About this site

Bodily Oddities is a catalog of 143 things that normal human bodies (can) do.

Why

I wrote a short post on why I wanted to create this little collection here.

How it's organized

Regions

Every oddity has one primary body region and sometimes a second.

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

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.