Doesn’t that’s sound a bit horrific? It is a term not necessarily known to all of us. But the phenomenon is commonplace, this erection of hairs on the skin due to cold, fear, excitement, euphoria or sexual arousal.

Before that erection happens, there usually is a sudden surge of warmth throughout your body. In colloquial language, we know this phenomenon of course as goose bumps. The reason for that choice of words naturally being that our skin then looks like the skin of an unfeathered goose.

We humans don’t have that much hair anymore, but the function in apes and many other mammals has always been to raise the body’s hair, and would have made our human ancestors as well appear larger, all in order to scare off predators and perhaps also to increase the amount of air trapped in the fur to make it more insulating, to keep the warmth that is.

Pet owners see horripilation all the time whenever their beloved dog or cat ends up in a dire situation and their hairs stand up. Then you know for sure that something’s going on. And you know for sure that you yourself are moved when it happens to you - no matter what you or anybody else says to the contrary.

So next time that piece of music or that particular person makes you feel all of a sudden cold and then the very next moment have warmth surge up on the surface of your skin that makes your hair stand up, you know for sure that you have made a connection on some deep and meaningful level.