Why does water feel WET? Temperature and texture change lets us sense liquid, study finds

Home »Why does water feel WET? Temperature and texture change lets us sense liquid, study finds

Why does water feel WET? Temperature and texture change lets us sense liquid, study finds

Posted by sciencetech-blog on Thursday, October 2, 2014 Label:

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The reason why water feels wet to humans is more complicated than you might think.

Although we come into contact with it on an almost daily basis, our skin does not actually have receptors that sense wetness.

This puzzled scientists as to why we can 'feel' water but now they say it is due to us measuring temperature and texture changes when we come into contact with it.

Scientists from Loughborough University studied why we feel wetness (stock image shown). They found that while we don't have 'wet receptors' our brains know what water should feel like based on its temperature and texture, and we can more easily perceive wetness if water is colder

The research was carried out by Loughborough University and Oxylane Research in France.

In the experiment 13 male volunteers were exposed to cold (25°C/77°F), medium (30°C/86°F) and warm (35°C/95°F) water.

They were then asked to report the level of wetness they felt, while a blood pressure pump was also used as a nerve block in some experiments.

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Each participant was tested on the hairy skin on their forearms and the bare skin on their fingertips.

The researchers found they could more easily perceive wetness the colder the temperature was.

And they also found the volunteers were less sensitive when their nerves were blocked by the blood pressure bump.

In addition hairier skin was more sensitive than bare skin.

The researchers suggest that our concept of wetness is actually a 'perceptual illusion', and that our brain evokes a response based on prior knowledge.

What we feel when we are wet is partially just what we think we should feel, based on the temperature difference of the water and its texture.

'This model supports the hypothesis that the brain infers about the perception of wetness in a rational fashion,' the researchers conclude.

The researchers suggest that our concept of wetness is actually a 'perceptual illusion', and that our brain evokes a response based on prior knowledge of water. Pictured is Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo doing the ice bucket challenge at the F1 Grand Prix in Belgium in August 2014