The human body is everything that makes up, well, us. However, there are plenty of fascinating things we don't know about it. Or rather, ourselves.
Once you look closer, dive under the surface of the skin, explore the inner workings of the biological systems that ensure our everyday life, you just can't help but admire the marvel that you really are.
To learn more about our bits and pieces, Redditor u/Zenssei made a post on r/AskReddit, asking other platform users to share some facts about the human body that not many people know about. Their call to action was immediately answered.
As of this article, the post already has received over 56K upvotes and 23K comments, and has become one of the coolest online trivia archives out there!
#1
Our brains make up, on average, around 2% of our body weight but consume 20% of our caloric intake
Image credits: MoodyTeeth
#2
Humans have, on average, just as many hairs on their body as chimpanzees, human hair is just a lot shorter and finer.
Image credits: Inner_Inspection6408
#3
Synovial joint fluid is the most frictionless stuff on the planet (unless they've synthetic'ed something up that recently.)
Image credits: that_doesnt_gothere
#4
When doing surgery where the doctors have to take out some organs, when placing them back, they don't have to be put back In the exact position there meant to be, your body kind of just, moves the organs into the correct position after the surgery
Image credits: IamaJarJar
#5
It only takes about 15 pounds of force to rip off a human ear
Image credits: 02K30C1
#6
The surface area of the lungs is about the same size as a tennis court
Image credits: felipebsr
#7
The eyeball is the fastest healing part on your body.
Image credits: _Nugget_UwU
#8
You hate the sound of your recorded voice because it's missing the low frequency you're used to hearing.When you talk, you hear your voice as it goes to the air and back to you ear. It also goes through your skull to your ear, and this bone conduction mechanism transmits the low frequencies better than air does.
Your recorded voice only has the air transmitted sound. That causes the dissonance between what you think your voice sounds like, and what it really does. It's also why your voice will (almost) always be higher pitch than you think.
Image credits: BlocterDocterFocter
#9
The reason it's so easy to break your collar bone is because its designed to break.The way it was explained to me is that its like a circuit breaker. It breaks there to stop the shock of impact getting to your spine
Image credits: Hardboiledsoftshell
#10
You can grow a new human being faster than most missing toenails can grow back
Image credits: CurrentAttention3
#11
You can poop out of your mouth if your intestines get backed up enough. It's like vomit, doesn't look like actual poop per se, but it's still disgusting.
Image credits: DTownForever
#12
Humans have stripes, we just normally can’t see them. They’re called Blaschko’s lines and form along the paths of embryonic cell migration. The stripes are sort of U-shaped down our front, V-shaped on our back, wavy on the head and face and we have basic, simple stripes on our extremities.
Image credits: LadySygerrik
#13
When you cry and your nose becomes runny, it's actually your tears.
Image credits: Bitchmom_6969
#14
Every minute you shed over 30,000 dead skin cells off your body
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#15
Your brain regulates how strong your muscles are. If your leg muscles were to contract at full strength, they would snap your femur.Its why people in emergencies on adrenaline can lift cars off children. Your body is capable of great strength, but it could also severely damage you, so your brain keeps you a weak, soft bag of jelly.
Image credits: Andibular
#16
Positive blood type women can have positive and negative blood type babies without issue. Negative blood type women require a shot with antibodies to prevent the mothers immune system from attacking the fetus if it is a positive blood type.#17
Your brain continues to try to revive the body long after the heart has stopped. In some cases 30 hours later there has been found brain activity trying to make repairs to bring the body back. This is used to indicate time of death in murder victims.
Image credits: flamingphoenix9834
#18
Humans are one of a few species of mammal that oddly don't produce their own vitamin C due to lack of a certain enzyme. Other mammalian species who exhibit this mutation are those contained in the main primate suborder Haplorhinni (monkeys, apes, tarsiers), as well as bats, capybaras, and guinea pigs.All other mammals produce vitamin C in the liver.
Image credits: TexasPatrick
#19
People who live in "extreme" conditions for generations adapt in extreme ways. For example people that live in high elevations often have larger lungs and different blood makeup. Or my favorite is the Bajau people that live on the water and spend a lot of their time diving, their spleens have become 50% larger in order to store more blood.
Image credits: localhelic0pter7
#20
Human eggs are small but big enough to be visible to the human eye
Image credits: Truly_Meaningless
#21
The heart smells like mushrooms.Source: I’m a cardiac anesthesiologist
Image credits: littlepoot
#22
It is simply impossible to laugh after tickling yourself, since the cerebellum sends commands to other parts of the brain to ignore these actions.#23
Humans are bioluminescent and glow in the dark, but the light that we emit is 1,000 times weaker than our human eyes are able to pick up.
Image credits: -eDgAR-
#24
It's possible to pull a jaw muscle while yawning. I found this out the hard way at work one day.
