ost of us feel Tickle, M ticklish on tickle! Think about at least some part of b something else our body. But for many of us, Tense your muscles while it might make us laugh, the A experience of being tickled is not exactly enjoyable. Far from it. In fact, some people even have a tickle phobia. It’s called Anyway, wouldn’t it pteronophobia. Although that be amazing if you could sounds rather more like a fear of block the tickly feelings How do pterodactyls. of a tickle, stopping your evil tickler in their tracks? Well, you can. Want to you block know how? Thought a tickle? you might. your by

Distracting . Like the most focusinga onlittle something else might help boringly unfunnygranny’s thing younightie? can think of. Say, tidying your Or the weather forecast. wayOr theto prospect . ofHowever, best if that fails, room Place your hands on top the absolute why c of the tickler’s hands block a tickle requires and us to understandbrain a little about the Hold your breath and we feel ticklish in the d first place. 210 stick out your tongue 211 Have you ever noticed that you But what if you were to feel ticklish every can’t tickle yourself? time anything brushed against the tickly Try it. Doesn’t work, right? parts of your skin, even if it wasn’t a You see, for us to feel surprise? You’d fall about laughing every ticklish, our brain has to be time you put on your shoes and socks! To surprised. This makes prevent this, your brain blocks the tickly good . You see, back in feelings when it's your own hands doing the caveman days, a surprising tickling. As your hands move towards your body, feeling on our skin was likely to a part of your brain makes a prediction as have been a sneaky little creature to exactly how they are going to feel on your coming along to bite or sting or scratch own skin, which blocks your tickle response. us, or even infect us with a deadly disease. There weren’t any doctors or hospitals back then, so having tickly feelings helped us to react quickly to unexpected and potentially dangerous creatures, causing us to So when someone else flick them away. tickles you, all you have to do is to trick your brain into thinking that it’s your hands While we might have evolved a lot since then, like in doing the tickling. Simply place our ability to eat with a knife and fork and do algebra your hands on top of the (although perhaps not at the same time), many of our evil tickler’s hands while survival instincts still remain the same. they’re trying to tickle you. And this ancient survival response Your brain can now make a to tickly tormentors occurs in modern-day pretty good prediction as animals too. You might have seen a to how their hands will feel on horse give a good old shudder to your skin, as if they're your try and get rid of a tickly fly own hands. This removes the that’s landed on its back, or element of surprise . . . a nd flick the irritating insect . . . bingo! No more tickly off with its tail. feelings. 212 213 Interestingly if you tickle your baby sister she probably won’t know it’s you who is tickling The answer is C her. Until the age of about To block a tickle, simply 6 months, babies certainly feel tickly feelings but they don’t place your hands on top realise the feelings are coming from of the tickler’s the outside world. So if you hands. tickle her toes she might Squeak! By the way, gurgle a bit but she’ll there is ONE place probably just where you can tickle think that yourself – can you find her foot has it? The roof of your randomly mouth. Try it. Did started to feel you squeal?! all funny.

Being ticklish is not just a survival response to protect us from harm. Other than us humans, few a . When tickled on their backs There is a also a rather different animals are programmed to and bellies, not only jump with type of tickle that exists to make get this kind of pleasure from glee, but they even let out high- us laugh – releasing feel-good tickling. It makes sense that chimps, pitched squeaks of pleasure. A sort hormones such as oxytocin gorillas and orangutans – being our of ratty giggle. Perhaps we should call that make us feel all soft and closest living relatives it a riggle?! And when the tickling squishy, helping us to bond – quite like the odd tickle. But stops, the riggling rats chase their with our tickler. Assuming you bizarrely the only other animal that tickler’s hand around their cage, as if actually like them enough to not seems to enjoy being tickled is . . . begging to be tickled again! mind being tickled by them. 214 215 Apart from amusing rats or tormenting your little sister, mastering the art of So check in with your tickle-buddy first, tickling can have its uses. For example if you wanted to catch a lobster. and please listen if they say stop. It Obviously. Lobster-hunters in the South Florida waters encourage spiny might look like they're laughing their lobsters out of their holes by tapping them gently, just behind their tail, head off, but tickling activates a part using what’s known as a tickle stick. The poor unsuspecting lobsters think of the brain that causes smile-like they’re being attacked from behind and movements of the face, even if the scuttle forwards, straight into person isn't actually happy. the fishermen’s nets. This is fun! So, you can’t assume that they’re enjoying it. Weird eh? No wonder it’s a trying to convince your tickler that you’re not really having fun.

Speaking of pain, did you know that there’s a part of your body that can’t feel any pain? Whilst tickling might be a good don’t like being tickled. In Yes, that’s right, you way to catch lobsters, and fact it can make them feel see the skin on can help strengthen our pretty scared. Especially close relationships, please don’t if you’re bigger and your . . . go around tickling all your friends stronger than them. willy-nilly. Unless of course Tickling was even used as it's to teach them the tickle-block a form of torture during trick. You see, some people really World War II.

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