6 Things Your Body Does Every Day That Science Can't Explain
The human race has scaled the tallest mountains, charted the deepest oceans and played a quick front nine on the freaking moon, but there's one frontier that still largely mystifies us: our own bodies.
There are everyday phenomenons you'd think must have been explained ages ago, but in reality asking these simple questions of a scientist will net you at best a shrug, and at worst some bullshit he just made up off the top of his head.
#6.
Yawning
The act of yawning is baffling to experts for two reasons. One, it doesn't actually seem to serve any purpose. Seriously, when you feel a yawn coming on, suppress it. What happens? Do you go into convulsions? Is your face racked by pain? Does blood shoot from your nose? No. Not a damned thing happens.
Equally baffling, though, is the contagious nature of it. Yawn, and whoever sees you will yawn. When a chimpanzee yawns, the other chimps yawn. If you yawn, you can make a dog yawn. Seriously, try it.
Odds are you've yawned once just because you read the word "yawn" several times above. Why?
Science's Wild-Ass Guess:
Your science textbook in elementary school may have said that low oxygen levels in the blood triggered yawning, with the yawn providing a quick influx of the gas. That was the prevailing theory going back to the days of ancient Greece. As is usually the case though, it turns out people from back in the day didn't know what the hell they were talking about. In fact it's been found yawning may actually decrease oxygen intake. Makes sense, when you do hard exercise you don't start frantically yawning. You don't see athletes yawning in the middle of a sprint.
Unfortunately, the alternatives are quite a bit more insane.
Such as the theory that yawning is the body's way of controlling brain temperature. Yeah, apparently scientists think our brains function with all the complexity of an old car engine. And you know how you're always yawning when you wear a hat, right? Right?
The proof of this was experiments in which it was found people with cool packs attached to their heads yawned less. Unless there could be some other reason people sitting in an unfamiliar lab with ice packs on their heads weren't much in a yawning mood...
As for why yawning is contagious, some scientists have pointed to human being's primitive herd instincts, figuring group yawning could have helped regulate sleeping patterns so that a "whoops, we all fell asleep at once and got eaten by giant sloths" situation didn't develop.
This remains merely a theory though, and of course still doesn't explain why people yawn while on their own.
#5.
Adolescence
Hey teenagers, need something else to add to your angst pile? Turns out these awkward times you're going through are far from universal in the animal kingdom. It's only humans Mother Nature decided to kick in the nuts, cursing to an opposite sex-repelling bubble of greasy clumsiness.
What evolutionary sense does it make for guys to be confined to their parents' basements smearing Clearasil on their face during their prime sexual years?
Yeah, a tie, that'll do it.
Scientists can't even agree when exactly the adolescent phase evolved. Some believe teenagers were awkward balls of nerves and nose grease as early as the Homo erectus era over a million years ago, while others think it's a much more recent development. Until they find a Homo erectus skeleton holding a fossilized iPod filled with My Chemical Romance songs, we may never know for sure.
Science's Wild-Ass Guess:
Some scientists argue that guys' half-decade of dorkdom is designed to force them develop traits chicks dig, like a sense of humor, artistic talent and conversational skills. Honestly though this theory sounds like the wishful thinking of scientists who don't want to face the ugly truth that their memorization of the periodic table and every Battlestar Galactica episode won't be getting them in any girl's pants ever.
Plus, it's hard to buy from an evolutionary perspective. Are we seriously to believe that all the guys who didn't have awkward teen years somehow got bred out of the population? Where we went to high school, while the clumsy awkward teens were trying to discover our charming adult personalities, the cool teens were busy having sex with one another. After a few thousand years of that, shouldn't evolution dictate that we all turn into Sean Connery on our 13th birthday?
#4.
