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15 Amazing Things The Human Body Does That Most People Have No Idea About

September 22, 2015

Here's a list of amazing facts about the human body that most people have no idea about...

Now, focus on a moving object and you will notice that you can now move your eyes smoothly as you track the object's movement. This eye behavior, known as smooth pursuit, evolved because it allowed us to better spot and keep sight of prey (or potential predators). The little eye jumps are ideal for skipping over useless sights and scanning the entirety of a space more quickly. Then smooth pursuit allows us to lock on to a target and keep it in our sights.

The next logical step is obvious: Send pregnant women to battle for they are invincible!

It's a nerve response, and has NOTHING to do with water absorption changing the skin. If you have sufficient nerve damage in your fingers/hand, pruning won't happen!

Except for allergies, which apparently makes the body self destruct.

You just turned your arm over and back again a few times didn't you?

Don't try this one at work... unless you're a football coach.

There was an article last year that showed that the fingertips can detect features that are 10 micrometers thick.

For example, if mom is nursing a toddler (who is more prone to short little "drive by" nursings) the child get more bang for their buck and gets a full session's worth of proteins, fats and vitamins in their one minute fly by the same as a 3 month old gets in their 25 minute session. As they get older, the quantity of vitamins, fats and proteins changes as well to meet their individual needs. This is even true if mom is tandem nursing two babies of different ages: the milk actually customizes itself to ensure they both get exactly what they need, and the amount of milk she makes is dependent entirely on how much stimulation she gets (ie. the more the baby nurses at the breast, the better supplied they are. This is why using bottles and pacifiers mucks up someone's supply: the baby wastes all their suckling needs somewhere else).

Even cooler, the milk makes antibodies for the viruses mom and baby are exposed to and fighting off. I always thought the coolest part in particular was that before the mom even know she or her baby are sick, her milk is already creating medicine (antibodies) to treat her child. It's like a built-in vaccine that is constantly being updated to fight off the latest bugs. This is the main reason why breastfed babies are better equipped to fight off both short term illness and long term disease (like respiratory illness, asthma, allergies, etc).

When you get a sunburn, it's not your skin cells being damaged by the sun and dying, it's your skin cells' DNA being damaged by the sun and them killing themselves so they don't turn into cancer.

This used to be a way to hunt. Humans can regulate heat while running/jogging/walking, while the animals being chased (antelope for example) cannot regulate their heat efficiently.

For that to happen, you brain needs to calculate the direction and rate of change your head is moving in 3 dimensional space and then send corresponding signals to the muscles in your eyes to exactly counter match the rotation and speed in order to keep them pointed at that spot. And not only that, the muscles that have to be moved (and the rate at which they move) are different for each eye, since if you turn your head quickly right, you R eye contracts the muscles on the nose side to compensate, and the L eye contracts the muscles on the temple side.

It's an absolutely amazing, fine-tuned process involving incredible spacial calculations and microsecond signaling and adjusting that we do all the time and take completely for granted.

It is way more happening down there than you think. Basically, at the anus there are 2 rings of muscle ("sphincters"), internal and external. In the resting state, the INTERNAL sphincter is contracted and the EXTERNAL sphincter is relatively relaxed.

Inside/above the internal sphincter (in the rectum) you are lined with mucosa, which is similar to the lining of your mouth. Down there it isn't very sensitive, though. But in between the two sphincters, the lining is basically skin (just like what you have outside the external sphincter) which has excellent sensation.

When a material gets into the rectum and stretches it, the internal sphincter relaxes, and the external sphincter contracts, exposing the skin between them to the material, which determines if it is solid, liquid, or gas (fart). Then the internal anal sphincter contracts again and the material is pushed back up into the rectum. As non-infant humans, we generally try to wait until a societally-appropriate time to sit or squat, relax both sphincters, and pass the material if liquid or solid (or in the case of pre-adolescent and older boys, lean over and pass the gas in someone else's direction...).

If you think about it, the brain also named itself.