I swallowed something wrong and coughed it up, and it got me thinking how easily I could be dead if I had no cough reflex.
So that’s my vote. OTOH, at this age I can cough voluntarily if I swallow wrong, but I might not have lived through my infancy if I hadn’t been able to reflexively.
So what else would probably kill us if we didn’t reflexively respond to it?
Under some circumstances, vomiting can safe your life.
For sneezing, however, I see no compelling use at all.
Pain?
Is breathing a “reflex action”?
Is it a response to something?
Shall we play answer a question with a question?
Sleep paralysis is pretty important too, isn’t it? People with faulty sleep-paralysis…thingies…end up sleep walking on the freeway and being run over by trucks.
None of these things are reflexes.
The OP isn’t asking for reflexes. He’s asking for things that cause reflexes.
(In the body he is, anyway)
Would fight or flight count? That’d be my guess.
How about the rooting/sucking reflex in infants?
Apologies for this misstated question. I was in fact attempting to ask for the reflexes that could save our lives, not the stimuli that evoke them.
Breathing is not, IMO, a reflex action. I would also say that “fight or flight” probably isn’t, but the rush of adrenaline and whatever other chemicals shoot into us in response to a threat are. Yet, this response doesn’t in itself save our lives, AFAIK, though it gives us extra resources that we could use to save our lives.
I vote for “protecting your junk”. We’d have died off centuries ago from damaged nads, otherwise.
Blinking when something is about to hit your eye.
…he said, reflexively.
groan
Thanks! I’m here all week! Try the veal!