Foot

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Foot
Image:Foot.png
A human foot - Enlarge to view legend
Latin	pes
Artery	dorsalis pedis, medial plantar, lateral plantar
Nerve	medial plantar, lateral plantar, deep fibular, superficial fibular
MeSH	Foot

The foot is a biological structure found in many animals that is used for locomotion.

Contents 1 Footwear customs 2 Customary measurement 3 Myths 4 Parts of the foot 4.1 Bones 5 Disorders of the feet 6 See also 7 Additional images 8 External links

Footwear customs

Customs about foot covering while indoors vary significantly from place to place and usually depend on climate, weather, and other factors:

• It is customary to remove one's shoes or boots when entering a home:
  • in much of Europe and Canada, and in many homes in New Zealand and Australia.
  • in some regions of the United States, but not in others.
  • in Japan; the custom is so widespread that floors are often made of materials that are too soft to survive being walked on with shoes.
• In some cultures, bare feet may be considered unsightly or offensive. In Arab countries and in Thailand, it is considered extremely offensive to show someone the sole of your foot, although the practice of not wearing shoes is common, due to various reasons including hot climate and tradition.

• Regardless of covering, according to Thai normshttp://www.americola.com/amwiki/Culture_of_Thailand#Customs feet are the least respected parts of the body; they should not be in a higher position than someone's head and should not face someone or an image of Buddha.

• The feet are one of the most common places to be tickled on the human body. The soles generally tend to be sensitive to tickling.

Bare feet can cause the width of the foot to increase. It can also cause podiatrius malius, where the outer rim of the foot will degenerate.

Customary measurement

The feet provide a convenient way to measure short distances on the ground by placing one foot directly in front of the other; this led to the adoption of the foot as a unit of length, even though not all human feet correspond exactly to this measure.

Myths

• It is a myth that the Imperial "foot" (= 304.8 mm) is about the length of the average European male foot. The average today is less than 270 mm and 90% of the population is within 20 mm of that. Very few men today have feet that are a "foot" long: most are more than 35 mm shorter. In the past, the average length would have been less. Even the overall length of most shoes remains well short of one "foot". Tradition has it that the Imperial foot was based upon the size of Hercules' foot.

• The belief that a man's foot size is correlated to the size of his penis has been discredited in anthropometric studies [1].

Parts of the foot

• Heel
• Instep
• Sole
• Ball
• Five toes: big, pointer, middle, ring, pinky toes
• Toenails

Bones

• Tarsus
  • Calcaneus
  • Talus
  • Cuboid bone
  • Navicular bone
  • Cuneiform bones
• Metatarsus
  • Metatarsal bones
• Toes
  • Phalanges of the foot

Disorders of the feet

• Athlete's foot
• Bunion
• Callus
• Club foot
• Flat feet
• Morton's Neuroma
• Verruca (plantar wart)

See also

Additional images

A foot seen from the (lateral view) outside.

Wikipedia information about Foot This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Foot". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.