Up to 99.95% Can’t Do These Things With Their Body

Buckaroo Banzai reminded us that “No matter where you go, there you are!”

No matter where you find yourself and what you bring along there will always be one constant: your body will be right there with you.

Absent any other stimulus, your body can keep you occupied for quite some time. What you can do with your body varies from person to person. You may be surprised at the things your body can do that you hadn’t yet discovered!

How many can you do?

12 Things Up To 99.995% Of People Can’t Do

1) Sneeze With Your Eyes Open (anyone can learn)

Our bodies have an autonomic response when we sneeze, and this involuntary response is why our eyes close. One theory is that it protects our eyes from the irritants that may be in the sneeze, but that hasn’t been definitively proven.

Anyone CAN learn to sneeze with their eyes open; however it takes a conscious effort to do so.

2) See Colors (5% can’t)

95% of people can see colors, but SOME people can see more colors than others! The average human eye has three cones in their retinas that differentiate red, green, and blue wavelengths, allowing a person to see about a million colors.

SOME people (1%) have a fourth cone caused by a genetic mutation, which lets them see 100 million colors.

Called tetrachromats, it is more common in women than men, with an estimated 12% of women with this extra color perception. If a person isn’t aware of the phenomenon and is untested, they may not realize that their world is more vivid than anyone else!

The most factual way to know if you are a tetrachromat is a genetic study to test for the mutant genes. Online tests, although claiming to diagnose the condition, are not reliable.

Find out more here.

3) Taco Tongue (25% can’t do it!)

It was common, in the 40’s and 50’s to be taught that the ability to roll the tongue is genetically determined. However, with practice, almost everyone can develop the ability to fold the tongue like a taco!

Why you would want to master this trick is beyond me. However, this is an impressive way to demonstrate your oral dexterity:

4) Snap Your Fingers (33% can’t)

Although Thanos was all about reducing the population, Marvel wouldn’t have had much of a movie if their anti-hero was among the 33% of the population that can’t snap their fingers.

Maybe that’s you, or maybe you just aren’t trying the correct technique.

Check out these step-by-step directions, or try one of the alternate methods.

Just don’t wear a jeweled gauntlet while you practice. For safety’s sake.

5) Smell Asparagus in Your Pee (60% can’t)

Are you among the 40% of people that can detect a change in the smell of your urine after eating asparagus?

A 2016 study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that the 60% of people that CAN’T detect the sulfurous smell have up to 870 mutations and

“All were located on chromosome 1, containing multiple members of the olfactory receptor 2 gene family,” they wrote.

6) Raise Alternating Eyebrows, One at a Time (62% can’t!)

The occipitofrontalis muscle is connected to both eyebrows, and it is rare to be able to lift only one eyebrow at a time. It is even more rare to alternate eyebrows, having the ability to isolate and lift either brow independently.

Like any muscle group, the occipitofrontalis can be trained with earnest and prolonged practice!

7) Make Yourself Sneeze by Looking at Bright Light (65% can’t)

Called a photic sneeze reflex, 35% of the population are triggered to sneeze by a bright light such as the sun or camera flashes. This is an inherited trait, so photic sneezers have at least one parent with the same trait.

8) Wiggle your ears (78% can’t do it)

Rowan Atkinson, aka Mr. Bean, performs his famous ear wiggle himself, unassisted by CGI. It’s very likely that one or both of Mr. Atkinson’s parents could also wiggle their ears! It isn’t something that everyone can learn to do.

A study in the journal Psychophysiology showed that “people who can wiggle their ears have a more active vestigial nervous system than people who cannot.”

The ability to move the ears and locate sounds more accurately are essential for animals like dogs and cats, but most people have lost the ability to mimic them in that way.

9) Tastes Like Soap! (83% can’t taste it!)

Famous cooks Julia Child and Ina Garten are with me: cilantro tastes like soap! My guess is that they are as incredulous as I am that people WANT to eat the nasty stuff!

Although this ability to wash out your mouth with that soapy taste doesn’t appear to be inherited, the genetics company 23andme tested the genes of people that taste soap when they eat cilantro and found that they share a ‘common smell-receptor gene cluster called OR6A2.’

This cluster picks out the smell of aldehyde in cilantro leaves , and aldehydes are also used in making soap.

So if you, like me, have sent back the cilantro and lime rice because it tasted ‘funny’, that taste wasn’t your imagination- it’s in your genes.

10) Rumbling Thunder Ears (87% can’t)

Yawn.

It’s OK, I’ll wait: YAWN.

Most people will have involuntarily yawned after reading this, and when they did, many will hear a rumbling sound caused by the tensing of the tensor tympani muscle. (It sounds a bit like the ocean, or maybe the sound when a person gets too close to a microphone and exhales.)

The majority of the population can’t flex those muscles at will and make what may be the most useless superpower ever: Thunder Ears.

Maybe it isn’t a HUGE superpower, but it’s exciting enough for several Reddit and Facebook groups.

Here’s a way to see if you can join one of those groups as a fellow rumbler, along with some of the most frequent FAQs they receive:

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/earrumblersassemble/comments/95lirl/guide_how_to_check_if_you_can_voluntarily_ear/

11) Touch Your Nose (90% can’t do it!)

Anyone can manage to touch their nose… but can you do it with your tongue? Most people can’t.

Only about 5% of the general population (including, allegedly, Gene Simmons) can do this. However an astounding 50% of people with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome can do it!

EDS is a rare hereditary disease of the connective tissue, and hyper mobility of the joints and hyper flexibility of skin are telling symptoms of the disease.

12) Hear or Taste Colors (99.95% can’t do it)

Synesthesia is the natural, as opposed to chemically aided, ability to hear and taste colors as well as see them. Synesthetes can also listen to music and see shapes. It can be any combination of experiencing one sense through another.

This condition is genetic, often begins in childhood, and synesthetes have more connections between the different parts of the brain that control the senses.

Although this may sound like one of the crazy rooms in Willy Wonka, it is quite real and can be confusing for children to explain as they are unaware that not everyone experiences the world with the same blending of senses that they do.

To learn more about synesthesia:

How many of these 12 things can YOU do? Leave a comment and let me know!

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