Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: vj_tu on 06/04/2006 12:06:27
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From CSI, a man who helped a murderer to cover the victim dead body usually puked , why is this so??
Investigators are likely to believe he's not a killer because he puked when he tried covering up the body!! Is this always the case??
Can anyone explain why one pukes?
Is it just a general idea of having seen a disguting scene as a signal and then is sent to the nervous system , which is then sent to the target organ which is a stomach and the response is to puke?
There must be some sort of advantage of throwing up, right?
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Personally, I cannot imagine that I would vomit from the sight of a corpse, although I could imagine feeling queasy from the smell – but then, some people can feel queasy merely from the sight of their own blood.
There are two things I can imagine that might have some meaning.
Firstly, in the wild, if you are in a group of people, and the person next to you fell down dead for no apparent reason, there would be a high probability that (s)he had been poisoned by something (s)he ate. Given that you and (s)he were probably eating similar foods in the recent past, then it might be wise to vomit up whatever it was you recently ate. This would certainly explain why the smell of someone else's vomit will trigger a sympathetic reaction, since the assumption is that if they have vomited up what they just ate, it might be safer for you to do the same, lest they both contain the same poison.
Another natural reaction is that many animals, when frightened and cornered, will either vomit or defecate. For an aggressor, seeking a nice piece of fresh raw meat for their meal, being covered in vomit or faeces was probably not what they had in mind as an hors d'oeuvre.
George
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Any intense emotional encounter can spark a number of fear related responses including vomiting. It could have it origins in a primitive survival tactic in closing down all unnecessary body functions before fighting or fleeing. It can be also a reaction the chemicals produced by the body to get ready for extreme action. Your response to a dead body may be that of your ancestors who assonated corpses with immanent and shocking death and extreme fear resulted in this.
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.