FASCINATING FACTS FROM BIOLOGYIf you yelled for 8 years, 7 months, and 6 days, you would have
produced enough sound energy to heat up one cup of coffee. (Hardly
seems worth it.)
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
(In my next life I want to be pig.)
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
(Still not over that pig thing.)
Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
(Is that why Flipper is always smiling? And why isn't the pig
included in this list? Maybe 30 minute orgasms aren't as fun as I
imagine...)
On average, people fear spiders more then they do death.
The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue. (Hmmmmmm......)
A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.
The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own
weight, and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
(From drinking little bottles of....? Did the gov't pay for this
research?)
Polar bears are left handed.
(Who knew? Who cares? Did the gov't pay for this too? Probably...)
The flea can jump 350 times its body length. That's like a human
jumping the length of a football field.
A cockroach will live 9 days without its head before it starves to
death.
The male praying mantis cannot copulate while it's head is attached
to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head
off. (Hi, honey. I'm home. What the...?)
Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
(In my next life I still want to be a pig.
Quality over quantity, you know?)
Butterflies taste with their feet. (Oh, jeez!)
Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
(I know some people like that.)
Starfish don't have brains.
(I know some people like this too.)
It takes your food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.
One human hair can support 6.6 pounds.
The average man's penis is two times the length of his thumb.
Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.
A woman's heart beats faster than a man's.
There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.
Women blink twice as often as men.
The average person's skin weighs twice as much as the brain.
Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.
If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.
Women Will be finished reading this by now.
And Men Are still busy checking their thumbs.
The human body is a treasure trove of mysteries, one that still confounds
doctors and scientists about the details of its working. It's not an overstatement
to say that every part of your body is a miracle. Here are fifty facts about
your body, some of which will leave you stunned...
1. It's possible for your body to survive without a surprisingly large
fraction of its internal organs. Even if you lose your stomach, your
spleen, 75% of your liver, 80% of your intestines, one kidney, one lung, and
virtually every organ from your pelvic and groin area, you wouldn't be very
healthy, but you would live.
2. During your lifetime, you will produce enough saliva to fill two
swimming pools. Actually, Saliva is more important than you realize. If your
saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.
3. The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the
smallest is the male sperm. The egg is actually the only cell in the body
that is visible by the naked eye.
4. The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue and the
hardest bone is the jawbone.
5. Human feet have 52 bones, accounting for one quarter of all the
human body's bones.
6. Feet have 500,000 sweat glands and can produce more than a pint of
sweat a day.
7. The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.
The reason it doesn't eat away at your stomach is that the cells of your
stomach wall renew themselves so frequently that you get a new stomach
lining every three to four days.
8. The human lungs contain approximately 2,400 kilometers (1,500 mi)
of airways and 300 to 500 million hollow cavities, having a total surface
area of about 70 square meters, roughly the same area as one side of a
tennis court. Furthermore, if all of the capillaries that surround the lung
cavities were unwound and laid end to end, they would extend for about 992
kilometers. Also, your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make
room for your heart.
9. Sneezes regularly exceed 100 mph, while coughs clock in at about 60
mph.
10. Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon
of water to a boil.
11. Your body has enough iron in it to make a nail 3 inches long.
12. Earwax production is necessary for good ear health. It protects the
delicate inner ear from bacteria, fungus, dirt and even insects. It also
cleans and lubricates the ear canal.
13. Everyone has a unique smell, except for identical twins, who smell
the same.
14. Your teeth start growing 6 months before you are born. This is why
one out of every 2,000 newborn infants has a tooth when they are born
15. A baby's head is one-quarter of its total length, but by the age of
25 will only be one-eighth of its total length. This is because people's
heads grow at a much slower rate than the rest of their bodies.
16. Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood the number is
reduced to 206. Some of the bones, like skull bones, get fused into each
other, bringing down the total number.
17. It's not possible to tickle yourself. This is because when you
attempt to tickle yourself you are totally aware of the exact time and
manner in which the tickling will occur, unlike when someone else tickles
you.
18. Less than one third of the human race has 20-20 vision. This means
that two out of three people cannot see perfectly.
19. Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents. But if you are a
woman, you are a better smeller than men, and will remain a better smeller
throughout your life.
20. The human body is estimated to have 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
21. The three things pregnant women dream most of during their first
trimester are frogs, worms and potted plants. Scientists have no idea why
this is so, but attribute it to the growing imbalance of hormones in the
body during pregnancy.
22. The life span of a human hair is 3 to 7 years on average. Every day
the average person loses 60-100 strands of hair. But don't worry, you must
lose over 50% of your scalp hairs before it is apparent to anyone.
23. The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as an
encyclopedia. Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream,
and is itself made up of 80% water. Though it interprets pain signals from
the rest of the body, the brain itself cannot feel pain.
24. The tooth is the only part of the human body that can't repair
itself.
25. Your eyes are always the same size from birth but your nose and ears
never stop growing.
26. By 60 years of age, 60% of men and 40% of women will snore.
27. We are about 1 cm taller in the morning than in the evening, because
during normal activities during the day, the cartilage in our knees and
other areas slowly compress.
