"Numbers don't have significant leading zeroes" is a rather daring statement. I guess you mean 'the western format of cardinal real numbers includes no leading zeroes,' but that assumes you are speaking of cardinal numbers, which are just some of them. 01033 is as much of a number as 1033.

Sorry for being nitpicky but do not confuse numbers with their representations. You would be amazed at the weird representations humans have used along history.