What are Goosebumps? Why do we get Goosebumps?

Before we discuss, what are Goosebumps? let me ask this question, do you believe in ghosts? Well some people do and some people don't. The reality is that you can't prove that they exist and you can't prove that they don't exist, so it's still a mystery. I remember when last time I watched a horror movie, it wasn't that good but there was a scene and while watching that scene, my entire body got goosebumps like very badly. In a scene that you knew something very bad was going to happen and it was almost like a warning that it's coming.

Why we get Goosebumps?

The important question arises as to why we get goosebumps? When a real or even a virtual threat is posed, a key part of brain called 'Amygdala' sends signal to brain's control system known as 'Hypothalamus' which in turns tells the nerves embedded in skin to release a hormone called 'Norepinephrine' which speeds up the heart beat and command 'Arrector Pili', very tiny muscles beneath the outer layer of skin, to contract until the hormone supply shuts down, causing the external hairs to erect and hence goosebumps happen.

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Word 'Goosebumps' origin

The word goosebumps comes from the look of the bird when you remove the feathers. Have you ever noticed that when cats or dogs get frightened or terrified, their hair looks a little bit bigger and that's because of the goosebumps. It's almost like if while hiking, you see some mountain line or some crazy animal you're supposed to make yourself look as big as possible in a way like if you mess with me you're going to get hurt, don't mess with me, causing fear in the other party but as a survival mechanism it could have been used to make us look a little bit bigger because if we had hair and our hair grows up in size it makes it a little bit bigger and therefore may help us survive that's a theory on why there's goosebumps but it applies to animals .

Conclusion

I do think there is one purpose that goosebumps do serve and it has to do with that scary movie I saw. I knew something bad was going to happen and I got the goose bumps. It's like intuition that our inner voice talking to us saying, okay get the hell out of here this is not good, so I do think it serves a purpose.
Another question that you might be wondering is to see if you can control goosebumps and can turn them on and off with will and if so how do you do that and that would be really cool. If you do know how to do that and it worked for you please share in the comments section.