Festive fun feet quiz: test your foot knowledge
Test your knowledge about feet with our quick quiz. No prizes, just the glory of potentially knowing more about feet than your family and friends!
1. Your feet contain a quarter of all the bones in your body. How many bones are there in each foot?
a. 8
b. 14
c. 26
2. Toenails grow faster during the summer months. True or false?
3. Some people are born with more than five toes on their foot. This condition is known as:
a. polydigitism
b. polydactylism
c. pterodactylus
4. Your feet have over 250,000 sweat glands. That’s more sweat glands per square cm on the sole of your foot than anywhere else on your body! How much sweat can they produce every day?
a. a spoonful
b. a cupful
c. a bucket load
5. How many miles does the average person walk in their lifetime?
a. about 50,000 miles
b. around 75,000 miles
c. over 100,000 miles
6. Using a standing desk is not only better for your general health and posture than sitting at one, it also burns more calories. The average person’s metabolic rate when sitting is around 80 calories an hour. How many extra calories per hour does standing at a desk burn?
a. 15 calories
b. 10 calories
c. 5 calories
7. When do our feet grow the fastest?
a. between birth and age 3
b. between ages 8 and 10
c. as teenagers
8. The world’s tallest man, Robert Wadlow, also holds the world record for the largest feet ever, wearing US size 37AA shoes. How many inches long were his shoes?
a. 12 inches
b. 18 and a half inches
c. 25 and a quarter inches
9. Which of these glamorous celebrities had/has US size 11 feet?
a. Jacqueline Kennedy
b. Uma Thurman
c. Audrey Hepburn
10. How old is the oldest shoe, discovered in a cave in Armenia?
a. 3,200 years old
b. 4,700 years old
c. 5,500 years old
ANSWERS:
1.c
Your body has 206 bones in total, 52 of which are found in your feet. There are also 33 joints, 107 ligaments, and 19 tendons and muscles in each foot.
2. true
Toenails also grow faster when you are pregnant and during your teenage years.
3.b
Of the other two answers, one is a genus of extinct flying reptile, and one we made up. Ask your dinosaur-mad children or grandchildren if you don’t know which is which!
4.b
No wonder we advise people to change their socks often when playing sports, etc! Also, kids’ feet sweat twice as much as adults, so it’s important they change their socks during the day too.
5. c
If you walk an average of 8k steps a day, every day, you’ll walk the equivalent of circling the globe four times during an average lifetime.
6.a
That may not seem a lot but that’s 15 x 6 = 90 extra calories burned in an average 6 hour day, or an additional 450 calories per five day working week, or over 21,000 additional calories in a working year (excluding five weeks of vacation).
7.a
Not a surprising answer for any parent who has tried to keep up with buying shoes for their young children! In these first three years, a child’s foot size can go up by an astounding NINE sizes. After the age of four, their feet change size every 9-12 months or so, often as part of a growth spurt.
8.b
18 and a half inches is 47 cm, just shy of half a metre! The current record holder (at time of writing) is Jeison Orlando Rodríguez Hernandez from Venezuela. His right foot measures 40.1cm long.
9.b.
Yes, this surprised us too! Jacqueline Kennedy had size 10 feet, and Audrey Hepburn size 10.5.
10c.
The ancient Areni-1 shoe is the equivalent of a Canada size 7 shoe. According to Wikipedia, “The shoe was found in near-perfect condition due to the cool and dry conditions in the cave and a thick layer of sheep dung which acted as a solid seal.”
