Why the Heck Are We Ticklish?

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I’ve explained a lot of weird bodily functions on this show but there’s one that we haven’t covered that’s always confused me: Tickling. What are you for, tickling? What’s the point of you? Why do you exist? Why do you make us laugh even though we hate you? Let’s dig into our evolutionary past to try and find an answer.

References:

Laughing, tickling, and speech http://untiredwithloving.org/dhahak.pdf
Pathogenic laughter https://n.neurology.org/content/64/12/2154.short
Tickling review http://charris.ucsd.edu/articl....es/Harris_EHB2012.pd
Darwin-Hecker http://charris.ucsd.edu/articles/Harris&Christenfeld_CE1997.pdf
Early thoughts https://www.jstor.org/stable/1....411471?seq=1#page_sc
Neural correlates of laughter https://academic.oup.com/cerco....r/article/23/6/1280/
Neural correlates of laughter https://academic.oup.com/brain..../article/126/10/2121 Experience of pleasure https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6877978
Tickling and laughter https://www.sciencedirect.com/....science/article/pii/
Ticklish rats https://science.sciencemag.org..../content/354/6313/75
Social laughter and pain https://royalsocietypublishing.....org/doi/full/10.109


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