The Facts on Goosebumps
Whether you get them when you’re cold, scared, or excited, everyone has experienced goosebumps, also known as goose pimples or goose flesh. But why do they happen and are they even necessary?
Before we get into its necessity, why are they called goosebumps in the first place?
Well, if you’ve ever seen a featherless goose, chicken, or bird, you’ll notice their skin has similar bumps. Clearly whoever named goosebumps wasn’t that creative unless you’re looking at the medical terms for it.
New Game Show: Naked Goose or Human?
Horripilation, piloerection, cutis anserina, and the pilomotor reflex are all medical terms referring to goosebumps and medical students everywhere are hoping one day they won’t have so many words for a useless reflex.
The truth is we don’t actually need goosebumps, it’s a leftover evolutionary trait. Scientists believe goosebumps were useful to our ancestors long ago but we’ve overcome the problems they had when it was needed.
Take the cold, each of your hair follicles has tiny muscles called arrector pili muscles that pop up in order to raise the hair on your body, this traps a layer of heat within the hair. Seeing as we developed fire and then clothing, we evolved to lose all that extra hair we carried around… well most of us have.
But what about when we’re scared, why did our ancestors need their hair to puff up? For that, we look at other animals who have the same pilomotor reflex and you don’t have to look far.
Cats, dogs, porcupines, and other animals use this reflex when scared to make themselves appear larger to predators. Our ancestors most likely had the same reflex just in case there was something coming for us.
“No really, I’m huge!”
Finally, why does being excited cause us to get goosebumps sometimes?
This can be simply explained by our very complicated nervous system. Those little muscles I mentioned before are connected to your sympathetic nervous system AKA the involuntary nervous system which, in simple terms, is associated with other emotions, such as excitement, pride, amazement, arousal, and also fear.
While it seems somewhat simple, there’s still research going on into why we have goosebumps in the first place since we really can’t ask our ancestors but who knows, in the future having goosebumps may only be a thing of the past.
Quick Facts
It’s thought one of the origins of the term “quitting cold turkey” is the result of goosebumps being a common side effect of withdrawal.
Besides the reasons mentioned above, there are a few other reasons you might have unwanted goosebumps, usually related to illnesses such as the flu. You might also get them from a spinal cord injury as that can affect your nervous system and a harmless skin condition called keratosis pilaris.
Pic for ‘Naked Goose or Human’ is a human
