As Mãos

Hands are so impossibly useful it’s hard to believe they’re real. I’ll let Steven Pinker take this one over for me:
‘Nearly two thousand years ago, the Greek physician Galen pointed out the exquisite natural engineering behind the human hand. It is a single tool that manipulates objects of an astonishing range of sizes, shapes, and weights, from a log to a millet seed. “Man handles them all,” Galen noted, “as well as if his hands had been made for the sake of each one of them alone.” The hand can be configured into a hook grip (to lift a pail), a scissors grip (to hold a cigarette), a five-jaw chuck (to lift a coaster), a three-jaw chuck (to hold a pencil), a two-jaw pad-to-pad chuck (to thread a needle), a two-jaw pad-to-side chuck (to turn a key), a squeeze grip (to hold a hammer), a disc grip (to open a jar), and a spherical grip (to hold a ball). Each grip needs a precise combination of muscle tensions that mold the hand into the right shape and keep it there as the load tries to bend it back. Think of lifting a milk carton. Too loose a grasp, and you drop it; too tight, and you crush it; and with some gentle rocking, you can even use the tugging on your fingertips as a gauge of how much milk is inside!’