Image credits: MissSara101
#25
Some women can feel the exact moment an egg is released from the ovary during ovulation. Feels like a little pop just on one side. Pretty neat
Image credits: blueridge97
#26
The human body typically only uses 30% of its muscle’s strength. The only times where your body will activate full power is when it’s life or death. The cost of full muscle power is torn muscles, broken bone, stress, and in some cases, lacerations.
Image credits: MaskedNavajo
#27
When fetuses start developing in the womb, they grow from the butthole first and work their way up until the main shape of the fetus is developed.#28
Jaw muscles are the strongest in the human body
Image credits: Exciting_Clock2807
#29
If you say haaah your breath comes out warm,but when you say Woooh it comes out cold.#30
You will sooner die from lack of sleep than lack of food.You can live, depending on your current body fat and health level, for months without food. Estimates are you that you will die for lack of sleep within 2 weeks
Image credits: feliciates
#31
Your eyes have a separate immune system from the rest of your body and in a lot of occasions if your body's immune system finds your eyes, they will assume they are a foreign body and blind you.
Image credits: SlavicSquat1234
#32
If you faint at the sight of your own blood you may have an oversensitive vasovagal response. The theory is that this developed as a survival mechanism, kind of like an opposum playing dead.
Image credits: shibapop
#33
You can calm yourself down by splashing cold water on your face to trigger the mammalian diving reflex.#34
The appendix is not a vestigial organ. It actually protects good bacteria in the gut. You can live without it, but it’s not just chillin’ in there#35
There's a "right" and a "wrong" way to swallow and the first swallow pattern you learn isn't the right one! Babies swallow by pushing their whole tongue forward (since it's better for nursing). However, as you transition to solid foods, you are supposed to change to a swallow where you put the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth and roll the food back. Not everyone does, and those that don't are more likely to choke, eat too fast, develop dental problems, and some develop a lisp or distorted sounds as they learn to talk!
Image credits: Shimerald
#36
The reason it feels weird when you or someone touches the inside of your belly button is because the nerves actually go to your spinal cord. These nerves lie at the same level that relay signals to your urethra and bladder. So when you feel like you have to pee when you touch the inside of your belly button, that's why.#37
We're the best marathon runners in the animal kingdom and can win a marathon against any animal out there.#38
Each one of your eyes has a blind spot where the optic nerve exit your eye into your brain. You can't see it because your brain tricks you not to see, it covers the spot with some made up image of what it thinks fits better with the rest of it.#39
Alzheimer’s disease isn’t just gradual loss of memory. It physically exists in the brain. It’s a physical substance that attacks the brain. Like, if you were able to open the skull of a person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease to take a look at their brain, you would actually see this sticky, fibrous, grey physical matter overtaking their brain.#40
Your stomach is surrounded by more brain cells (half a billion neurons) than the brain of a cat contains in total.It's your enteric nervous system. It controls digestion, operates autonomously, has its own memory, can handle its own reflexes, it has its own senses even.
It's thought to have come about because of the blood-brain barrier and the main brain being locked away in the skull, a spinal column and nerves away from the critical action of nutrition.
Image credits: Hattix
#41
The proportion of your vision that is actually in sharp focus roughly equates to the size of your thumbnail at arm's length. The rest of it is just your visual cortex filling in the blanks.#42
Scars are not made of "permanent" tissue (they're held together by collagen) and are in a constant state of repair. This repair is facilitated by vitamin C (amongst other things). Yes, this means that people with scurvy (from vitamin C deficiency) will see all their old scars reopen into fresh wounds.#43
Your body must warm fluids before absorbing them, so drinking ice cold water to hydrate is only burning more energy, and you're not hydrating as quickly.#44
The amount of bacteria in your entire body is ten times more than the amount of human cells.#45
There are tiny cilia that spin in a certain direction. If they spin in the opposite direction while you're developing in the womb early on, that is how you get organs transposed onto the opposite side of your body.
Image credits: gurgleslurp
#46
When loosing weight, fat isn't lost through heat, poop or sweating. Nearly all fat is lost through simple breathing. If you lose 10kg of fat, precisely 8.4kg comes out through your lungs and the remaining 1.6kg turns into water.#47
In children under 11 (for some reason), cutting off the fingertip from the last knuckle will result in complete regeneration of the finger in 100% of cases, assuming the naibed is intact. There's no explanation for why this happens, why it only happens to children under 11 and why it can't be sequences to fully regenerate / grow organs. It also occurs in many animals, as observed in test rodents.I learned that in science class in grade 8 and my dad called me a liar. I showed him my science textbook and he threw it away and said it was fake.
#48
The hyoid bone is a bone not attached to any other bones in the human body and is only considered the anchor of the tongue
Image credits: emzirek
#49
39% of people have an extra bone in their knee. 100 years ago only 11% of people had this bone.
