We all have somewhat silly physical peculiarities like flipping our thumbs or moving our ears, but there are people who are born with truly singular differences. Sometimes it doesn’t change anything in their daily lives and it’s just intriguing, but there are also rare medical cases that can really ruin life.
1. People who don’t have a little voice in their head
Hearing a narrator’s voice in your head when you read is called subvocalisation ; the majority of people learn it unconsciously when they start to know how to “read their minds”. Even more invasive, many people hear a interior monologue voice, the “little voice in the head”. It would take a large-scale survey to determine the number of people concerned, but it can be estimated thatbetween 10 and 20% of the population has no inner voice and we don’t really know why.
On the other hand, there is a hypothesis to explain the existence of the voice in the head: this phenomenon could be linked to the corollary discharge. To put it simply, we never hear our own voice when we speak but a copy of this sound created by the brain. According to Canadian researcher Mark Scott, it would work the same for the inner voice except that the brain is able to produce an internal message without emitting sound.
2. Absence of wisdom teeth
Today, wisdom teeth are completely useless. They were used, before humans changed their diet, to chew when the molars had become too damaged. Very often, wisdom teeth are removed because they no longer have room to grow properly in the jaw, but they can be kept if they do not interfere with the other teeth.
We can see that the human species is evolving because some people, just under 20% of the population, have no wisdom tooth roots. It is in any case the only explanation that we have today to explain this absence of null teeth.
3. People who don’t get goosebumps
There are very few people who have never had goosebumps and just like missing wisdom teeth, it’s probably a evolution of the species. When you’re cold, hundreds of thousands of thermoreceptors distributed all over the skin send a message to the hypothalamus. It transmits the message to the sympathetic nervous system which activates muscles horripilateurs (hair straighteners) in an attempt to warm the body. The hairs then stand on end against the skin to create a thin layer of insulating air; goosebumps therefore serve to fight against heat loss to protect against the cold.
With the evolution of the species, the human body has much less hair than before and this technique is therefore less effective; we can therefore think that people who never have goosebumps simply do not have these horrifying muscles, real humans 2.0.
4. The different shapes of fingerprints
There are three different fingerprint shapes: swirl-shaped, loop-start shaped, or wave-shaped. The thing is, only 5% of people have wave-shaped footprints. A new Chinese study revealed in early 2022 that the shape of fingerprints is influenced by the EVI1 gene, which plays a role in the development of embryonic limbs. The patterns of your fingerprints are actually related to the length of your fingers.
5. People who never have a rumbling stomach
Belly gurgles, called borborygmes, are perfectly natural. It is a manifestation of the stomach preparing for digestion and it is even louder when the stomach is empty because it resonates. If your stomach does not growl, it may be because you never eat at the same time: you feel hunger differently and your stomach does not automatically prepare for digestion.
6. Hair of different colors
There is a physical anomaly called thehyperchromie or cutaneous hyperpigmentation; it is characterized by hair with two very distinct colors. This disorder is due to an excessive accumulation of hair pigments or a disordered distribution of pigments during melanogenesis. It’s quite rare but it’s not serious at all.
7. People who can’t recognize faces
People with prosopagnosia have great difficulty recognizing faces, even those of their loved ones or people they see on a daily basis. Some people are even unable to recognize their own in a group photo.
According to some studies, this could be explained by a difficulty in integrating local components into a whole: facial features are perceived independently and not as a whole. Affected subjects are therefore obliged to retain precise characteristics of a face in order to recognize someone.
“We already met in fact” Okay well I don’t remember you. Have you ever thought about being more memorable and less insignificant? »
8. Alien Hand Syndrome
Alien hand syndrome is a very rare neurological disorder (and definitely more serious than the previous points). Like in a bad horror movie, people who suffer from this syndrome lose control of one of their hands, which seems to be acting under someone else’s will. She can get dangerous and go after her owner, which is super creepy.
This disorder can appear after an operation which aims to separate the two cerebral hemispheres to relieve epileptic attacks. It can also happen because of a brain tumor, stroke, or other neurological disorders.