LittleGuy

Sitting here on my armchair, trying to flick away a particularly sticky booger, it struck me that I was engaging in a very irrational habit: I mean, the mucus in my nose is supposed to filter out dust, particles & other nasties from my lungs, right? If so then why am I deliberately picking it out. Compulsively? Like, everyday?

And please come up with another explanation than just me having a bad habit: I've seen other, more avid, nosepickers.

Are humans the only race to engage in this past-time?

And is it true it can cause nasal cancer?

Doubting Didymus

I'm fairly sure that the great apes pick their noses. It doesn't neccesarily have an adaptive purpose. It's probably a side effect of the brains habit-forming functions.

I very much doubt that it causes nasal cancer. It will make you go blind and grow hair on your palms, though.

Minnesota

Right away you commit the cardinal sin of all Commie-atheist-evolutionist-liars: disowning god in favor of evolutionary materialism. If you were familiar, and I mean REALLY familiar, with god's word you would know that in the Genesis 51: 3-5 it says "And god, seeing Joseph's great suffering of coagulated rhinorrhea, allowed that henceforth the nares of all men would be enlarged to such an extent as to permit the insertion of no more than one digit to facilitate the removal of the crap."

No evolution, stupid. God perfected man with the ability to manually unclog the nose. Why do you think the index finger fits so well? And think about this: if such an ability did evolve, where are the transitional forms? How would such a specific mating between the finger and the nostril ever come about?

Duvenoy

Bovines pick their noses (sort of) with their tongues.

Old saying: "You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."

doov

Undercurrent

I had read that in other mammals, mucus drains down the esophagus into the stomach to kill the germs in a little acid bath. It's only in humans and great apes with their distorted nasal system that allows the mucus to drain foreward and dry in the foreward nasal cavity where nose-picking is relevant.

Heathen Dawn

I once saw, on the science channel, chimpanzees using sticks to pick their noses.

simian

Why do gorillas have big nostrils?
Because they have big fingers.

I doubt that dried out mucus does much filtering, and it can be iritating. Removal of it does not seem too unusual to me.

Simian

Nectaris

Holy crap, yet another argument for design, that we can perfectly fit a finger in our noses. I mean if we weren't designed would our fingers be like five times the size of our noses, or vice versa.

pmurray

Naah, but it will cause random nosebleeds later in life. I dont want to even think about the vein in my nostrils. Every now and then it just pops and starts bleeding while I am just having my morning shower for no reason at all honest, I swear I wasn't even touching it.

For a less intense gross-out, anyone else got a line of whitish scar-tissue along the inside of their cheek where over the years they have bitten it?

JERDOG

Nose hairs are for filtering.