Let’s face it: human bodies are strange. From the mysterious quirks of our minds to the peculiar functions of our organs, there's no end to the oddities that make us who we are. Should we delve into the wonders of boogers, brains, and beyond? Absolutely. Each strange fact is a gateway to understanding the marvels of biology, offering lessons that celebrate both science and the weirdness of our own existence.
The past century has seen a massive increase in scientific explanations for different phenomena. From the theory of continental drift to the complete mapping of the human genome in 2003, scientists have provided plenty of insights into the nature of the universe, as well as why our body does weird stuff. One of the most dramatic scientific leaps has come in the area of medicine as doctors and researchers have begun to explain the most mysterious and complex processes of the human body.
However, despite the sheer amount of research done on and for humans, there is still a whole host of things that no one can explain about the body. These lasting enigmas largely revolve around strange bodily functions that seem to either have no purpose or operate in a way that simply baffles scientists. Some of them are part of everyday life, while others are simply weird things that our body does without us ever even noticing. Whatever the case, the human body is a far more peculiar thing than you might ever have imagined.
Take, for instance, the inexplicable growl of an empty stomach or the sudden rise of goosebumps when we're cold or scared. These seemingly trivial occurrences are part of the mysteries of human biology, rich with stories that even the sharpest scientific minds haven't fully unraveled. And let’s be honest, we're all pretty weird when you really think about it. Embracing that weirdness can turn every “gross” fact into an amazing discovery.
So, the next time you ponder why your body does something bizarre, don’t shy away. Dive into the weirdness. Celebrate the quirks and the questions and remember: every peculiar fact is a testament to the wild and wonderful adventure of being human. Get ready to explore the unexplainable as well as ponder some fascinating facts along the way
Laughing is no laughing matter: While many animals can "laugh" (videos of mice or monkeys being tickled are all over the net), only humans have a sense of humor that can provoke laughter without physical touching. Yet (sincere) laughter is completely involuntary and incredibly difficult to fake, suggesting it must have some sort of evolutionary purpose that has helped it to become so ingrained in us.
Most of the leading ideas involve humor acting as a mechanism for achieving social superiority and laughter acting as either a communicative tool and signal or a means of relieving sexual and aggressive tension. However, scientists, philosophers, and psychologists have yet to come to a definitive agreement on the roles of humor and laughter, leaving them to conclude that perhaps a single explanation doesn't exist.
· Did you know that earwax is actually a type of sweat? While not identical to the sweat produced by other glands in the body, it does share many similarities.
· Did you know that when you calculate all the blood vessels in the human body, there are more than 100,00 miles of blood vessels present? That’s nearly 4 times the circumference of the Earth.
Real or Not? Scientists still can’t say how the placebo effect fools us. While a well-documented phenomenon, the placebo effect - the fact that humans can experience benefits from inactive drugs and treatments simply through the belief that they work - continues to baffle almost every researcher who has investigated it.
Essentially, the placebo effect is the ability of sugar pills and other non-active medicines to improve the symptoms of a patient for no physiological reason. While researchers have made strides in deciphering the areas of the brain that are involved in the placebo effect, it's still unclear exactly how or why it can have such an impact.
· Did you know that you’re taller in the morning?
Though you may not be at your best first thing in the morning, you are at your tallest. While we stretch out to sleep at night, gravity gradually compresses cartilage in our spines and knees throughout the day, shrinking us a bit. When astronauts come back from space, they are a few inches taller because of the lack of gravity they were exposed to, before gradually returning to their own size.
· Speaking of shrinkage, did you know that your brain shrinks when you become a parent? Scientists believe that having a baby changes the brain of new mothers, resulting in less gray matter in areas of the brain involved with responding to social signals and general processing. However, new research recently revealed that dads experience similar shrinkage in their brains in regions related to executive functioning and visual processing. So, when kids say their parents don’t know anything, they may be onto something.
The mystery of pubic hair: The mere fact that humans have pubic hair at all is strange considering that fact that all other primates, our closest living relatives, are the exact opposite with hair covering everything on their bodies except the pubic regions. The reason for having pubic hair is also difficult to work out when those who remove it do not seem to suffer from any ill effects.
Some of the suggested theories for why the human body grows thick hair near the genitals and under the arms include the idea that it provides protection, creates a cozy genital blanket, and acts to stop friction. However, the most prominent idea is that sweet, smelly pubic hairs collect pheromones to help attract mates.
· Did you know that a quarter of all the bones in your body are in your feet? Yep, for only making up a small portion of your body, your feet contain 26 bones per foot, 52 total, accounting for about a quarter of the bones in your entire skeletal structure of 206 bones.
· Did you know that when your body experiences extreme starvation, there are chances that your brain will start to eat itself.
Nobody Knows Why We Find Kissing Enjoyable: Although there are a very limited number of animals that "kiss," none of them do so romantically like human beings do. In fact, kissing isn't really even a general human "thing" - many cultures from around the world don't kiss, and scientists and anthropologists have discerned kissing to be a western cultural phenomenon. This makes it even more difficult to explain why some bodies seem to enjoy kissing so much. Kissing presents the threat of sharing 80 million saliva bacteria, and at least half of the human world finds it revolting. So why is it so arousing and a fundamental ritual of courtship in some societies?
