet.” But in case of a sore toe, well - here’s the difference between a dancer and a hop hop-hobbling-around bidder for sympathy.

“I always dance, anyway,” Thibeault says. “A sore toe? That wouldn’t keep anybody from dancing.”

TOE THE LINE

Toes are part of a complicated mechanism. The human foot is not a dangly sock like a Halloween skeleton’s appendage, but an assembly of 26 bones. Of these, the toes are the front line.

Toes scout ahead. They check out what the rest of the foot - sometimes, the whole rest of the body - is apt to get into, and so the expression: “Stick a toe in.” Each toe has a puffy little layer of fat on the bottom that works like an air cushion. When a person has that twinkle-toe feeling that he is walking on air, in a way, he really is.

All this happens with very little attention to toes. A person’s toes are like the old lady in the nursery rhyme: They live in shoes - and socks - and don’t come out much.

But lose a toenail, uh-oh. The problem is familiar to long-distance runners, and to Dr. Ruth Thomas, professor of orthopedics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Medicine.

“Runners often slide in their shoes, and the toes hit the end of the shoe,” she explains.

“Over time, this can lead to the nail being lifted off the great toe from chronic end-striking in the shoe.”

Things could be worse. Piranha fish have been reported nipping off swimmers’ toes in Brazil. Scientists wonder if people’s little toes might eventually shrink down to nothing. But right now, the loss of even the tiniest toe can make a big difference.

The doctor tells exactly what happens without toes:

“Losing the big toe reduces balancing ability. In addition, after loss of the big toe, the second toe will often hammer [bend, with the likely consequence of a painful callus].

“If you lose the second toe, the great toe will begin to deviate toward the third toe and take up the space left by the absent second toe. This leads to significant bunion deformity.

“Loss of the third and fourth toe usually only leads to deformities of the lesser toes when they begin to fill in the space from the lost toe. Loss of the fifth toe can lead to development of calluses under the fifth metatarsal [long bone] head of the foot.”

All in all, people who don’t have all their toes lose the “roll-over” quality of normal walking ability, she says, “and you take each step flatfooted.”

This story will now pause while the reader puts on steel toed boots.

TIC-TAC-TOE

Nature finds many amazing uses for toes. In fact, people’s toes are among the least interesting - compared to, say, a frog’s toes. The variety of things toes can do is apparent from just the index of the encyclopedia. Under the heading of “Toe,” a digit of the foot:

“Climbing adaptations in frog and lizard.”

“Owl specializations for predation.”

“Crocodilian special character.”

Crocs have five toes on each front leg, four toes in back. This makes crocodiles the original toe biters. But people, too, have their own kinds of specialized toes, including:

Popsicle toes: cold toes, especially the other person’s cold toes in bed.

Tippy-toes: good for reaching, and tiptoes: good for sneaking.

Six toes. Marilyn Monroe was rumored to have six toes. Not so, according to television’s Biography Channel. She had plenty of other extras, but not toes. But some people do have six.

Tappin’ toes - toes that keep rhythm, often attached to happy feet.

HEAD TO TOE

Barefoot is an odd condition. Since biblical times, to go barefoot is be impoverished and pitiful. Or - to be carefree and enviable, as in John Greenleaf Whittier’s often quoted poem, “The Barefoot Boy,” that goes:

Blessings on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy with cheeks of tan.

In between, today’s compromise is the Vibram Five Fingers shoe and similar goods - shoes that fit over toes the same way that gloves fit fingers.

The Vibram company of Massachusetts introduced the “minimalist” design six years ago to replicate the feeling of running or walking barefoot, but with shoe protection.

Stores that sell the shoes include Pack Rat Outdoor Center in Fayetteville, where Sandy Staszkiewicz has become her own best shoe customer.

“I’m in my 50s, and I’m on my feet all day,” she says. Her feet and legs hurt so much, she gave the five-toed shoes a try as “a last-ditch effort.”

Not even the manufacturer claims the footwear is pretty.Colorful, yes - pink, yellow and green stripes and zigzags - but only Tarzan might holler for the look.

“If you go to the grocery store, somebody is going to say something,” she says. “‘Those are really cool,’ or,‘Those are really weird,’ or, ‘I’d never wear those.’”

Feet that quit aching are the reason for Staszkiewicz’s collection of “four or five pair,” which she expects to keep wearing this winter.

Fur-topped, five-toed boots are available as well, but she won’t take quite that big a step.

“The way I look at it,” she says, “they kind of remind me of Planet of the Apes.”

Hollywood stepped into the complications of human and simian footwear with the movie series that started with Planet of the Apes starring Charlton Heston (1968). Helena Bonham Carter played a chimpanzee in the remake (2001).

Heston went barefoot, Carter wore open-toed sandals and the gorillas had boots.

TOE-TO-TOE

How important are toes? Life and death.

One of the first things a baby discovers is how to wiggle his toes.

And when it’s all done, the last thing they give you to show for your time of being up and around on planet Earth is, what else?

A toe tag.