You can't tickle yourself in dreams, nor if induced to have an out of body experience Thinkstock. Windt recently performed a dream experiment that sounds like it came straight out of the movie Inception.
The subjects also tried to get other dream characters to tickle them; that too failed, sometimes because the other characters simply refused to be of service.
If all that seems a little esoteric, there could be practical reasons for picking apart the neural processes behind self-tickling. So attempts to break down that process in healthy people could, eventually, shed some light on the way it malfunctions during periods of mental illness.
Could robots one day be sentient enough to be ticklish? Self-tickling could even improve artificial intelligence, says Robert Provine, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. If so, a feather duster could provide a delightfully bizarre alternative to the famous Turing test for artificial intelligence in years to come: just aim for its extremities and see if it laughs.
With its beak wide open, it can also catch insects. Two star-like shapes on its snout make the star-nosed mole a very well-equipped hunter. The appendages around its nostrils — a total of 22 fleshy tentacles — are sensory organs.
With these it can examine 13 potential prey animals per second. We can't even look that fast! What sounds like a fantasy creature actually exists — in Australia. The platypus boasts a large, flexible beak with a leather-like surface.
A built-in snorkel is also included: its nostrils are on top. This allows the animal to dive underwater and breathe at the same time. Don't worry, as scary as it may appear, this vampire is vegetarian. The tufted deer prefers to graze at dusk. If it senses danger, it does something unusual: it barks. Deer do this to warn each other. While fleeing, they erect their white tail — an escape-signal among tufted deer.
This bird may look like a character from a comic, but the shoebill actually walks among us — in the swamps of central tropical Africa. It often stands motionless in the water and looks downward. When it detects prey, it strikes at lightning speed. With the hook at the top of its beak, it grabs its prey.
Even large lungfishes are swallowed up whole. With a body length of up to 10 meters, the basking shark is the second-largest fish in the world, after the whale shark.
This short delay of several hundred microseconds was enough to cause subjects to respond more strongly even when the subject was doing the tickling. Please update your payment details to keep enjoying your Irish Times subscription. Tickling yourself just doesn't work Mon, Sep 11, , Dick Ahlstrom.
Most Viewed. Watch More Videos. Coronavirus Explore our guides to help you through the pandemic. Latest News. Further studies using robots showed that the presence of a small delay between your own movement and the resulting tickle can make the sensation feel tickly. Indeed, the longer the delay, the more tickly it feels.
So it might be possible to tickle yourself, if you are willing to invest in a couple of robots! Answer originally posted Aug. Sign up for our email newsletter. Already a subscriber?
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