Hairy Fingers

There was a guy in the office today with the hairiest hands I've ever seen. A dark carpet sticking out past his cuffs that, seriously, looked like it could have been braided. Like an orangutan or something. He wore a gold watch with metal links and all I could think was that he must have rubbed a bare spot on his wrist, otherwise all those hairs would have gotten stuck something fierce. Painful.
   I took a look at my own hands, which while not baby's-butt smooth certainly don't have the kind of goat-hair mess that this guy had. Then I took a look at my fingers, and the hair on the first phalanx (that's the fingerbone bit after the knuckle). It's kind of like the hair on my big toes, it's there, but I have no idea why.
   I understand the biochemistry of the matter, androgens makes hair grow and since I'm a man (and how!) I grow hair in places women and children don't. Like the bit on my trapezoids or my shoulders. Or on my butt. But my fingers? As my Hispanic friends might say: 'porque?'
   I wracked my brain and I can't come up with any reason why hairy fingers would be a good evolutionary adaptation. Especially when the hair on my index finger is far fainter than the hair on my pinky. What use could that kind of gradation possibly be? None, that's what. I think hairy fingers are an evolutionary throwback, the appendix of your skin, as it were. I need to write this up for a medical journal.
   The only drawback I can see to publication is that the anti-evolution crowd could seize on this and try to say it disproves evolution. Since there's obviously no evolutionary benefit to hairy fingers they'd want to toss the baby out with the bathwater. So I guess maybe I'd better keep this quiet.
   Forget I mentioned it.