If I’m looking down from a high bridge, I get a sensation I can only describe as a tightening in my testicles. (“Thrill” is better, but only in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Neither painful nor pleasurable.) I don’t experience it in other scary situations; I’m terrified of bees but the adrenaline rush that comes from encountering a vicious honeybee is not localized.
What causes that sensation physically / chemically? Does everyone get it? Do women experience an equivalent?
Yes. I have no idea how it’s possible, but I get exactly the same sensation in the testicles I don’t have.
Well, in the lower abdomen. It isn’t external or anything.
I get it (I’m a guy).
I wonder if it’s an evolution-thwarted attempt to retract them to protect them from a fall?
Yes, it’s the cremasteric * muscle tightening, which tends to retract the testicles. Except of ninja fighters and other trained experts, it doesn’t really retract them that much – not far enough inside the body to protect them much.
But it also happens during orgasm. So it becomes associated with that, which might explain the ‘thrill’ feeling.
(I have no idea how this works in females. But generally, they have equivalent physical makeup, so there’s probably a similar reaction.)
I also get this sensation (albeit very briefly) when I’m in a confrontation with someone and I think fists might start to fly soon.
We still have a cremaster muscle, only ours is smaller and on the round ligament of the uterus. Which isn’t where I feel the pulling sensation begin - I really do feel it where I’d have testicles, if I had 'em. Below the inferior boundary of the labia majora, with a tingling that extends up to the labia and mons pubis anteriorly and then a tightening of the vagina and uterus like orgasm, but without the pleasurable feelings of orgasm. But it definitely starts with my nonexistent balls. Maybe it’s just me.
Nerves are weird.
I think I sort of feel it in my pelvic floor, those muscles you work when you do kegels.
Just a WAG, but maybe it’s nature’s way of “taking up the slack” before you jump off something high. You don’t want your boys flopping around when you hit the bottom of your jump.
yeah, I agree, that it’s the same thing just before a fight.
Best answer to anything ever !! 
I get the same feeling when going through that momentary weightlessness upon cresting a steep hill in a fast car or just past the low point on a swing. I do get the same feeling looking down from a great height from a standstill. Since you experience weightlessness when you fall, maybe it is an anticipatory feeling.
I used to get the same feeling while climbing towers or high-rises. (Male here.)
Trust your equipment first…the fear of falling is a natural instinct.
That’s why I gave it up after so many years. I’d rather have a nice coffee and sandwich than plop down beside you in a bloody mass that now resembles spilled guts on a platter.
Not even cooked, unless one would let me fry on the sidewalk a bit.
“boys flopping around when you hit the bottom of your jump.”
Brought back a memory of a couple of college age kids about to do a running jump off of a 50’+ cliff on the Guadalupe River, one summer. They had goaded each other into jumping “bare assed”, to impress the crowd below in the river.:dubious:
They shucked their shorts, and got a running start. As they went off the edge of the cliff, one of the two got a look on his face that said, “UH OH! I got stuff, hangin’!”:(…
In mid fall he reached down and cupped his “stuff” with both hands while crossing his legs.
His buddy wasn’t quite so “in tune”, with what was about to happen.
He “windmilled”, arms AND legs, all the way down!:eek:
There was a collective, audible “groan” heard from the large crowd of tubers, canoeists (canoeers…canoeists?) and rafters, witnessing the event.
(Makes me wince, just to relate the story.;))
And as though to add insult to injury, the poor guy lost his grip on the shorts he had clutched in his hand. It took him quite a while just to be able to climb back into the canoe with his female friend. (Who, by the way, was trying to evince sympathy while suppressing laughter, but wasn’t doing a very good job of it.:p)
She gave him a towel after he had climbed in, (with, not a little, difficulty) and they paddled on down river, to the laughter and catcalls of the crowd.
Ahhh… The lessons of youthful abandon! :smack:
I believe this feeling was formerly described as being in the stomach. This makes sense to me, as I have found that a stomach ache also seems to elicit this sensation.
Ah! That must be the location of that swoopy feeling related to excitment that’s felt lower than your stomach, but above your genitals (so it feels different than both a disturbed stomach and arousal).
I don’t know—the sinking feeling you get in the stomach when anticipating something bad isn’t the same sensation at all.