Placebo Effect
It's obvious why some placebos work. A guy says he's feeling nauseous, you give him a sugar pill and tell him it'll cure it. He stops worrying about his stomach, thus the stomach calms down. The "herbal Viagra" industry and products like ExtenZe can enhance sexual performance by making the man think he has taken something that will enhance his sexual performance. It's easy to imagine how it works.
But the placebo effect goes way, way beyond that.
Completely imaginary drugs have been found to help everything from warts, to heart disease, to asthma. Doctors have even gone so far as to conduct sham knee surgeries that were almost as effective as the real thing.
"Fake knee surgeries, what a terrific use of my medical degree."
What the hell?
Science's Wild-Ass Guess:
First, there's debate over whether the placebo effect is even real at all, with some believing that most recoveries attributed to the effect can be explained by the body's natural healing abilities (as in, the patients would have gotten better even if they hadn't seen a doctor at all).
On one level, that's actually pretty disturbing. Keep in mind, some studies show placebos work as well as actual medical techniques in up to 50 to 60 percent of cases. Yes, it's possible 50 to 60 percent of what the trillion dollar medical industry does could be achieved by staying home, resting and watching daytime TV. Try not to think about that one too much or you may end up on YouTube screaming something at a town hall meeting.
Others have even hypothesized the placebo effect may just be us unconsciously ignoring or repressing symptoms so we please our doctors. Meaning, the patient was still in pain, but was fed up with sitting in the waiting room for an hour every week so finally said, "fuck it." Tell the doc you're all better and get him to sign a note for you to return to work.
"I did it? Hell yeah. I rule at doctoring."
None of those explain everything, including the extremely weird fact that the phenomenon has become more and more powerful in recent years.
Again we ask, what the hell?
The pubic hair for men is most likely the same reason men have nipples. It is considered such an important function for women fir human reproduction, that it is included in the dna codes during early development for both sexes.
ReplyMy theory on dreaming has always been, basically, a process in which random nerves activate as the brain, more or less, "sorts itself out". These random nerves of course being associated with certain memories, concepts, feelings, etc. As a result, your conscious brain tries to make sense of the random information, and basically fabricates a story to rationalize what is happening. This would explain why external factors can still affect the content of a dream, because your senses are still fully functional during sleep. This seems much more plausible when you compare recalling versus recognizing in memory. The brain stores insane amounts of information, even smells, sounds, sights, from everything you experience. This information isn't always "accessible" (as in, being able to recall it), but it is still there. Sort of like how a certain scent can help you recall a distant memory. Of course, I don't carry a PHD but i have yet to hear anything that discredits that explanation.
ReplyI read an article a few years back (so this may not be accurate. Hell it could have been a dream but here goes) that said yawning was connected to empathy. Like if you're a nice person you're more likely to yawn when you see someone else do it, meaning everyone posting here about starting to yawn must be lovely people who relate well to other people/cheetahs.
ReplyThat said I do have to disagree that nothing happens when you suppress a yawn. Anyone who's ever had a yawn stuck in their mouth (sometimes for so long you're on the way to crying with anger) will know that once you're body has decided it needs a big frickin' yawn it's going to happen, whether your mouth is big enough to let it out or not.
Anyone who doesn't understand this, you can make it happen to someone else. Just wait til they're clearlygetting ready for a big one and distract them ("What's that behind you?!")
anyone else yawn when they saw the cheetah?
Reply"and makes most pornos filmed before 1980 nearly unwatchable today?"
ReplySpeak for yourself, Sparky. Adults grow hair down there. You know who doesn't? Little kids. I find it nearly impossible to consider genitals as hairless as a baby's in any way sexy. I gotta wonder about anybody who does.
That argument is bullshit. Anyone who's gone through puberty knows that sex organs change a hell of a lot more than just by growing hair. Most Westerners now favour shorter hair or depilation as an aesthetic choice, and it's got nothing to do with paedophilia. At least, for most of us. I can't speak for the people in whatever weird world you inhabit.
Wtf, i started yawning when you said it.... AND ITS 4 pm!!
