What is the mechanism of crying? Why do we cry when we are sad? Like laughing, I don't think any other animal does it, but it could be because humans are the only animals with brains developed enough to feel sorrow deep enough to induce crying. What were the evolutionary benefits of developing this strange involuntary reaction? And why do we cry when we are happy? Crying is strange. Would a severely dehydrated man be able to cry?
Everyone has different thresholds for crying: some cry at the drop of a hat; others only cry once in their lifetime, like at their mother's funeral. As well, different people are made to cry by different sorts of sad situations. Saddam Hussein could witness a genocide and not shed a tear, but then his pet cat might accidentally fall into its bowl of milk, and then perhaps the old tyrant would burst into tears. Of course, he's dead now, so we'll never know.
2 comments:
I've always thought of tear ducts as exhaust ports for releasing buildups of emotion-related chemicals... for heavy-duty jobs that require immediate dumping at the source... i.e. get that crap out of the brain immediately or it's going to explode!
I have no idea how that shit works.
i was just thinking about this the other day. my only thought was - crying is caused by pain, and pain might be caused by getting stuff in your eyes (like maybe one of those reptiles that spits acid into people's eyes), so it could have just generalized from that.
as for laughter, V.S. Ramachandran had a great theory about it:
http://walkereconomics.blogspot.com/2005/10/why-do-we-laugh.html
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