Fun Facts About the Human Body

John Mayer was right when he said your body is a wonderland, but it is also a weird and wonderful thing that holds many secrets.

While you may take for granted the skin you’re in, spare a thought for all the amazing bits that work together to make you, you.

These facts range from the fun to the rather bizarre, but we bet that after you’ve read them, you’ll have a new appreciation for physiology and the way you’re put together!

Brains, Eyes and Blood

• The only part of your entire body that does not have a blood supply is the cornea in your eye. This receives oxygen from the air as it is exposed, and therefor doesn’t need an alternative source. Technically, it’s an inside organ that gets outside benefits.
• During the average lifetime a human heart pumps 182 million litres of blood around the body.
• Women’s hearts beat faster than men’s.
• Your brain has the capacity of a 4 terabyte hard drive on average. Good to know if you want to back yourself up or if you need to think a little harder about NRL Premiership odds and which way to wager!
• If you laid out all your blood vessels in a long line, their total length would be around 100,000 km.
• When you blush, blood rushes to your cheeks. But it also rushes to your stomach, and that turns red too.

Bones, Nerves and Breathing

• You have 29 different bones in your skull.
• Your right lung can take in more air than your left lung can.
• Nerve impulses from the brain travel at a speed of a speed of 274 km/h. That’s a little faster than the average Formula One car.
• For up to 7 months of age, a newborn baby can breathe and swallow at once without choking.
• A kiss gives us the same sensations firing a gun, or skydiving. A passionate kiss that is, not a peck on the cheek from grandma.
• Even if you combined all the telephones in the word, a single brain would still generate more electrical impulses in a single day.
• Your respiration rate is a third higher in spring than in autumn, and as it gets colder, our breathing slows down.

The Bizarre and the Unbelievable

• The average human has enough sulphur in their body to kill all the fleas on a dog.

It also has enough carbon to make around 900 pencils, more than enough potassium to be able to fire a cannon, and enough fat to make as many as 7 bars of soap- unless you are overweight, in which case even more soap can be made.

• While you were reading this at least 50,000 cells in your body died and were replaced.
• Koalas also have fingerprints, just like us.
• The longest record for hiccupping is held by Charles Osborne who hiccupped for 68 years in total.
• On average, we forget 90% of our dreams the minute we awake.
• We are the only living beings that sleep on our backs.
• Teeth are the only part of our entire bodies that cannot technically heal themselves, and once they begin to decay they will never replenish or regrow.