Oddly enough
I did a scholarly study of this topic years ago. I posted a summary of my findings in another thread a few months back, but here it is again.
On the bioevolutionary origins of dominance/submission and ticklishness.
My take on the origins of DS goes to an ongoing problem in Paleoanthropolgy; why is it so consistently difficult for professionals in that field to find analogues to human behavior patterns in other primates? The answer is that they are ignoring a major fact of evolutionary biology; the genetically selected behaviors any animal species keeps and passes on to future generations are determined primarily by the ecological niche that species occupies in its environment.
The pretribal, indeed precultural human animal occupied an ecological niche called 'cursorial hunter'. No other primate has ever occupied a niche even remotely similar, hence the lack of analogous behavior patterns. The only other species to occupy that niche in the history of this planet have been Wolves and Feral Dogs.
If one looks at the behavior patterns found in Wolf and Dog packs, EVERYTHING you see has close analogies in human behavior patterns!
Wolf packs have dominant Alpha males, secondary Beta males and submissive Gamma males. The female Wolves have their own, separate dominance order. In general, there is one chief dominant Pack Alpha and one or more Beta lieutenants, totaling one third of the male adults in the pack. All the females and all theGamma males are submissive to the Alphas and Betas. The Gammas are submissive to the females.
Anyone familiar with the scene has noticed, and perhaps wondered why, submissives seem to outnumber dominants in all categories. Straight, Gay, Bi, Male, Female, there are always more subs than doms. It's a holdover from a time when the survival of the species was furthered by such patterns of subordination. In any survival-critical emergency, there had to be someone in charge, whose orders would be obeyed without question.
Another pattern which ensured the strongest possible offspring was that the females simply would not mate with the Gamma males, who often engaged in homosexual relationships to relieve their needs. This is seen in Wolf and Dog packs today. This was biologically engineered into our genetic makeup by evolution, and explains why even the most liberated woman feels attracted to a dominant man, while even the most liberated man feels the need for some degree of submissiveness from his woman.
The fact is, of course, that modern technological society has made these patterns of D & S totally unnecessary. The fact that we no longer need these patterns does not cause them to automatically go away, for two reasons.
First, it takes about 100,000 years for evolution to effect any major change in a species, and conditions which made male dominance/female submission no longer a survival advantage are less than 100 years old IN THIS COUNTRY. In many parts of the world, Male D/female S is still a powerful survival advantage.
Second, an evolved trait does not evolve away just because it is not an advantage anymore. Look at our tail bones and appendixes. To evolve away, a trait must become a significant disadvantage, so that those who do NOT have it are much more likely to survive and have children than those who do.
That has not happened with D & S, in fact quite the contrary.
This all relates to tickling too. Among Wolves and Dogs, in order to resolve dominance disputes without actual injury to a valuable pack member, they have evolved a submission behavior which turns off further aggression by the dominant victor like throwing a switch; flipping onto the back and exposing the vitals to the dominant animal. The dominant responds by very lightly touching the tips of it's fangs to the throat or belly of the submissive, symbolizing that the dominant could have fatally injured the submissive but chose not to.
In humans, the analogous behavior is tickling. If you look at all the places on the human body that are usually ticklish, they are all areas where an injury would be fatal to an animal whose survival depended on running with a hunting pack, or take away it's ability to successfully have/rear offspring.
Toes/soles of feet-ability to run
backs of knees/kneecaps-ability to run
inner thighs-femoral artery (if it is cut, the individual bleeds to death in 30 seconds)
backs of thighs-hamstring tendon
hips-pelvic joints
lower belly-reproductive organs
ribs/sides-all the major organs in the body trunk
underarms-major nerves and arteries
neck/throat/under chin-major nerves and arteries/windpipe
breasts(women)-ability to feed newborns.
This is why for a human to allow another to tickle/tease them is a profoundly submissive act, and to choose to take advantage of that permission is a profoundly dominant act. One thing makes this expression of deep submission and dominance different for humans than dogs or wolves. While wolves are sexually active only once a year when the females come into heat and their females activate the sex drives of the males, and for dogs it's about every month and a half, humans alone are sexually active 24/7/365 while physically capable.
For this reason, all expressions of dominance and submission among humans take on sexual overtones. For any person to allow another to tickle them will involve arousal for both. I have noticed that when a bound person of either sex and any orientation is tickled, they ALWAYS become aroused,(some will adamantly not admit it!). Even if the tickler is an inappropriate sex partner, such as an animal, a machine, a person of the wrong sex for the victims usual orientation, or an underage child this remains true.
Incidentally, several years after I first wrote the above, my theories were confirmed by no less a scholarly luminary than Desmond Morris, author of "The Naked Ape" and other seminal works on paleoanthropology, in a book he wrote on the origin and reasons for the close ongoing partnership between humans and dogs.
