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In: Biology
What is the purpose of vomiting? To expel potential poisons or materials that carry disease that you may have ingested. Things that trigger nausea are things that are likely to involve tainted food, disease risk, or experiences that come with being poisoned.
For example, motion sickness occurs because there are some toxins that cause your inner ear to feel like you’re moving even when you’re not; so when your eyes and your inner ear disagree about whether or not you’re moving, your body decides that you might have been poisoned, and throws up just in case.
Seeing other people throw up makes you want to throw up because we’re communal animals and there’s a decent chance you ate the same thing those around you did; if they’re throwing up, maybe you should too.
Rotting food? Probably contains disease.
Fresh poop? The same.
Etc. etc.
Sometimes we might throw up from stuff that doesn’t seem immediately connected to that. Such situations might have a direct connection to eating bad stuff that just isn’t obvious at the time, or it might come from your mind somehow subconsciously connecting stuff to bad things (for example, a big ol’ ball of earthworms is completely innocuous, but it might remind you of maggots writhing inside a dead animal, thus triggering the vomit reflex).
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