You have to hold hands with strangers to make this bus shelter warm

Look away, germaphobes. A bus shelter in Montreal will keep you warm and toasty — IF you hold hands with your fellow travelers. As a social experiment (cough, PR stunt that we totally fell for), Duracell sponsored the shelter, which uses human flesh to create a circuit. After joining hands, the people at either end of the chain press one palm to a negative and positive contact to complete the connection and activate the heat:

If the goal is to draw a parallel between human warmth and that of actual heaters, we can think of a couple more kinds of skin-to-skin contact that would make the bus stop downright steamy. (Kissing’s been done, so next time let’s raise the bar on awkward human contact.)

As Treehugger points out, making commuters hold hands IS an interesting challenge to our nose-in-iPhone culture. Not just making eye contact or acknowledging someone with a brisk nod, but physical touch?! Preferably if there’s proof there’s no dried pee on anyone’s fingers.

If the video tickles your fancy, Duracell will donate a buck to Habitat for Humanity Canada every time someone shares it from its Facebook page, up to $25,000. That’s more than we can say for those recipe chain emails we keep getting.