

Fingernails on Blackboard - Possible Explanation - sofal
http://amasci.com/amateur/screet.html

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noss
Summary: his theory is that it is similar to the sound of you damaging your
teeth, since teeth have no nerve endings, the sound of them being damaged
makes you cringe.

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baddox
And he surmises that the sense of hearing evolved from the need to protect
teeth. Seems that nerve endings in teeth would have been more likely to
evolve.

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likpok
More nerve endings in teeth mean it's harder to eat if you get decay or are
eating something hard. Given the state of dental hygiene back in the day, it
makes some sense.

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alanthonyc
Just reading that article made me cringe. He may be right, but I couldn't
finish it to be sure.

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ryanwaggoner
I couldn't even click on the link. Ugh.

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ars
"It's the sound of body damage; but it's a particular type of body damage for
which there is no pain ...yet no healing."

That's not actually true. Teeth do heal - which hurts his theory, except that
while they do heal, they don't do it well, so there could be something to it.

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jws
I suppose we can look forward to new class of crowd suppression, area denial
weapons now.

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tokenadult
The sound has never bothered me at all.

