How Tickling Works

the groundhog Roscoe Pete, Colecrane, Coltrane. But yeah, is that the Georgia guy? No, that's um general generally, right? Yeah? Where is Roscoe? The one in Pennsylvania? Now that's Paul, that's right, Pucks and Tawny, Phil Puny Phil, Paul Tucket. I think that's that's just some that's just some crazy guy. And Paul Tucket. That's Paul Tucket, Pete. This is the best start ever. Yeah, it is because none of this has anything to do with what we're fixing to talk about.

Springs around the corner. That just tickles me to death. That's not no. Have you heard Chuck of a guy named and I'm sorry that I just shamed you on our podcast. It wasn't that bad. I've heard way worse. We've listened to tech stuff. That's right. Have you heard of a guy named Robert Waller? Uh? It sounds familiar, but I always say no and end up saying it doesn't know you have not heard of this guy. I

would be very surprised if you had. Robert Waller in n was a Walmart employee, uh stalker apparently at the UM Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada store. Okay, okay. December was a big month for a new toy that had just debut called Tickle Me Elmo, and uh, Robert Waller was about to find out the links that people would go to to get their hands on one of these um

on December fourteenth during a midnight madness sale. Apparently Walmart had sold out of these things, but that hadn't dissuaded customers from basically roving the Walmart impacts looking for him. Exactly behind stuff is knocking stuff over and they see Waller accepting a box of these from another employee, and they went after him. But really he suffered. Uh. He was pulled under, trampled the crotch was yanked out of his brand new jeans. Uh, he suffered a pulled hamstring.

Back up a second. They physically tore the crotch from his jeans trying to get to this trying to get their hands on a tickle me a like exactly. Yeah, but if there's like three people pulling in the same spot, it's pretty easy their strengthened numbers. Um. But so he was just swallowed by this pack of three people who who were trying to get to these tickle me almost. He suffered injuries to his back, his jaw, and his knee and uh, he suffered a broken rib and a concussion.

Not funny, No, it wasn't funny. And we can assume that Mr Waller, ironically, in the course of giving over these tickle me almost was in no way, shape or form tickled. No, and that he probably didn't laugh because, as we know, tickling is related to laughter, as anybody who has seen it tickled me elmo. Yeah, yeah, but have you stopped and wondered why we laugh when we tickle? I know you have, because you've asked me before you

said we should do this, you know. As a side note, I read this awesome article in The New Yorker last week about crowd trampling and crushes and crowd waves and stuff. We should do a podcast on that. We talked about it in UM Riot Control Them. I yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really interesting stuff. And sad I agree, and that they wrote this one because of the Walmart incident last year at Black Friday. Somebody died at that one. There's no tickle me almost, so I couldn't use it, but

I saw that in my right screen TVs. I think we're the culp for that. That is so messed up. What is wrong with people? I don't know? And Black Friday deals everybody and he knows they've gotten increasingly suck here in this economy. Oh man, all right, so that was a little sidetrack. Sorry about that, Josh, No, that was the intro. Let's no, I mean, my little New Yorker thing. Let's get back to happier. Well, we we have a question before us. Why do people laugh when

we're tickled? This has been around for a very very long time. People have pondered this kind of thing, right, Um, Sir Francis Bacon said that, Um, you don't necessarily have to be in a good mood in the seventeenth century, Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon was like, I'm I'm neutral on this subject um and then uh, Darwin was huge about tickling. He did a lot of studying of tickling. I didn't

know that until I read this. He concluded that you have to be in a pretty good mood to be tickled, that you have to be in the right frame of mind, because both both um, tickling and laughter require a good mood. He was wrong, and tickling and laughter are linked. We'll get into that. But it's a question that very smart people have explored and failed to explain, and we're not going to explain it in this podcast Chalk. We're just not this was I wrote this. By the way, I

want to apologize to you. I wrote this in like within a couple of months of getting here, and I was just out to prove myself and this is not my finest article. I confused myself when I went back and read parts of this. Can I can I read a sentence allowed written by your hand? Yeah, A gentle kiss can create physical arousal. So let's talk about what's the what's the physiology of tickling? Is that what you

wanted to do. Yeah, let's talk about touch. You have millions, we all have millions of nerve endings, little tiny ones um under our skin that tell our brain when touch

is coming or you know, something or something cold. That's how like it sends alerts like get your hand off the stuff, that kind of thing, right, that's one of the waves we survive exactly when they are stimulated, um by something like a light touch, which is called what it's called nismesas K N I M E S I S And that's um G. Stanley Hall and Arthur Allen who decided that there's really just two categories of tickles.

