Symmetry is useful for locomotion. It’s an easy way to get backup instances of things. By “easy” I mean it doesn’t take much “code” to accomplish for the value it produces.

When something is more valuable and “cheaper”/“easier” requiring less code to set up, it’s more likely to be selected for.

Basically, evolution produces organisms that work well in the environment, mainly by the environment trimming off the ones that don’t work there.

Well it turns out you can achieve all sorts of forward locomotion just by having two mirror copies of a thing and moving the mirror copies in an off-phase rhythm. Once you’ve got that back-and-forth timing, your body just needs to tend forward and suddenly you’re mobile.

Let’s look at it another way. One requirement for mobility is a direction. You can’t move without moving in a direction. A direction is a line. You can create movability by varying an organism’s form along the line of travel. The introduction of additional lines dilutes the motion-enabling asymmetry across multiple vectors.

The body form that concentrates the most variation along a single line is bilateral symmetry. Radial symmetry diffuses that variation across multiple lines, and hence doesn’t create motion.

I know I’m being really, really abstract here, but it’s a concrete fact of motion and geometry. Let me take another stab at summarizing why bilateral symmetry enable motion:

• simplest one-line directional geometry is actually radially symmetric. Think of a coke bottle or a flower. It has a line.
• bilateral symmetry actually has a plane, leading to more diffusion of aim
• but bilateral symmetry makes neural control easier: your signal just has to be A-B-A-B-A-B… . Left, right, left, right, etc
• With your radially symmetric form you need signaling like: A-B-C-D-E-A-B-C-D-E-A-B… . Like tuning the cylinders on a turboprop engine. This is how flagella move: in a corkscrew shape. It’s hard to coordinate.

Shit I’m just making it more complex. Bilateral symmetry gives you a nice combination of directionality (enforced by the way gravity squishes that plane down into a line of movement).

This is why you see more bilateral symmetry as organisms get larger: gravity requires asymmetric designs to be stable across the gradient. You see those circular-firing motility types at a more micro scale, where the effect of gravity is smaller. That radially-symmetric torpedo-sperm-flower-coke bottle shape needs to be in a well-organized circle in order for its thrust to not send the organism off on a crazy tangent, or best case traveling on an inefficient helical path. And even if the path is helical, that will only tend in a straight line, ie toward a target, if it’s not being distorted by gravity.

So the microscopic realm, where gravity is more negligible, you see more organisms that use a helical strategy for motion.

As gravity gets more primary, at larger scales, you start getting shapes like fish that always keep one side up and another side down. And the way the fish moves, despite having variation top to bottom as well as front to back, is by having no variation left to right. That lack of left-right variation allows the complementary action of its left and right to balance out to a straight line.

Following the A-B-A-B firing pattern, the fish moves its tail back and forth and achieves forward motion.

I hope that helped at least a bit. I know it was convoluted.

Once most societies decided to use a base 10 counting system, evolutionarily it just made the most sense to have a corresponding number of digits to help with maths.

The wikipedia article Polydactyly in stem-tetrapods has some explanations on how we ended up with 5 fingers and toes.

The gist of it is that tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrate animals) evolved from a fish similar to a lobe-finned fish that had 5 sets of bones in each of its fins that evolved into fingers and toes. Some tetrapods have subsequently lost digits but the basal state was five.

There’s a book, Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin that’s full of this kind of stuff. Highly recommend.

Some people do have 6.

Why 6??? Why not 5???

But seriously, let me make the case for 5.

To grip anything you need at least two. But two digits will give you an unstable pincer-like grip so let’s call 3 the true minimum. So we need a minimum of 3 but our control and precision is improved with another one. And it’s a good idea to have a backup in case one gets injured, so that brings us to 5. Five is more than we honestly need and evolution budgets very strictly, which is why you already see finger #5 shrinking in size so it costs less resources over your lifetime. It truly is there just as a backup.

Now forget all that because it’s bullshit. 5 digits was established in our ancestor organisms before gripping things even came about with the opposable thumb. So what were those organisms doing with digits? Walking on them. There are two styles of walking tool: paw and hoof. The paw has flexible digits that help mold the step to the shape of the ground for maximum stability and traction. As a bonus you also get some sensory feel. Hoofs go the other way: a hard and durable shoe that will compress the soft ground or catch on hard surfaces. Organisms that run fast and far tend to have hooves because they aren’t picking their path super carefully and durability is the most important thing. Predators tend to have paws because they ARE picking their paths with great precision and they need to walk carefully, sometimes with stealth, and be able to build up their traction for a spring.

So if you’re going to design a paw with flexible digits that can mold to the ground, how many digits should it have? A single digit is no better than a hoof. Two points on the ground form a line which is tippy and still not stable yet. You need the third minimally to form a triangle that’s stable. Now control and flexibility to match uneven ground surface will increase with a fourth. And it makes sense to have a backup in case one digit is damaged, so you have five. However, fine control isn’t as important for paws as our hands, so the added value of fine control and having a backup adds up to a less, and evolution budgets very strictly, so you see digit number 5 fading from pawed organisms, and already vestigial in many. You could consider the “palm” of the paw to be a digit that works in tandem with the others, though, which gets us back to 5. Five really does seem to be an inevitable number, doesn’t it.

That should cover it. Be sure to drink water before bed.

Nice try, AI image generator!