You’re also not drinking a lot of fluid at a time, and it’s in motion so spreads the heat across more tissue. Spills are bigger and don’t go anywhere so all the heat is dumped in one place. Take a huge gulp of a hot beverage, hold it in your mouth, and you will rapidly notice you have burned your mouth.
The tissues are different, both in terms of nerve-endings and thickness. Furthermore, there’s saliva in your mouth (hopefully) that coats your throat and cheeks. Also, our oral orifices go thru a different kind of repetitive abuse than most areas on our bodies, but if we abused other parts of our skin, they too would lose sensitivity (think martial artists with calluses and grandmas that have burnt the shit out of their fingers over and over).
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