Light tickling, right like say by a feather, very light touch, and then um heavy tickling, which by the way, is the only one that can induce laughter, which is called called gargolesis is not very good name for it. Now. So a light touch, let's say it sends a message through the nervous system. It goes to a couple of

regions in the brain. Josh to help us along, called this so mattisensory cortex is right, and that analyzes touch and pressure, and then the interior singulated cortex governs pleasant feelings. So you put touch pleasant feelings together and your brain is going to calculate tickle and laughter maybe. So there you go. Well, that's that's the physiology of tickling as far as we know, and and anybody who's actually saying attention to that little spiel, your ears should have perked up,

because it's fairly incomplete. We we gathered this information from the Wonder Machine f m r I. You and I both loved the Wonder Machine, but we both know that humans aren't fully capable of using it to its full potential yet, and therefore it doesn't fully prove anything. It

just suggests everything. Let's just give a brief primer in the m r I. Okay, a d chuck, it's a fancy machine lights up and basically shows you what regions of the brain are activated when you're doing introducing certain stimula right, and by activated we mean like that they're suddenly getting more oxygen supply via blood than they had before. So there's a correlation. But the m r I doesn't show causation. Although it's a lot of people say, oh, well, the m r I shows this, so that's it's not

it shows causation or correlation, not causation. Well, it also correlated in this case why we can't self tickle because the cerebellum says, hey, body, your fingers approaching your arm it and you know it's coming. And supposedly, if you know it's coming, you're not gonna be tickled. And people as far back as Aristotle have wondered why, and he supposed that, yeah, that's probably it, like you know it's coming.

The thing is it doesn't. That doesn't fully explain it, because think about it, like when somebody comes to you like bor it totally does what what? But that doesn't mean that this is incorrect. The cerebellum is responsible for recognizing motion, not just in yourself but in others. So what they found is, for some reason, just based on m R S, when you're doing it to yourself, the

cerebellum is less active. Basically, what they surmise is that your brain is judged that something totally insignificant is about to happen, so don't pay any attention to it. Let's just keep looking out for you know, antelopes to jump on our tigers that are coming at us. You know what that's called what sensory attenuation. Yes, and that's when the brain filters out. Like you said, anything unnecessary true to I wonder, though I read this, I wonder if

someone with alien hands syndrome could tickle themselves. I would think wholeheartedly because your brain doesn't know what's going on and why because of an accident. Generally with alien hand syndrome, your brain isn't receiving the message that your arm is moving. Right, That's true. So I guess, yeah, I don't see why

you wouldn't be able to tickle yourself. So I guess one thing, one idea for um that explains ticklishness, or the fact that we are ticklish, Um is supported or supports the idea or the reason why we can't tickle ourselves because it's insignificant, right um. And one idea why we are ar ticklish and why we tickle others is because it's a product of socialization and a tool of it too. Right, Well, you're talking about Darwin Hecker. Yes,

uh e wall Hecker with Darwin Um. Like you said, they they hooked up together and said you have to be in a good mood. But that's sort of been disproven. I'm not sure how they did these studies, though, they said that they would get people to watch like stand up comedy and get them laughing, and they found that they were no more likely to laugh when being tickled. I don't know about that, because if you're in a really bad mood and someone tries to tickle you, that's

not working. No, that's not necessarily true. If you get a UM, if you're tickled by means of gargo Lisa's tickle, like tickling or laughter is involuntary. If you're ticklish and somebody gets you in the right spot, you can not be in the right frame of mine and you'll still like laugh and be ticklish. Yeah, no, no, no, and then we'll think about it. If you were ticklish, Chuck, I can suppose that. Okay, I'm sure you've seen people

