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Asked by 472curm52 to K, Hazel on 13 Mar 2018.
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K Sasitharan answered on 13 Mar 2018:
There are certain types of muscles at the base of each hair in our body. These muscles are called, ‘pilli muscles’. When our body faces a fight or flight situation like danger, fear, cold temperature exposure etc. these pilli muscles contract. the contraction of these muscles leads to the standing up of the hair. This pulling up of hair is what looks like goosebumps.
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Hazel Gibson answered on 14 Mar 2018:
Yes indeed I do! The reason this happens is a hangover from when we as a species had thicker hair all over our body. When we feel cold, muscles at the base of the hairs cause them to stand up on end instead of lying flat like they usually do. With animals that have a thicker hairy coat this works great to make them warmer, because the fluffed up hair thickens the layer of insulating warm air trapped in the fur, between the air and your skin. Think of birds, like pigeons, in the winter. You have probably seem them sitting with their feathers all fluffed up when it’s cold, because their feathers do the same thing – when they are fluffed out the layer of warmer air trapped in the feathers helps keep them warmer too. Unfortunately goosebumps are pretty useless to us for that purpose now as our hair isn’t long enough to trap an insulating layer of air anymore.
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