One explanation is that it has evolved culturally as a way of being able to sniff out potential mates, giving people the chance to smell pheromones and genes in a partner to see if they are suitable. Some societies culturally evolved to get really up close and personal to take in pheromones through lip-on-lip contact, while others do it through more general close contact that doesn't actually involve saliva swapping. The root of social kissing, though, has been difficult to pinpoint, leaving it as one of those bodily mysteries for the ages.
· Did you know that the strongest muscle in the human body is the jaw? Forget working out your lats, biceps, or glutes. You were already exercising the strongest muscle in the human body when you were munching on a burger and talking trash with your buddies, because the strongest muscle in the human body is the masseter, aka the jaw. A healthy jaw is capable of closing a set of teeth with a force of up to 200 pounds. If you were looking for an excuse to refer to snacking as “strength training,” now you have it.
· Did you know that sperm can survive longer than you might think? Although there is reason to worry about the sperm health of men globally, on an individual level these little swimmers are pretty resilient. Provided that they’re in a woman’s reproductive tract and not a hot tub, sperm can survive for up to five days after ejaculation. This explains why people can become pregnant if they have sex several days before ovulation, and why the famous sperm race scene in the 1989 comedy “Look Who’s Talking” was more of a marathon than a sprint.
There’s no explanation for why we go through puberty: We share so much with our primate cousins, including opposable thumbs and the majority of our genetic code. However, one thing they don't have to undergo is a hallmark of human existence: the bittersweet symphony that is puberty.
In fact, out of all the animals that live on planet Earth, only humans have the pleasure of experiencing that awkward, pimply, hormonal rollercoaster of physical and sexual maturation. Other creatures simply transition into adulthood in a constant kind of growing, rather than having a "childhood" of small to moderate growth followed by a protracted adolescence. While scientists can't definitively explain that tumultuous period of human existence, they know that it must serve some purpose since it’s lasted for at least 200,000 years.
· Did you know that there’s more to the penis than meets the eye? That's because half the length of the penis is inside the body. Just like you don't see all of a big oak tree above ground, you don't see the root of the penis because it’s tucked up inside the pelvis and attached to the pubic bone.
· Did you know that stomach acid can melt metal? If you’ve ever had heartburn so bad that it felt like your burps could melt faces, you might be onto something. The digestive juices in the gut contain hydrochloric acid, which can dissolve certain metals like zinc and falls just below battery acid on the pH scale. One study found that gastric acid could even partially break down razor blades. But not copper. So it’s a mixed bag.
No one really knows why humans and other animals sleep: Even though every animal on the planet sleeps in one way or another for large proportions of its life, sleep is one of the great mysteries of modern science and one of the weirder things our body does. Perhaps to make it even more mysterious, scientists know that sleep is essential to life - humans can actually die if they get too sleep deprived. As far as explanations for it go, though, William C. Dement, founder of Stanford University's Sleep Research Center, once said that, "As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy."
Multiple theories have been offered to explain why we sleep, such as that it's a way to save energy, restore our bodies, and clear the brain of chemical buildups. But none of the explanations have come close to providing a definitive answer. Considering how much time we spend sleeping and the fact that we die without enough of it, it's difficult to think that it does not play some imperative role in sustaining life.
· Did you know that the human body technically glows in the dark? That’s right, just like glow worms and fireflies, humans are bioluminescent, meaning we emit light. This is mostly because of a metabolic reaction in which free radicals are produced through cell respiration, causing us to glow. The big difference between humans and fireflies is that the light we produce is about 1,000 times weaker than the human eye can detect. However, at least one study has captured the glow though ultrasensitive cameras. Researchers found that the light was at its highest in the afternoon and was the brightest in the cheek, forehead, and neck.
· Did you know that women blink more often than men? Specifically, women have been found to blink 19 times a minute compared to 11 times a minute for men. Researchers believe this has to do with the hormone estrogen, which can make the cornea more elastic and change how light travels through the eye, making women more susceptible to blinking. As women’s estrogen levels decrease, their rate of blinking also declines. So, sadly, that mysterious beauty may not be batting her eyes flirtatiously from across the room. She just has more estrogen than you do.
No one knows why we involuntarily twitch before falling asleep: While you may not be familiar with the phrase "hypnic jerk," there's a good chance that you've experienced one during your lifetime. Hypnic jerk is the involuntary twitch that can occur at night just before you fall asleep, often accompanied by a falling sensation. Exactly why this happens and why it's so common have never been explained. Some believe it may be a leftover quirk from when our ancient ancestors lived in trees.
They'd twitch themselves awake to keep from falling from their nighttime perches. Others characterize hypnic jerks as involuntary battles between our wakeful brain and our restful one in which surges of energy from the day suddenly spark through our nervous systems, twitching us back into cognizance. There's really no data to support either theory, though.
