At about 3:30 AM, on Saturday morning, I was woken from a terrifying nightmare about Anne Robinson by the sound of general mayhem from below. As it transpired, my sister on her way to a small midnight fridge raid had tripped over my dog, fell head first and managed somehow to stub her little toe on a cabinet, breaking it in the process (the toe, not the cabinet).

This post is not about the laughter I had to supress, nor is it about the clumsiness of my sister. It is, namely, about toes.

My question is - while Evolution was ironing everything else out (tails, fur, small heads and the like), why didn't it bother to get rid of toes? Toes are, with the exception of the appendix, the most pointless piece of the human anatomy.

Thinking about toes and what uses they have (my mind seems to work best in the wee hours of the morning), I could only come up with two uses - manipulating bath taps without having to use your hands, or counting up to twenty when you have a sum that your hands can't cope with. Other than that, they are pretty useless.

Yes, I know that some people insist that they are useful for balance, but I don't see why we just have one big toeless block (á la "The Witches" by Roald Dahl) instead of five little stubby things that break easily and cause considerable pain if the nails grow too much. Anyway, a foot with a bigger surface area should help balance somewhat...

As you might have noticed, I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately. My mind is running at about 50% capacity, so if nothing above makes sense I apologise entirely.

Now, let's see whether I can create me a genetic mutant...

Chris"Two Toed Sloth"topher