Paper seems completely harmless, but anybody who has refilled a photocopier or thumbed too quickly through a book knows that this humble material harbours a deep, dark secret. Deployed properly, it can be a serious weapon: paper cuts are just the worst.

There isn’t a whole lot of scientific research effort directed at understanding the pain of paper cuts, probably because nobody would sign up for a randomised, controlled study that involved a researcher intentionally inflicting this kind of torture on study participants. But according to Dr. Hayley Goldbach, a resident physician in dermatology at UCLA, “we can use our knowledge of human anatomy to help us out here. It’s all a question of anatomy”.

It’s all to do with nerve endings. To start with, there are lots more pain receptors embedded in your fingertips than almost anywhere else in your body. Though Goldbach is quick to point out, “it would probably also hurt a lot if you got a paper cut on your face or in your genitals, if you can imagine that.” So while a paper cut on your arm, or thigh, or ankle might still be annoying, it would probably be more trivial than the intense fiery quality that finger-based paper cuts tend to have.