Question: can pigs have brain freeze

Eileen Diskin answered on 14 Nov 2012:

Hahaha! What a great question, that made me laugh.

Only in the past couple years have scientists been able to sort out why humans get brain freeze. You know scientists, they like to give super long fancy names to everything, and the science name for brain freeze is “sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia” (basically that means mouth-related nerve pain). But I think its a lot easier to just say brain freeze!

Brain freeze happens because when something super cold (like ice cream, mmm) hits the roof of your mouth, a lot of blood goes through one of your arteries that supplies your brain all of a sudden – and this causes that sharp pain sensation (our nerves are what give us a sensation of pain).

Can pigs get it? Thats a tough question. Possibly, because pigs anatomy is actually quite similar to ours. Because of this, scientists sometimes use pigs instead of humans in their experiments. Pigs have a lot of these same arteries and nerves that give US brain freeze, so it is very possible that they get the same sensation!

But the real question is, what kind of ice cream would a pig be eating to give it brain freeze?!