An Anatomy Lesson: Things I Learned about Bodies!

 Here’s some fun facts I discovered on the web about the human body:

#26 August 19:  Two bones in your body continue to grow even into your 70’s.  Your head or skull: your forehead moves forward while cheekbones move back.  And your hips continue to grow well into your 70’s.  So while your ass gets bigger, you get more room for brain power? 8/17

#26  August 20:  Glabella – the space between your eyebrows.  That’s a new word for me, but when would I use it? 8/17

#27  August 21:  We have wisdom teeth because our ancestors had to chew and crush food more.  I might have figured this out, but never really thought about it.  What I want to know about evolution is why do we still have them, and why are our mouths getting smaller so they have to be removed? 8/17

#28  August 22:  It’s a myth that we only use 10% of our brains.  That “fact” was just the opinion of William James, one of the founders of modern psychology.  It took off when Dale Carnegie cited him in How to Win Friends and Influence People.  See #26 – with bigger heads, do we really gain wisdom as we get older? 8/17

#29  August 23:  Babies have 300 more bones (mostly cartilage that later ossifies) than grown-ups.  They need to be pretty limber to live in the womb and escape from it!  8/17

#30  August 24:  We have more than 5 senses.  I learned a little about this when working in the inclusion of children with special needs.  I had never thought about proprioception, how the body views itself in space.  There is also thermoception which monitors temperature and nociception, our sense of pain.  As I get older, my thermoception is picking up cold more than hot and I have a fear of being that “little old lady” with her thermostat stuck at 80 degrees! 8/17

#31 August 25:  Your tongue has its own “fingerprint”.  While I’ve never thought about it; it is not surprising.  But I found this interesting:  Since it is relatively protected from external factors and is harder to change (think filing off fingerprints or altering your eyes or voice, it is being used for biometric identification, especially since someone must really consent to have their tongue printed! 8/17

OK of the 25 facts in this article,  I knew most of them, but learned 7 new ones.  I guess at 72, I’m pretty smart (see # 26 again!! Lol)… OK  I may not have come up with 68 years for the longest case of hiccups, but I knew it was almost a lifetime; or 68,000 miles of veins, but I knew it was a BIG number, but I did know that babies see black and white and then red first and that your hand has the most bones of any body part. (I didn’t know they only beat your feet by one bone!)