The act of hiccuping is one of the worst things human beings can suffer through or witness, what with the awful spasms they cause and the aggravating hic-hic-hic-hic noise that reverberates through your skull. One of the most frustrating things about hiccups, though, is that they seem to be virtually unstoppable. We just have to live with them and hope that our next hiccup attack isn’t annoying enough to drive away our loved ones.
However, if we’re going to be stuck with hiccups, we might as well learn about them. To that end, there’s a new TED-Ed animated short narrated by John Cameron that looks to explain just how and why hiccups happen. Of course, nobody’s really sure why they happen, but Cameron offers some pretty interesting and convincing explanations in the video. There’s also an interesting bit about how only mammals hiccup, and that humans hiccup even before they’re born—which we think suggests it could be some kind of “original sin” punishment. Mankind is no closer to eradicating the hiccup menace, but at least we get to enjoy a cute cartoon.