Why Are We Ticklish?

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Our reaction to be tickled may be nature's way of encouraging self defence training from an early age.

BrainCraft was created by Vanessa Hill (@nessyhill) and is brought to you by PBS Digital Studios. Talking psychology, neuroscience & why we act the way we do.

A big thank you to Anna from Gross Science, Kelsey from Infinite Series and Jacklyn from SciJoy for being tickled for this episode.

And thanks to Deep Look for their epic mosquito shot:    • How Mosquitoes Use Six Needles to Suck You...  

Hosted, Animated and Produced by Vanessa Hill 🤺
Written by Teagan Wall   / teagwall  

References 🗂

European fMRI study:
Wattendorf, E., Westermann, B., Fiedler, K., Kaza, E., Lotze, M., & Celio, M. R. (2013). Exploration of the neural correlates of ticklish laughter by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Cerebral Cortex, 23(6), 1280-1289. https://academic.oup.com/cercor/artic...

Tickling Rats: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.physbe...

‘‘Laughing’’ rats and the evolutionary antecedents of human joy: http://caspar.bgsu.edu/~courses/Readi...

YouTube clips 💻
Chimpanzee:    • tickle session.avi  
Penguin:    • Penguin laughs when tickled.... Cute and f...  
Owl:    • Tickling a Pygmy Owl  
Meerkat:    • Видео