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If it's too hot, I use a sheet. I think the explanation is pretty simple: crawly things that may come and bite us.
by forgotmypw 9y ago
If it's too hot, I use a sheet. I think the explanation is pretty simple: crawly things that may come and bite us.
- JohnJamesRambo 9y agoHow would a sheet help with that?
- jacobolus 9y agoDunno about crawly things, but mosquitos definitely first go for body parts not covered by sheets.
- maruhan2 9y agowhich is pretty ineffective since mosquitos are quite good at finding the body part that's uncovered. If you sleep like a cocoon and don't move i guess that works.
- IshKebab 9y agoThat's... why you sleep under a sheet... so your body parts are covered. It definitely reduces the number of bites I get.
- forgotmypw 9y ago>If you sleep like a cocoon That's basically how I sleep, though I do move around a bit.
- mannykannot 9y agoIf only your face is uncovered, I think you are more likely to notice a mosquito, either by sound or by touch. On the other hand, mosquitoes can reach you through a net or thin sheet if it is against your skin, as I have found to my cost.
- VLM 9y agoPoint the fan at the uncovered part. Mosquitos tend to dislike fan airflow. Also works outdoors. The airflow also triggers your pressure sensors so spontaneous firing isn't an startling issue if the fan breeze hits something other than your head. Obviously for use in the hot summer; also if you sleep with a fan pointed at you in Korea, you'll catch fan death and die. Cultural myths about fan death is an interesting sleep related topic. With respect to nature vs nurture, different cultures certainly do weird things such as fan death related to sleep but the vast majority cross culturally like blankets; that would imply blankets could be genetic in some weird way not merely cultural.
- riquito 9y agoYou would notice that there's something under the blanket, moving toward your head.
- VLM 9y agoWhere I live the state bird is the mosquito. Which doesn't really narrow down my state of residence LOL. Here I am daydreaming my way to sleep counting sheep and a touch/pressure sensor in my skin spontaneously fires as they sometimes randomly do, and ugh there's a mosquito or fly or whatever on me wake up and swat it. Now wrapping in a blanket means the pressure sensors saturate full on all the time so I don't startle. I suspect its worse for men with body hair. Randomly a leg hair catches airflow and red alert a bug has landed on me! Its the same as the tickle reflex, leaning on me while cuddling on the couch is comfy and sleep inducing, tickling is not even remotely sleep inducing. Speaking of pressure, I sleep on my side with my legs partially up and if I force myself to sleep otherwise, I wake up in that position, so may as well give in. So... maybe TMI but without squooshing at least a thin blanket between my legs there's kind of a self inflicted thigh-vise on my male parts which as any male will attest is uncomfortable. This is a universal problem for males who lift weights and sleep on their side, unless you guys have invented an interesting hack for this problem...
- rojobuffalo 9y agoI would hypothesize that a cover would restrict air flow around your sweat glands which would reduce your scent on the air around where you're sleeping. It would also mask the outline of your body. For insects adapted to bite humans, hiding these signals and providing a physical barrier would possibly reduce bite incidents. Reducing bites from potentially pathogen-spreading insects would have an evolutionary advantage.
- supergetting 9y agoIf it's friggin' HOT, and as long as there's privacy in my own room, nothin', and nada, no need for close proximity insulation technology, and for bugs? I use my mosquito bed net I bought from Amazon.
- woliveirajr 9y agoBlankets and sheets also protect from ghost, witches, monsters from under the bed... ask any child, if you're under something that hides you (or that you cant't look at), automatically you won't be found. Things that you can't look at can't look at you, too.
- ourmandave 9y agoThere's also the unspoken rule that hanging a foot or hand over the edge of the mattress fair game for Monsters Under the Bed.
- evincarofautumn 9y agoI wonder if that common anxiety is the distant echo of an ancestor who slept in trees—don’t dangle, lest you get pulled to your doom by a hungry “monster”.
- Jaruzel 9y ago> Things that you can't look at can't look at you, too. This is why, as every seasoned hitchhiker knows, always travel with a towel.
- spongeb00b 9y agoThat or your Peril Sensitive Sunglasses
- smoyer 9y agoTowels are also good for teething (https://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/jerry-tarkanian-e1425259703219.jpg?w=750 https://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/jerry-tark...)
- logfromblammo 9y agoA CPAP doubles as an ideal monster snorkel. A sheet over the head also protects against killer robots, as it interferes with face recognition. It also protects against alien abductors, as their paralysis-ray guns can't penetrate fabric with sufficiently high thread counts. These days, I mainly protect myself from the spouse's dreaded fan, that constantly blows the icy breath of Borealis across the bed. But it's nice to be safe from all the monsters, too.
- sandworm101 9y agoIn all seriousness, they protect from anything hunting via heat. Snakes and a great many insects wont notice a warm body covering in an insulating blanket as they would bare flesh.
- LeifCarrotson 9y agoIs the temperature of the blanket or sheet, under which I'd be sweating profusely for 8 hours, meaningfully less than the temperature of my bare flesh without the covering? My metabolism is still producing the same amount of heat energy, and my radiant surface area doesn't increase much. If anything, the efficiency of convective and evaporative cooling drops significantly when I cover myself, so you'd think that the blanket would give off a stronger heat signature. Thoughts?
- sampl 9y agoCould be wrong about how this works, but... if it was true that a person under blankets radiates about as much heat as a bare body, that would mean blankets aren’t very good at keeping us warm. (But they do keep us warm)
- VLM 9y agoI borrowed a FLIR to check my house insulation, inevitably screwing around will happen. Also images.google.com is full of FLIR people pix. In summary the outside of clothing is much colder than skin, surely blankets are similar.
- Terr_ 9y agoIn terms of the "hunting snake theory", perhaps it's a radiation-vs-convection thing? Supposing your body has the same amount of waste-heat per second and the whole system has reached a steady state, perhaps less of it would be leaving as infrared light (detectable by some snakes' "pit organ") and a greater proportion would be leaving via the upward rise of warmed air.