Humans are bi-pedal animals who walk extensively over long distances. However our feet are soft and not well suited to the task. However dogs, monkeys, and other animals have paws that serve as shoes to protect the feet.
No other mammal has such unprotected - but we are known for walking the farthest distances / nomadic behavior. Is this a joke?
I want paw feet instead of shoes.
We do, we gain and then but lose them in the womb. They’re called volar pads
Walk barefoot, toughen up your feet. I prefer having thumbs and hands to paws.
I mean honestly this is the answer. I used to long board barefoot as a teenager and I also ran track. Often ran barefoot. By the time I was 16 I could walk on some glass without bleeding.
Yup! I didn’t wear shoes much when I lived at the beach and I got to the point where I could walk on hot asphalt or through broken glass without even noticing.
TBF, walking on glass is a fairly common sideshow trick
Your feet develop this texture if you walk barefoot a lot.
personal anecdote; I spent a year barefoot as a teen after dropping out of high school. The only time I had anything on my feet was orthodontist visits they said i couldn’t go on without flip flops but nowhere else cared.
After about a year of this the callous on the bottom of my feet was so thick i could walk a few hundred meters on summer asphalt without a break and once got a small square of windshield glass embedded in my foot and it just plucked right out and left a square hole, zero pain at all. The pads were about 3/4 cm thick at the ball of my foot and 1/2cm at the heel.
I did this after reading about this effect in a book and wanting to see if it was true and it really was!
edit: also if you try this i should mention that your feet pads turn black and are impossible to clean really just get to a less dark black. most other people find this offputting.
cw: gross, blood
Tap for spoiler
don’t read this part if you’re squeamish
I would often have to pick tiny rocks and slivers of metal out of my feet when I did this because I walked to my friends house all summer and there was no sidewalk so it was on the streets.
So i had my dad’s tools like these little snippers and needle nose pliers to grab the stuff and pull it out. So one day i’m like picking at my toe where the callous is really deep and I see something black embedded in it so I start digging for it. And damn this one is deeper than most I’m snipping into the toe deeper and deeper with the metal snippers and i can’t quite reach it and it’s starting to get to sensitive tissue.
And that’s when I snip some little blood vessel in my toe that i had mistaken for embedded road debris. Ooze not squirt so i suppose it was just a big old capillary but oof it hurt and was a mess and that was the end of my messing around with my feet I started wearing shoes and socks again after that!
Thank you for reading my barefoot memoirs 😂🦶
It’s just you. You’re weak, and soft, because you’ve been trained by society to wear shoes.
There are many people who never wear shoes, and they have tough soles. From indigenous tribes, to modern Olympic athletes.
That said, even your dog can step in sharps and hurt their feet; cuts, thorns, stabs - shoes provide protection that paws and tough soles do not; this is the main reason we wear footwear.
If you’re interested in a more back-to-nature approach without giving up extra protection, there are dozens of companies that sell minimalist footwear - in essence, modern moccasins. Vibram is one such, but there are many more. Fitkicks is a cheap version (~$20). Look for “active” and “water shoes.”
Sorry - not true. This dog lives on the couch and has barely set foot outside.
They come with paw feet naturally. I want that too, not to go harden my foot pads by walking on rocks and buying fancy nature shoes
Walk around barefoot and you’ll get calluses similar to what you want. The more shoes you wear, the fewer calluses you’ll get.
Alternatively, line your shoes with sandpaper and toss some gravel in there
As others have said, you wear shoes, keeping your feet soft. There was a time in my life I walked everywhere, and did it barefoot. My feet became pretty well calloused and protected, to the point I could walk on gravel no problem. Even hot pavement wasn’t too bad.
What life were you living where you walked a lot barefoot?
Not OP, but I didn’t wear shoes as a young man living in a beach town, surfing, and just chillaxing.
If they’re anything like my tree hugging mom, then just for kicks I guess.
Kicks without kicks.
And don’t get me started on keratinized dicks
Yes, please don’t start.
