Goosebumps
Posted by Ruth on March 15, 2003
Q: Why do we not get goosebumps on our face?
A: To begin with, not all hairs have muscles (called arrector pili) attached. For the most part, it is the areas of thickest body hair that have these muscles, and many of human facial hairs are extremely tiny and not thick. Although I've never seen goosebumps on someone's face, they can occur on our head - as when something scary makes your scalp "crawl". Since goosebumps, or an ability to raise our body hairs, serves to both keep us warmer and make us look larger to others, having this ability on our face just doesn't seem necessary for humans.
May I suggest that if you have a pet cat or dog at home you try to get a good look at it if it is frightened or cold and see if it dfoes or doesn't raise its facial hairs. Since dogs and cats have so much more hair on their bodies, maybe they CAN raise their facial hairs - I'm not sure. Anyway, it's worth an effort to find out.
John Wiessinger ( March 21, 2003)