A cut in your hand, cracked lips, or bumping your toe into a rock. Even though those wounds didn’t penetrate anywhere, the feeling they gave was extremely poor . So why is it that when we are injured in the limbs, we have a feeling of extreme poverty, a need that is more indescribable than anything, it all has a cause!
When your toe is hit with a force similar to a punch. Because the toe has a small surface area, that force cannot spread, so the pain remains concentrated at the point of impact. It’s the same reason it hurts a lot more when stepping on a sharp object than it does on a smooth object.
You don’t just feel an immediate shock like stepping on a sharp object, followed by a sharp pain later. That’s because toes contain special nerve bundles called Nociceptors . When hit, the warning signal from the nerve bundle will be activated at the same time, however, the transmission speed is different.
Nociceptor nerve bundles can be found throughout the body, but they are most concentrated in the body parts that you use to explore the environment such as the fingertips, toes, and lips. . That’s why accidents like broken hands, tripped feet and cracked lips can leave you feeling extremely needy.
The researchers suggest that the pain we perceive is an evolutionary way to increase survival since our ancestors. Back before antibiotics, even a small cut could cause a deadly infection because the feet are constantly in contact with dirty, bacterial-contaminated surfaces especially vulnerable. So people with sensitive feet may have been careful while walking, so they would be less likely to get infections and survive to pass this gene on to the next generation.