You wouldn’t drive a car without reading the owner’s manual and knowing all the features, so why would you do the same with your own body? Of course you know how amazing the human body is, but even the base model has some pretty outstanding features you may not be aware of. Here’s some of our favorites from a thread at Quora.com, but this just scratches the surface. We found a great site called 100 Interesting Facts About the Human Body that will keep you interested for hours!
A single mutation which arose as recently as 6-10,000 years ago, possibly near the Black Sea, is responsible for all the blue-eyed people alive on Earth today.
We share 96% of our DNA with the Chimpanzees. That 4% is all the difference that makes you ‘human’.
75% of the world’s population are lactose intolerant. The ability to digest milk well into adulthood has been a very recent adaptation among a small percentage of people, but has been one of the fastest spreading mutations of recent times.
One of the leading factors people find attractive in the opposite gender is a symmetrical face and body. It serves as an indicator of good genes by demonstrating that the person was fit and healthy enough to produce equal number of cells on both sides of the body.
Most people know about humanity’s African origins, but not many know humans migrated out of Africa only in the last 65,000 years. It’s not that many years in an evolutionary time frame but these 65,000 years have given rise to all the amazing human diversity we see today.
Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 250 miles per hour.
The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb. Your brain generates as much energy as a small light bulb even when you’re sleeping.
The brain only makes up about 2% of our body mass, yet uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream.
The brain is much more active at night than during the day.
Neurons continue to grow throughout human life. For years scientists and doctors thought that brain and neural tissue couldn’t grow or regenerate, but neurons can and do grow throughout your life.
The brain itself cannot feel pain. The brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain, but the brain is surrounded by loads of tissues, nerves and blood vessels that do.
80% of the brain is water. Your brain isn’t the firm, gray mass you’ve seen on TV. Living brain tissue is a squishy, pink and jelly-like organ thanks to the loads of blood and high water content of the tissue.
Facial hair grows faster than any other hair on the body. In fact, if the average man never shaved his beard it would grow to over 30 feet during his lifetime, longer than a killer whale.
We’re taller in the morning than at night
Our stomach manufactures a new lining every three days to avoid digesting itself.
A person will die from lack of sleep sooner than they will from starvation, which usually takes a few weeks.
A single human blood cell takes only 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.
An average person produces about 25,000 quarts of saliva in a lifetime, enough to fill two swimming pools.
We humans are the best long-distance runners on the planet, better than any four-legged animal. In fact, thousands of years ago we used to run after our prey until they died of exhaustion.
Humans are bioluminescent and glow in the dark. The light that we emit is 1,000 times weaker than our human eyes are able to pick up.
When we look at an object, the image of that object appears upside down on our retina. However, our brain automatically corrects for this, allowing us to perceive the object the right side up.
Like fingerprints, every person has a unique tongue print.
With the 60,000 miles of blood vessels inside the average human body, we could circumnavigate Earth two and a half times.
Everyone has a completely unique smell (except for twins).
There’re more bacteria in our mouth than there are people in the world.
Our heart pumps nearly 1.5 million barrels of blood during our lifetime, enough to fill 200 train tank cars.
People with higher number of moles tend to live longer than people with lesser number of moles.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Southampton University scientists have found evidence that awareness can continue for at least several minutes after clinical death which was previously thought impossible
Every day the average person loses 60-100 strands of hair. Unless you’re already bald, chances are good that you’re shedding pretty heavily on a daily basis. Your hair loss will vary in accordance with the season, pregnancy, illness, diet and age.
An adult is made up of 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7 octillion) atoms. For perspective, there’s a ‘measly’ 300,000,000,000 (300 billion) stars in our galaxy.
The human brain can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica.