being tickled before. Like if your next being tickled, your shoulders draw up and like your hands go up and you're you're trying to push the person off of you, right, yeah, Or someone goes at your armpit, you you know, swat them away with a wax off exactly. Um. Well, one thing he goes that we um are basically taught that these are very vulnerable places in our bodies and that we need to protect them. Yeah, that makes sense to me, Like the neck especially, Yeah, there's a lot of important

chunk in there. Yeah, and it's not even tickling with the neck. If someone comes at your neck, you're just natural responses hunch up your shoulders and like grab their hand or something. Somebody comes at you with the judo chop. So this goes back to when we were cave people, right, and vulnerable spots on your body where you could bleed out you want to protect. Now this, uh, this doesn't necessarily go toward that explanation, but what you're talking about

being in caves. Yes, this is extremely ancient, and that that's that's proven. We're suggested by the fact that all great apes um laugh when they tickle when they're tickled, right, little bona bows, and that's just that orangutange pretty much all of like the smarty pants primates, right, have the ability to laugh, and they laugh in different ways, but basically what it is it's a panting sound, right, right, So that goes to show us that you know, we

diverged from apes ten to sixteen million years ago. If apes can laugh and we can laugh, that means we both came. We both laughing is older than that divergence, see what I'm saying, unless we evolved it naturally afterward, but that's less likely I think then it occurring in such an ancient way. It's that Also the idea that is even older than that divergence, um shows up in the fact that we're ats laugh when they're tickled. Yeah, and that's so cute. Did you sell the video to

see the video they studied? Uh, sure, more than one person has done this, but Jake pant Skep of Bowling Green State University, that's my brother Falcons. They tickled rats and they found out they have a little chirp that um it's ultrasonic. Humans can't even hear it, but they, you know, were able to record this. And not only do they chirp when tickled, but they have a similar reaction that you were talking about earlier, like a little kid.

Once they got used to the tickling, if you started coming at the little rap with your little fingers, they started chirping and wiggling around and throw themselves on their back and in anticipation. But it's also that same study and video suggests that it's it's play as well, because when the person stopped um tickling, he just put his hand in the cage and the rats would run after it in circles. Wherever he moved his hand, they'd go after it like they wanted to play tickle. See that's

a rat study. I can get behind tickling rats. I'll do that all day long. Yes, So let's talk about some of the parts of the body though, because like the soles of the feet. Let's say, Uh, you walk on these not exactly vulnerable, No, not vulnerable. You walk on these heavy plotting every day. Uh. You would think that a light tickle would tickle the feet, and they do. But if you press a palm, like really hard against the sol your foot, it would not tickle. That's all

true because of the Meisner's corpuscles. Corpuscles, corpuscles, they're very, very sensitive, and I get the indication that they're more sensitive than other areas of the body. Right, And the soles of the feet are loaded with these things. Again, no one has any idea why. And the fact that the soles of your feet, which aren't very vulnerable, especially pre shoe you know, pretty tough feet, when when there was such a thing as shoes, right, yet the feet

were still understandably ticklish. Probably um. It kind of undermines that idea that it's it's um socialization of the vulnerable parts of your body. It doesn't make any sense, right, but that is why your feet while you don't tickle, While your feet aren't tickled whenever you walk, that pressure is different. Whatever. It could be a much different world everyone would have like balloons and stuff. What um. What I couldn't figure out though, is how it's tied to laughter.

You want to know why you couldn't figure it out because it's not proven. No one has any idea. We just know that there it's involuntary. We know that it's not related to mood. We know that um not a light touch. That light touch, the nismesis can actually it can be arousing or it can be annoying, like a fly buzzing on you. That doesn't that doesn't cause laughter. You see a horse or a cow like whacking flies off of their hind d right, So that's why we

have that touch. But it can also be arousing, and it's consider a type of tickle. It's the gargo Lisa's tickle that's laughter inducing. But we don't understand why. Another evolutionary biology theory is that um, it's a benign form of human conflict, so we can get our aggressions out without actually causing any hurt feelings and the laughter UM shows that it's all fine and dandy and nobody's really upset.

