When soccer star David Beckham had the names of his children tattooed on his skin, thousands rushed to copy him. But Beckham may not have been revealing his sensitive side after all – a study of US college freshmen suggests that tattoos make the skin less sensitive to touch.
Todd Allen at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley measured skin sensitivity in 54 people, 30 of whom had tattoos, using an aesthesiometer. This consists of two adjacent plastic points that can be moved further apart until a person senses them as two distinct points rather than one.
Allen tested participants’…
