About this site

Bodily Oddities is a catalog of 140 strange things that normal human bodies do. It is a field guide, not a medical site.

What it is

Every entry describes one thing: a trick some people can do, a sensation that happens to you, a sound the body makes, a structural difference, a reflex, or a rare ability. Each entry answers the same questions in the same order: what it is, how common it is, who controls it, where it comes from, how it works, whether it is a problem, and where to read more.

The writing is plain and technical. The design carries the playfulness.

Not medical advice

Nothing on this site is a diagnosis or a treatment plan. The entries describe what is normal and what is common. When an entry says "get it checked", that means a doctor should rule things out. When it says "not an emergency", that means the thing itself is harmless, but you know your own body better than a website does. If you are worried, see a doctor.

Sourcing policy

• Every entry lists two to six sources. At least one is an encyclopedia article or a peer-reviewed paper.
• Every number (a prevalence, a year, a measurement) has an inline citation that points to a source.
• Online communities are cited when they are the best available evidence for something science has not studied. The entry says so.
• Video links currently point to a YouTube search. Specific videos are added by hand.
• When the evidence is thin, the entry says "No formal studies exist." That is a valid answer.

Source kinds: paper, encyclopedia, article, video, community, book, other.

How the catalog is organized

Regions

Every oddity has one primary body region and sometimes a second. Each region has its own colour, and that colour is the main visual signal on cards and pages.

Kinds

• Trick: Things some people can do on command. Some are learnable; others appear to be innate.
• Involuntary: Things that happen to you, sometimes frighteningly, that are benign or very common.
• Perception: Things your senses and brain construct that are not out there, or are more real than you think.
• Sound: Noises the body makes or that you hear from inside it.
• Variation: Normal structural differences between human bodies.
• Reflex: Automatic responses that run without asking you.
• Rare ability: Abilities and conditions that very few people have.

Control

• Voluntary: You can do it on purpose.
• Involuntary: It happens to you. You cannot start or stop it at will.
• Reflex: A fixed automatic response to a specific trigger.
• Structural: A feature of how the body is built. Nothing to control.

Tags

Two tags matter most. Not an emergency marks things that feel alarming and are harmless. Get it checked marks things that are usually benign but worth a doctor visit.

Rarity

Band	Share of people	Meaning
Universal	~100%	Everyone, or nearly everyone.
Very common	> 50%	More than half of people.
Common	10–50%	Between one in ten and one in two.
Uncommon	1–10%	Between one in a hundred and one in ten.
Rare	0.01–1%	Between one in ten thousand and one in a hundred.
Very rare	< 0.01%	Fewer than one in ten thousand.
Unknown	?	No reliable numbers exist.

How it is built

The site is static. It has no accounts, no comments, and no server. Every entry is a Markdown file with structured metadata. The build checks the metadata against the taxonomy and fails on mistakes.