· Did you know that twins smell the same? If having the same DNA weren’t enough, the weirdest thing about identical twins is that even if they don’t share matching outfits, they still share a scent. Studying the scents of identical twins, Swiss researchers discovered that twins smell 10 times more similar compared to non-related pairs. This was expected, as our body odor is thought to be rooted in genetics. But now you know that dogs probably can’t tell twins apart either.
· Did you know that part of your DNA isn’t exactly human? Human beings are, genetically speaking, 99.9% the same. As inherently unoriginal as that may be, there is a twist: Not all of our genes are human.
Of the approximately 20,000 genes in the human genome, about 8% are made up of ancient viruses, on top of another 40% of repetitive strings of letters that are thought to be viral as well. Scientists suspect that these viral genes can jump throughout the genome and copy themselves, potentially contributing to diseases like multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It seems as complicated as it is scary, but the point is that when it comes down to our coding, we’re not that basic after all. We’re barely half human.
Why we yawn and why it’s contagious is a mystery: Yawning is something that every single person on the planet does, and yet no one seems to know exactly why. After all, yawning doesn't appear to have any noticeable effect on you when you do it unlike many other strange bodily functions. For a long time, the prevailing theory was that it may have injected extra oxygen into the blood when levels were low, but this has largely been dismissed. Some researchers have recently suggested it could be a way to control the temperature of the brain, helping keep ambient core temperatures through the injection of a cold, refreshing blast of oxygen.
Even more troubling for scientists than what purpose a yawn serves is why they’re so contagious. Seeing someone else yawn, or even reading about the action, can be enough to invoke yawning. The fact that it is involuntary may mean that it's a psychological response meant to be communicative rather than a physiological one. Some scientists even reason that yawning is a herding symbol, intended to help us link up with the others of our species. However, there are no fully accepted theories for the phenomenon.
· Did you know that new species of ancient humans are still being discovered? As of right now, there are 21 known species of human, and the Homo longi was uncovered as recently as 2018. Scientists have also discovered hybrids of some human species, such as a girl with a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father known as Denny. In case it’s not clear what species your screaming toddler is, they’re a Homo sapien - allegedly.
· Do you know how many atoms make up the human body? We didn’t think so. According to what we can tell, an adult is made up of around 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7 octillion) atoms.
Why the body has hand dominance is a mystery: Apart from a few select individuals, almost everyone demonstrates hand dominance to some degree. Exactly why this happens has never been fully understood. Possible explanations have to account for the fact that around 10% of people are left-handed, something that evolution should have weeded out a long time ago.
Unlike past theories which simply stated that learning to favor one had an environmental cause, the leading thought today is that hand dominance is determined genetically, through complex genetic networks and brain asymmetries. But, as far as a single best reason for why humans manifest hand dominance, researchers still don't have a precise explanation.
· Did you know that the entire surface of our skin is replaced every month? Which, put another way, means we have about 1,000 different skins in our life! It also means that we shed over 30,000 dead skin cells every minute which means that most of the dust in your house actually consists of you.
· Did you know that your heart can sync to the rhythm when you listen to music?
Well, apparently it can.
Nobody knows what consciousness even is: Here's an unsettling mystery of the human self - no one has ever been able to definitely, decidedly explain what human consciousness is or where it comes from. Philosophers, neuroscientists, and psychologists can agree on the fact that it's something intangible that hovers above our conscious decisions and experiences, but what it's "made of" remains elusive. And one of the biggest issues in trying to decipher consciousness is that our brains might actually be too "puny" to reach over and beyond themselves in order to understand how they work.
(now, we know we’ve shown this clip before – but it’s appropriate on so many levels. Plus, we love the movie!!)
The crazy thing is, many in the know reason we might never have an answer to the mystery of consciousness.
· Did you know that the fastest-growing fingernail is on your middle finger?
· Did you know that, spread across a lifetime, most people spend an average of one whole year sitting on the toilet?
And on that note, we thought it was time to wrap up today’s curious dive into the bizarre mysteries of the human body. It's clear that our biology is a labyrinth of questions waiting to be answered. From the inexplicable growl of an empty stomach to the contagious yawn that traverse’s minds, these peculiar phenomena are threads that weave together the fabric of our shared humanity. Each strange fact invites us to embrace our inherent weirdness and marvel at the biological wonders we embody.
Celebrating the quirks of our bodies isn't just about reveling in the oddities but also about recognizing the profound mysteries that science has yet to unravel. Whether it's the evolutionary conundrum of laughter, the enigmatic placebo effect, or the purpose behind our hand dominance, these mysteries remind us that despite our advances, there’s still so much we don’t understand. This journey through the unknown serves as a testament to the complexity and wonder of being human, urging us to keep exploring and questioning.
So, as we navigate the labyrinth of our own existence, let’s embrace the weirdness that defines us. Let’s dive into it with curiosity and wonder, knowing that every odd fact and unexplained phenomenon is a celebration of the human adventure. Cause remember, in the grand scheme of things, we’re all pretty much the same - and we're all pretty weird. After all, isn’t that what makes our journey through life so endlessly fascinating?
Could have done without
“smelly pubic hairs collect pheromones to help attract mates”
The best fact I loved is that the heart syncs to music! Makes complete sense because nothing soothes the soul like some good tunes 🎶