– Why do our face muscles tighten up when reacting to unpleasant/painful stimuli?
In: 0
It’s not just your face muscles that tighten up – most of your body does actually. This is the infamous fight or flight response that we’ve become accustomed to.
Your body tenses up because it’s gearing up to the olden days where pain or unpleasantness was usually an indicator of having to outrun a predator or fight for survival. So, in anticipation for such an event, your body “preps” its systems for go time.
Over time, this system actually gained even more function between animals to indicate behavior changes. Animals learned that other animals did this when in a certain situation, and thus we gained a further advancement from this adaptation.
You can see this in other mammals – which likely implies that we developed this from a shared common ancestor. Cats, for instance, in situations of danger will puff up their fur, stand up high and tense up. They’re getting ready to either brawl or take off, however, what they’re also doing is making the other animal aware of the incoming threat.
Now a days, this is usually not something we have to do deal with, but evolution hasn’t exactly caught up to our societal advancements. It’s like why you have goosebumps; as it all stems from the same principle.
Hope the answer was helpful 🙂 !
Latest Answers