Archive

Topic: The body

Fact Wisdom teeth are vanishing from the species A growing share of people are simply born without them. 1 min read Fact Your nostrils take shifts Right now, one of them is doing most of the work. It will swap in a few hours. 1 min read Fact Bone is stronger than steel by weight Not in absolute terms. Pound for pound, it is a remarkable material. 1 min read Fact Eight per cent of your genome came from viruses Ancient infections wrote themselves into the human record and never left. 1 min read Fact You shed enough skin in a lifetime to fill several pillows And a good share of household dust is you. 1 min read Fact You have about as many bacterial cells as human ones The famous ten-to-one figure was wrong, and the truth is stranger. 1 min read Fact Your gut has its own nervous system Hundreds of millions of neurons, capable of operating without the brain entirely. 1 min read Fact Red blood cells throw away their own nucleus They give up the ability to divide, repair, or make anything, in exchange for room to carry oxygen. 1 min read Fact Humans are among the best long-distance runners alive We lose almost every sprint and win a surprising number of marathons. 1 min read Fact Your cornea has no blood supply at all Blood vessels would be opaque. So the tissue does without. 1 min read