ReplyI once read that pubic hair may have developed when we first started walking upright as a way to reduce friction on our crotches when running. Which makes sense if you're running around naked.
ReplyHell, there was even an old hypothesis that says--and get ready to cringe here--our short and curlies exist to give babies something to grab and hold onto. Are you picturing it? Come on! Picture it! Couple of dudes, talking casually near their cave, each with a newborn clinging to their bush.
Replywhy? WHYYYYYY????
With # 5, I remember reading somewhere that as society became more and more like it was today, the term "teenager" began to garner more of a meaning. Think about it: up until the last 100 years or so, as soon as you were 12 you had to help work to keep the family alive. You were an adult or as good as one.
ReplyAfter the rise of Suburbia occurred in the wake of the World Wars (particularly the 2nd one), young people were no longer pressured to immediately assist the family's wages as soon as they hit the double digits so the next ten years or so officially gave them adolescence. I presume that all the zits, hormones and self-loathing were given more time to develop than they would have been given had this change not occurred.
What about crying. Why do tears stream down our faces?
ReplyHe doesn't know why we cry! He's a terminator! Quick, flatten him in an industrial press and/or drop him into molten steel.
AHhhhh!!!! ARRRGHHHAHAHAHAHAH!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OHGODSGETITOFFGETITOFF!!!!! ARRRRRRGHHHHH!!!!!!!
ReplyAfter reading that thing about pubes, I'm stapling a pair of pants there so my kids will never be able to pull the weeds
ReplyFunny, I yawned when I saw the picture of the hyena
ReplyObviously, the placebo effect is getting stronger because people are getting stupider and more gullable :p
ReplyOr maybe sugar pills are the universal cure for everything.
I'm guessing we dream because our brain doesn't shut down when we fall asleep.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesAnd I'm guessing the pubic hair is a filter for women that men just happened to wind up with too, like how males have nipples that we really don't need.
you're pretty smart... or maybe we just think the same?
The reason that a male has nipples is, everyone was once a girl. Yep. In the womb, the eggs are all female, until the serum hits. Then the girl has options kinda. Depends on what she eats, It's why you don't get told if it is a girl or boy for a few months. So, that's probably why they have the 'filter' too.
Are you a child? You clearly know nothing about human reproduction. The sex of the baby is determined by that of the sperm that fertilizes the egg. There are no "options" and it doesn't matter one bit what anyone eats. The reason you generally don't find out the sex until a few months into the pregnancy is because it takes that long for the baby's genitalia to be distinguishable on an ultrasound.
Uh, no. Dude, all ova are X chromosome. In that sense, we DO all start out female. It's only the addition of ANOTHER chromosome that solidifies the sex of the eventual critter. So your snap denial turns out to be...wrong.
I'm pretty sure most of the things associated with adolescence have to do with the body's increase in hormone production.
Replyi think it's mostly weird cos it's only humans. Teenage animals don't get spots and tell their parents they hate them, except that 'emo bunny' thing that went viral a wee while ago. Although a vet or something might come and correct me on that...
Actually, the real reason for blushing is the fact that all of the blood rushes up to our head, which houses, guess what? The brain! The extra blood is supposed to help us think in tight, emergency situations, so we can get out of them.
ReplyThat would explain why one so often blushes in socially awkward, confusing situations. Also why one freezes and stammers and otherwise sounds like an idiot while blushing. Yeah, very logical.
i just read this entire article and most of the comments. i haven't yawned even ONCE!. take THAT unexplainable phenomenon!!
Replyand the people who say stuff about dreams being just our unconcious telling our concious state what we need...does that mean that despite my shortness and lack of physical strength,i will some day be in a wrestling event with John Cena, Kharma, Sheamus and a buttload of other wrestlers?...f'ing kick ass.
Shit, picture 3 hit combo
ReplyEven weirder: placebos are shown to work even when the patient knows that they're taking a placebo. What!
Reply