Goosebumps are one of those things, like the taste of your own spit or those weird noises your belly makes after you eat spicy food, that is so intrinsically part of our bodies you kind of forget how weird it is. But it is , right? You get a bit cold, or creeped out, and your body reacts by going all bumpy? What’s the point in that?

Well, it’s actually quite interesting.

What are goosebumps, anyway?

If you’re a doctor, or just kind of a nerd, you’ll know the phenomenon not as “goosebumps”, but as “ cutis anserine ” – it may sound smart, but it’s literally just Latin for “goose skin”, so evidently the medical crowd aren’t as fancy as they pretend. Alternatively, there’s “horripilation”, or the somewhat spicier “piloerection”, which references the arrector pili muscles – the tiny, smo

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