28. The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light
bulb, even while you are sleeping. In fact, the brain is much more active at
night than during the day.
29. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per
hour. Neurons continue to grow throughout human life. Information travels at
different speeds within different types of neurons.
30. It is a fact that people who dream more often and more vividly, on
an average have a higher Intelligence Quotient.
31. The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger.
32. Facial hair grows faster than any other hair on the body. This is
true for men as well as women.
33. There are as many hairs per square inch on your body as a
chimpanzee.
34. A human fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months.
35. By the age of 60, most people will have lost about half their taste
buds.
36. About 32 million bacteria call every inch of your skin home. But
don't worry, a majority of these are harmless or even helpful bacteria.
37. The colder the room you sleep in, the higher the chances are that
you'll have a bad dream.
38. Human lips have a reddish color because of the great concentration
of tiny capillaries just below the skin.
39. Three hundred million cells die in the human body every minute.
40. Like fingerprints, every individual has an unique tongue print that
can be used for identification.
41. A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it
has been decapitated.
42. It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown.
43. Humans can make do longer without food than sleep. Provided there
is water, the average human could survive a month to two months without
food depending on their body fat and other factors. Sleep deprived people,
however, start experiencing radical personality and psychological changes
after only a few sleepless days. The longest recorded time anyone has ever
gone without sleep is 11 days, at the end of which the experimenter was
awake, but stumbled over words, hallucinated and frequently forgot what he
was doing.
44. The most common blood type in the world is Type O. The rarest blood
type, A-H or Bombay blood, due to the location of its discovery, has been
found in less than hundred people since it was discovered
45. Every human spent about half an hour after being conceived, as a
single cell. Shortly afterward, the cells begin rapidly dividing and begin
forming the components of a tiny embryo.
46. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than
left-handed people do.
47. Your ears secrete more earwax when you are afraid than when you
aren't.
48. Koalas and primates are the only animals with unique fingerprints.
49. Humans are the only animals to produce emotional tears.
50. The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet in
the air.
Pigeons have just tied with non-human primates in terms of math competence.
Pigeons can not only discriminate quantities, they can also learn abstract mathematical concepts.
Pigeons are on par with primates when it comes to numerical competence.
The study, published in Science, discovered that pigeons can discriminate different amounts of number-like objects, order pairs, and learn abstract mathematical rules. Aside from humans, only rhesus monkeys have exhibited equivalent skills.
Scarf, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago, and colleagues Harlene Hayne and Michael Colombo began by first teaching pigeons how to order the numbers 1, 2 and 3.
To do this, they presented the pigeons with three images containing one, two, or three objects. All three images appeared at once on a touch screen and the pigeons pecked the screen to make a response. If they correctly accomplished the task -- pecking the images in ascending order -- they received a wheat snack.
"We took steps to ensure things like volume could not control responding in training and testing," he said. "For example, during training and testing, the higher numerosity did not always have the largest surface area/volume and thus the pigeons could not respond based on this stimulus dimension."
The images also came in different colors and shapes, so the pigeons weren't somehow linking those qualities to quantity.
Next, the researchers upped the ante, to see whether or not pigeons had just learned to order 1, 2, and 3, or if they'd learned a more abstract rule. Scarf and his team presented the pigeons with pairs of images containing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 objects. The pigeons again had to pair the items in ascending order. For example, if a pigeon saw 8 and 5, it had to peck the objects representing 5 first. "Remarkably, the pigeons were able to respond to these novel pairs correctly," Scarf said. "In addition, their performance was indistinguishable from that of two rhesus monkeys that had been previously trained on this task."
If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months, and 6 days, you would have
produced enough sound energy to heat up one cup of coffee. (Hardly
seems worth it.)
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
(In my next life I want to be pig.)
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
(Still not over that pig thing.)
Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
(Is that why Flipper is always smiling? And why isn't the pig
included in this list? Maybe 30 minute orgasms aren't as fun as I
imagine...)
On average, people fear spiders more then they do death.
The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue. (Hmmmmmm......)
A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.
The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own
weight, and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
(From drinking little bottles of....? Did the gov't pay for this
research?)
Polar bears are left handed.
(Who knew? Who cares? Did the gov't pay for this too? Probably...)
The flea can jump 350 times its body length. That's like a human
jumping the length of a football field.
A cockroach will live 9 days without its head before it starves to
death.
The male praying mantis cannot copulate while it's head is attached
to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head
off. (Hi, honey. I'm home. What the...?)
Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
(In my next life I still want to be a pig.
Quality over quantity, you know?)
Butterflies taste with their feet. (Oh, jeez!)
Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
(I know some people like that.)
Starfish don't have brains.
(I know some people like this too.)
It takes your food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.
One human hair can support 6.6 pounds.
The average man's penis is two times the length of his thumb.
Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.
A woman's heart beats faster than a man's.
There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.
Women blink twice as often as men.
The average person's skin weighs twice as much as the brain.
Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.
If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.
Women Will be finished reading this by now.
And Men Are still busy checking their thumbs.
