- Why do I feel this way? And why do I have fingerprints?
You’d imagine we’d know the ins and outs of our own bodies. After all, we’re all human beings, and if there’s anything we spend a lot of time working on and with, it’s other humans.
Yet, there’s so much about the human body we simply don’t understand. Never mind stuff like not knowing which molecular pathways some medicines work through — we don’t even know why some basic, everyday reactions take place.
Here are nine things that happen with every human body that scientists, or anybody else, can’t fully explain.
1. Yawning
Even animals yawn, and we all known that yawning happens when you’re tired. Yet, why exactly we yawn is not clear.
You may have heard that yawning helps you boost blood oxygen levels, but further studies have shown that doesn’t actually happen. Latest theories posit that yawning may regulate brain temperature, but there’s no hard proof of that either.
Oh, and let’s not even get to why yawning is contagious. That could indicate it has no physical effect at all and is meant to communicate being tired — but then animals do it too. Yawning is just weird.
2. Fingerprints
Your fingerprints are unique. There’s no one on this planet who shares your fingertip pattern.
There’s also no one who knows why you have a unique fingerprint, or fingerprints in general.
For a long time, it was believed fingerprints enhance grip. Again, deeper research showed that the situation is the complete opposite, with fingerprints actually decreasing traction when we grab something.
So why are they there? Maybe the tiny ridges help with touch sensitivity, but ultimately, your guess is as good as mine.
3. Dreaming
Dreams are strange. But what’s stranger is why anybody dreams.
Some doctors and scientists posit that dreaming is a side effect of your brain’s information organization system that runs while you sleep. Others, however, believe that dreams result from your brain neurons turning on and off more or less randomly.
So, don’t feel bad if you can’t explain your dreams. No one else can, either.
This isn’t the only strange dream fact. Check out our article on 12 odd things about dreams for more.
4. Limb Dominance
Are you a rightie or a leftie? Doesn’t matter, because nobody can explain why one of our arms tends to be the dominant one.
What’s even weirder is that having one dominant limb doesn’t make sense in terms of natural selection. If you happen to lose your dominant arm, you’ll be up s*** creek without limbs to paddle with — even when you have another perfectly good arm right there.
Additionally, only roughly 10% of people are left-handed. If there was any kind of survival disadvantage to being a leftie, you’d think nature would’ve wiped out left-handed people a long time ago. Yet, here we are, still using one hand over the other for reasons we can’t comprehend.
5. Blood Types
Blood types have to do with more than just blood transfusions. Doctors are aware that people can resist different infections at varying rates, depending on their blood type.
But that’s where the understanding ends. Looking at the prevalence of blood types in populations, and the infection rates of various diseases, there’s no clear distribution pattern (apart from malaria, which corresponds with the O blood type).
If blood types had developed to resist local diseases, you’d expect to see people in a specific place share blood types. Yet, that doesn’t happen, and the random distribution of blood types continues to baffle the medical field.
6. Feeling (or Not Feeling) Pain
We know how pain works — something damaging happens to a section of your body, and the pain signal travels to your brain. Now, your brain can tell your body to move away from whatever hurt you.
So, pain must be a mechanism that exists to keep you alive. But how do we explain pain tolerances, then?
Cutting yourself (for example) is equally dangerous to everyone, yet some people shrug and slap on a band-aid, while others scream and almost go into a panic. The experience of pain is so subjective that researchers simply can’t explain why we feel (or don’t feel) pain the way we do.
7. Blushing
Maybe your crush just complimented you, or perhaps you did something incredibly embarrassing. In either case, your face turns bright red. But why?
Humans are the only living things on Earth that blush. So, blushing must have some inherently human function, but nobody seems to be able to figure out what it is.
Part of the problem is that blushing can be triggered by so many things on the complete opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, from blind rage to utter delight. It’s obvious that blushing communicates something between people — but we’d have to ask our millions-year-old ancestors what it is.
8. Puberty
Speaking of being a blushing and embarrassed mess, here comes puberty. Similarly to blushing, out of all animals in the world, humans are the only ones who have to put up with this hormonal nightmare.
Most other animals go from infancy to adulthood at a more or less constant rate of growth. Humans, for some reason, have an extended period of little growth (childhood) followed by a rapid growth spurt over a few years.
Being an awkward, crater-faced teen must have some beneficial purpose, or nature would’ve weeded it out already. What that purpose is, though, is as hard to understand as the feelings of angsty teenager.
9. Pubic Hair
Well, since we were on the topic of puberty, we might as well have our final mystery be something that shows up during that time. We all have pubes, but why they’re there is not clear at all.
One theory, which would be easy to believe, is that your hairy scrotum keeps dirt and bacteria out of your most sensitive parts. There’s just one gaping hole in this suggestion — almost every other animal’s private parts are mostly bald and they do just fine.
Another possible explanation is that the hair provides cushioning and prevents chafing during the horizontal mambo. Again, you could see that, but you also have to consider that other animals don’t seem to suffer from scraped scrotes after doing the deed.
The last (and grossest) theory posits that our pubes are stink sponges. Perhaps our primitive ancestors were attracted to a pheromone-filled jungle down south.
If you’d like to read more about weird stuff our bodies do, here are a few things that show your brain is actually really stupid.