Why does our anus have receptors for spicy stuff?
In: Biology
It doesn’t. The receptors “for spicy stuff” are your body’s regular detectors / receptors for actual literal temperature. Your whole skin is covered in them, and so is your digestive tract (including mouth, anus).
Capsaicin (the spicy chemical) is not a “flavour” that activates taste receptors. It activates your temperature receptors. “Hot” food feels “hot” because your brain is getting the exact same signal from temp receptors as if touching something physically hot. (That’s also why hot temp stacks with spiciness and they make each other worse, just activating more of the same receptors.)
It’s important for your mouth to know the temp of things (because cold water is safer to drink, too-hot food would burn your insides, etc), and capsaicin developed to hack this pathway and get felt as “hot”. So spicy food feels hot anywhere you have temp receptors. If you’ve eaten really hot wings or something, you know it’s not just your mouth and anus, the hot sauce will burn on your lips, face skin, anywhere it gets.
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