Why does poking your belly button feel weird?

[ArtemisMoon]

Knowing it’s connected to the bladder nerves makes so much sense.

[abramc]

Imagine if we did have those types of nerve endings. We could be like: "Ouch, the third segment of my transverse colon hurts"

[waffles]

Telling Hank to not make something weird is pointless. It's Hank, he is weird no matter what.

[pennyroyalty]

my belly button being touched sends me into an unhinged fit of rage

[nickkerr]

One time I asked my friends, “you know how it feels like you gotta pee when you poke your belly button really hard”

I got blank stares in return

[lorrygoth]

I always wondered why poking my belly button made my urethra hurt. Thank you for that bit if insight Hank.

[orbital]

Poking my belly button feels absolutely no different from poking any other surrounding skin, so this is clearly not universal. Interesting though, I had no idea that some people have some kind of special sensation by poking their belly button...

[AnnaTalks-videos]

You have NO IDEA how LONG I’ve been searching for this Thank you!!

[VivaLaVittoria]

This makes so much sense … I’ve always had the strangest, most uncomfortable visceral sensation if I poke my belly button… and what feels like referred pain “down there” from my belly button 😳

[First_in_Last]

"It's like important to know you're getting touched, you're body has lots of resources dedicated to that."
Mans has my sides 😂

[logan]

i used to poke my partners belly button not knowing he was having a totally different experience than I could understand 😂 my belly button feels no different except perhaps less ticklish than the rest of my torso

[esobelisk]

I used to wonder about this as a kid, and then in like 2017 I found out from a tumblr post that I wasn’t the only one experiencing it, and the mystery just lodged itself in my brain.
In a way, this video feels like the end of a saga for me. I now know about that weird thing that happens when you poke your belly button.

[kcarter]

When I realized my friends did not feel like they were being zapped in their nether region, I went straight to the anatomy teacher and asked him. He actually brought out a textbook and explained it and then used that in a lesson for class the next day. I couldn’t live with the questions! Lol

[HeyItsMeChelseyOnYouTube]

You explain in such a simplistic and relatable way. Thanks Hank, as always, for sharing your wisdom and personality!

[theonionqueen]

Does anyone else remember exploring their bodies a lot as a small child, but in a non-sexual way? Like, I’d poke my belly button really hard to see what that would feel like, or I’d press into my eyeballs hard to see what that would do, or I’d see if I could swallow my tongue, or I’d suck on my arm to watch it turn red and purple (didn’t know it was called a hickey back then, ) or I’d lie upside down on the couch to feel the blood rush to my head, stuff like that. I just wanted to know what everything felt like.

[seagreen]

Answering a question I've had for years, but never thought to ask - Thank you Hank!

[liftx]

For those not understanding we can feel it in our crotch area

[TruthAndLoyalty]

imo, it's even weirder than that. We imagine that nerves all connect up to our brain 1:1 and behave like sensors, but they actually combine in different ways across the levels of your spine and you develop a complex map to decode what you're feeling based on this very limited number of regulated signals. it's very similar to the way machine learning works. You can identify something based on the proportion of multiple variables. There are also "blocking signals" coming back from the brain tuning this system. it's way more complicated than that, but it's wild. I have neuropathy and one of the craziest things about it, is that it breaks the sensory map because there is an expectation of performance that's no longer met. Nerve damage in one part of your body can make you feel things in a whole other part of your body. When the nerves are unreliably firing it causes all sorts of meaningless sensations because they overwhelm the system with noise.

[loveharley]

I have been wondering this for years! Asked my doctor and everything, no answer. Zoning out on YT reels and find my answer. Thank you!

[tiffanyfennimore]

This answers SO MANY QUESTIONS in my life! 😵‍💫🤣😵Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us! 😍🥰