But that's that's undermined by the idea that you can really upset a person by tickling them for a prolonged period past the point where they don't want to be tickled any longer. They can be kind of upset. Yeah, as a as a younger brother, you know this. Yeah, Well my sister actually her husband who was the boyfriend you know, years ago, used to tickle her like crazy, and you know, I got out of hand, she get angry. Tickle torture, Yeah, that's exactly what I didn't. That is

that a thing. It's the thing I looked at, tickle torture, which I always thought was like medieval Apparently it's either Chinese tickle torture, Indian tickle torture, some exotic land tacked onto the front um. Apparently it may have been used in medieval Europe as a form of torture. UM bring up right. Nowadays it's used as a form of um torture in a very sexual way. Um, at least as far as Daily Motion is concerned. Um. But that that kind of brings up something or brings us back to Darwin.

Darwin suggested that we tickle, and he probably has the most elegantly simple explanation. We tickle because we form social bonds. Yeah, if somebody you don't know it tickles you, that's an attack. If somebody you do know and you feel comfortable with tickles you, it's intimacy. Whether it's parental or sibling or you know, the creation of or the strengthening of bonds between like sexual partners. It's like you said, it's intimate. Interesting.

I wonder if the fact that it's uh, we retreat or react because we're afraid of an attack, and if if if it's the same with apes and rats, if that holds true for them as well, Like it's in a benign attack for them. Yeah. Well yeah, because they were talking about the apes like playing like they do it during play, and the rats seem to take it as play as well. Interesting, But what that is useful for we don't really know, or maybe we do know we're looking too deeply into it. We should do one

on laughter period. Yes, I agreed, All right, let's do one. Be a good one. Um. I guess the answer to the question, then, Chuck, is we don't know why people laugh when tickled. That's disappointing. It's a little disappointing. But we'll come back to it when we be figured out.

Well maybe we will one day. Okay, So if you want to learn more about how we don't have any idea why we laugh when we tickle, you can read this really kind of bad article I wrote um years back, and you can read it by a writing in laugh and tickle in the search bar at how stuff works dot com, which will bring up that article, and which brings up listener mail Josh. I'm gonna call this, uh kind of a mean thing to do, but we're the funny as well a munch Housen's um email. Uh. Now,

how to Control a riot? This is from Eric with the k Hey guys, hello stuff. You should know staff like we have a staff. It's me, you and Jerry, that's staff. I listened to how to Control a Riot and you spoke of mob mentality. It brought to mind a game that my friends and I used to play when I was in the Disney College program. So that

was pretty good. If we were sitting around the apartment with nothing to do for the day, um, a group of friends would go into a Disney park until it was time to drink, so I guess you had pretty much free access to the Disney Park if you win this college program. We would get ten or more people together and stand in a line. The line would be in front of a wall or a fence, away from any entrance or exit. It is really funny to see more and more people get in line behind the group

of friends. The best part is when at the same time the group just disperses at the same time, like the original people would just leave, and all of a sudden, there's people standing in line. We're like, why are we standing by a wall? What was this here? Form? The buffudded look on their faces would really crack us up. I admit this is not the nicest thing in the world, wasting part of people's day at Disney, and I still get a chuckle though when I think of it. It's

funny to me. Now you just go with the flow. I grouped this in with face the wrong way and an elevators something he does. It's very off putting. I just oh yeah, I do it all the time, but I don't do it to annoy people. I do because I'm like talking to people. Oh well yeah sure, but yeah, I know. I don't just stand there with strangers usually, I knee can't people who do that. You guys are

the greatest. Is Eric with a k? All right, well thanks a lot, Eric for with the k. Look for your kneecapping if we're ever in an elevator together, or if you're standing by a wall from coming after you, buddy. Yes. Uh. If you have any stories about Disney, we want to hear about them, especially the gnarly uh seedy underbelly Disney, like it's Disney jail. Yeah and I heard it. There's just a whole underground under the entire park. That's the rumored with mutants. Yeah. Uh, Well, we want to hear

your Disney stories. Please don't send us any heartwarming, heart felt ones that we can just find those anywhere. Send us your CD Disney stores and an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is It how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has a arrive. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the

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