The human body. Even now, no machine on earth can copy all its features or reproduce every one of its functions exactly. It remains one of the most complex and fascinating things there is. Here is a far from exhaustive list of what it does for us, often without our noticing.
The human body as you have never imagined it
- Over a lifetime we spend 10% of our waking hours with our eyes closed, simply because we blink.
- The masseter, the muscle of chewing, is one of the most powerful in the human body.
- The human body makes 25 million cells every second.
- The human brain can read up to 1,000 words a minute.
- Across a lifetime we shed around 18 kilos of dead skin.
- Our brain produces enough electricity to run a light bulb.
Powers that outrun the imagination
- Our strength is naturally capped to spare us muscle injuries and torn tendons — but an extreme surge of adrenaline can lift that cap for a few seconds, which is how people pull off extraordinary feats in danger.
- When we fall in love, the hormones released by the brain come close to the neurotransmitters that follow a dose of amphetamines.
- The human eye tells apart up to 10 million shades and hues of colour, a range no telescope has matched to date.
- Humans are not the fastest animal on the planet, but among the most enduring: one ancestral hunting technique consists of tracking prey for several days, until it drops.
- The human body gives off a light of its own, 1,000 times too faint for the eye to catch.
- Babies have 60 more bones than adults: over time, some bones fuse together, in the pelvis, the skull and the spine.
- The navel is home to thousands of bacteria, an ecosystem in its own right, as rich as a tropical rainforest.
- Over a lifetime we produce around 23,660 litres of saliva, enough to fill two average swimming pools.
- We can remember 50,000 different smells.
- Red blood cells travel through the whole body in barely 20 seconds.