Image credits: Cruithne
#50
X-rays of childrens mouths are nightmare fuel. The second set of teeth to replace baby teeth are already grown and lodged in their skulls. So you'll see two rows of teeth and its freaky looking. They don't grow in when the old ones fall out, they are already loaded in the chamber waiting to get launched.
Image credits: demonardvark
#51
Baby don’t get knee caps until 2-6 years old#52
Apparently about 20% of people have a bony ridge on the roof of their mouth. Most people's pallettes are smooth with a very slight ridge.The 20% like me have an exaggerated and more pronounced ridge. Apparently it's most common in women and Asian folk, and I'm neither so that's neat. I always thought it was totally normal.
#53
Your brain likes stimulation, if it doesn't get any it will make some up, some people are more sucepticle to it then others, the colors you see before you fall asleep are a common mild occurrence, there are several classes of these hallucinations, closed-eye visuals, which are caused by leaving your eyes closed for a long time, hypnagogia, which is caused by the onset of sleep, prisoners cinema, which is caused by looking into a dark place for a long time, ganzfeld effect, which is caused by blocking out all external stimuli, and Charles bonnet syndrome, caused by sight loss.
Most are these are simple phosphenes but some can be whole imagined scenes, or more abstract fractal-like imagery
#54
Babys can break their collarbone during delivery. It happens quite often, but heals quickly. My teacher told me that (if it happened to you ofc) you may feel a slightly higher spot on your collarbone, called the callus where the fracture grew back together.#55
The shoulder blade is a more complicated joint than you'd think. While the hip is a ball and socket that just rotates, the shoulder can fold forward. If you sit with your back against against the chair, hold your hand on your collarbone. Then try moving your shoulder forward. You should be able to move the joint forward without moving your back from the chair#56
You can live "normally" with half your brain. In some severe drug resistant epileptic syndrom in young kids, the only option to stop the seizures is to remove a complete brain hemisphere.After a while, with proper reeducation and all, the children can go on to have a normal life without cognitive deficit. They will have a limping, blindness from one eye and a very weark arm but can lead a normal life and not end up cognitively impaired.
One of the earliest sign of alzheimer's disease, before the memory loss, could be the loss of the sense of smell. It's also the case with Parkinson disease.
Our brain looks wrinkled because it is actually "folded" inside our skull in order to fit a maximum of surface and thus neurons & cell communications. Some animals like rodents have a completely smooth brain.
Image credits: Matrozi
#57
Most reflexes never make it to your brain. The sensory aspect travels to the spinal cord and the spinal cord itself sends the muscle movement signals to your limbs.#58
Your body will reduce your muscle strength to protect your spine.Stand on flat ground, hold your arms out in a t-pose, and have a friend push down on your hand while you try to hold it in place. That's your control, how strong you actually are.
Now, remove 1 shoe (or put a book under 1 foot) and repeat with your hips askew so your spine isn't straight. An inch is all it takes.
Your strength will be reduced to the point that your friend can use a single finger to push your hand down.
#59
The average adult has 22 square feet of skin. Perfect size for a nice rug.
Image credits: angry_centipede
#60
Apparently not everyone knows that women grow a new organ while pregnant.In addition to growing a child, they grow the placenta.
#61
When you have a bowel movement, your heart rhythm shifts temporarily due to a vagus response. The reason Elvis died on the toilet was because his heart was beating 200+ bpm and the quick rhythm change caused a myocardial infarction. People with low heart rates have been known to pass out on the toilet because their bodies can't handle the shift.It's also why EMTs will absolutely not let you use the bathroom before getting on the ambulance. Especially if the bathroom is a standard 5'x8'.
#62
30% of body waste is excreted via skin#63
That there is NOT 20 lbs of toxic poop in your body at any given time. But apparently a ton of people still believe all sorts of ads about some pill or another being able to flush some imaginary "toxins" out of your body like it's going to magically cure you of 20 years of terrible eating and exercise habits.#64
In theory humans could breathe a liquid if it was super saturated with oxygen. It wouldn't be easy because the density of liquid being so much higher than air so after 15 mins or so you would be too fatigued to continue breathing.The hardest part is getting all the liquid out of the lungs so the person doesn't get pneumonia
Image credits: Crackracket
#65
When you get conditioned to physical activity, your circulatory system adapts -- more blood, more vessels, more blood cells. But your lungs really don't. This is because no matter how much blood your heart is able to deliver to your lungs, the lungs still have no problem oxygenating it. This is why your oxygen saturation doesn't drop during exercise (unless you have a heart defect.)
Image credits: grenudist
#66
If you carry a lot of unprocessed trauma, it can cause psychosomatic autoimmune diseases.from Bored Panda https://bit.ly/3wb6wHQ
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