The body you inhabit is made up of lots of moving parts that need to communicate with each other.

Some of this communication – in the nervous system, for example – takes the form of bioelectrical signals that propagate through the body to trigger the appropriate response.

Now, US researchers have discovered that the epithelial cells that line our skin and organs are able to signal the same way to communicate peril. They just use a long, slow ‘scream’, rather than the rapid-fire communication of neurons.