While bored and browsing Reddit, I came across this thread of people sharing facts about the human body. I thought I knew a lot about the human body because I'm a human, but it turns out I know nothing!!! So here are some things I learned about this weird bloody skin suit we are all living in.
1. "Human eggs are small but big enough to be visible to the human eye."
2.
"When doing surgery, organs don't have to be put back in the exact position they are meant to be. Your body kind of just moves the organs into the correct position after the surgery."
3. "Your elbow skin is called your weenus. Also, you can pinch it as hard as you want and it won't hurt."
4.
"Your brain regulates how strong your muscles are. If your leg muscles were to contract at full strength, they would snap your femur. It's 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."
5.
"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."
6. "When you cry and your nose becomes runny, it's actually your tears."
7.
"A healthy heart doesn't need a body to beat. As long as it has an oxygenated blood supply, it will just keep going, with or without its owner."
8.
"The average human erection has roughly about 130ml of blood in it, while the average rabbit has about 126ml in its entire body. So, there is more blood in a boner than in a bunny."
9.
"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."
10. "The liver can regenerate itself. If you literally cut off 2/3 of the liver, it can regrow itself in about two weeks."
11.
"Humans have, on average, just as many hairs on their body as chimpanzees, human hair is just a lot shorter and finer."
12.
"Our brain looks wrinkled because it is actually "folded" inside our skull in order to fit a maximum of surface and thus neurons and cell communications. Some animals like rodents have a completely smooth brain."
13. "You can only swallow 2–3 times before your body forces you to wait to try again."
14.
"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 even has its own senses. 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."
15.
"Your cornea (in the eye) is the only part of your body that doesn't get oxygen from your lungs. The cornea just absorbs free oxygen from the air like insects do. This is why contact lenses have to be breathable!"
16.
"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."
17. "Your intestines are in near-constant motion, wiggling like a worm."
18.
"Some people will cough if they put something in one ear, a very small percentage will cough if something is in either ear. It is called Arnold’s ear-cough reflex."
19.
"Your heart rate increases about a minute before partaking in exercise. It is known as the anticipatory rise and happens involuntarily."
20.
"Right before you vomit, your mouth fills with quite a bit of saliva, this normally happens like 30–45 seconds before you vomit. It does this to help protect your mouth from the acids in the vomit. It's also a good indicator that you are going to vomit. So if that happens to you, find the nearest toilet, bush, or garbage can."
21. "The brain organ itself cannot feel pain, but it can feel the pain from all other parts of the body."
22.
"The brown line on your scrotum is where your labia fused together in the womb and your clitoris formed the freneum of your penis."
23.
"You're just a little bit taller in the morning than you are at night. Spinal compression from gravity."
24. "The tongue doesn't have a 'taste map,' every cell has the ability to taste all flavors."
25.
"When breathing through your nose, most of the air enters through one nostril. The nostril used switches every few hours. This is called the nasal cycle."
26.
"When a cell is going to die by apoptosis, it undergoes a careful, regulated process of packaging up its intracellular contents (e.g. organelles) so that its neighbour cells don't die."
27.
"Your eyes can only move slowly if you're tracking an object, otherwise they just twitch into place."
28. "If you say "haaah," your breath comes out warm, but when you say "Woooh," it comes out cold."
