Brain Trick
Ambidexterity
Using both hands equally well for every task. About 1% of people are truly ambidextrous. Many people who say they are ambidextrous are mixed-handed: right hand for some jobs, left for others.
About 1%
Famous people
A well-known person has or had this.
Showing 14 oddities.
This tag marks entries where a well-known person has, or had, the trait in question. Elizabeth Taylor and distichiasis, or CCR5-delta32 and the small number of documented HIV cures, are the kind of pairing behind this tag.
The tag exists because a famous example makes an unfamiliar trait easier to picture, and sometimes easier to believe is real at all. A reader here is often verifying that a claim they heard about a celebrity is accurate.
This list will tell you who is documented as having the trait, and how that case is known. It will not use the famous example as proof of how common or safe the trait is generally. One person's experience, however well known, is a single data point.
Spiritual 5Icky 5Not an emergency 21Get it checked 15Try it 67Learnable 18Party trick 19Vestigial 7Genetic 37Sleep 6Illusion 22Childhood 8Debunked myth 11Community 14Famous people 14Record 7
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Brain Perception
Aphantasia
Most people see a picture in their mind when they think of a friend's face. People with aphantasia see only a faint image or none. About 4 in 100 people are like this, and about 1 in 100 see nothing at all. A few people have images almost as vivid as real sight.
About 1% have no mental images. About 4% have faint or none.
Body Rare ability
CCR5-delta32
About 1% of people of Northern European descent carry two copies of a broken gene that makes them almost immune to the most common form of HIV. A bone marrow transplant from one such donor produced the first cure of HIV.
About 1% of Northern Europeans (two copies)
Body Rare ability
Chimerism
A chimera is one person made of two sets of cells with different DNA. It can happen when two embryos fuse in the first days of pregnancy. Most chimeras never find out. A few discovered it when a DNA test said they were not the mother of their own children.
Unknown. Fewer than 100 documented cases
Eyes Variation
Distichiasis
A second row of eyelashes growing from the oil-gland openings along the inner edge of the eyelid. It is rare. It can be inherited or acquired. Elizabeth Taylor was born with it.
About 1 in 10,000 people
Eyes Variation
Heterochromia
Eyes of two different colours, or one eye with two colours, in fewer than 1 in 100 people. When it is present from birth it is usually harmless.
Fewer than 200,000 people in the US
Brain Rare ability
Highly superior autobiographical memory
Fewer than a hundred people worldwide have been confirmed to recall what happened on almost any date since about age 10, in detail and without effort. Their memory for other things, such as lists or numbers, is ordinary.
Fewer than 100 confirmed cases
Brain Rare ability
Human echolocation
Some blind people find their way by making sharp tongue clicks and listening to the echoes. Brain scans show the echoes are processed in the visual cortex. Sighted people can learn a basic version in ten weeks of training.
Nobody has counted it
Brain Perception
Prosopagnosia
People with prosopagnosia, or face blindness, find it hard to recognise faces, even those of family and friends. Most have had it all their lives. It can also start after brain damage. Estimates run from about 1 in 100 people to about 1 in 40, depending on how it is tested.
About 1–2.5% of people
Muscle Trick
Raising one eyebrow
Lifting a single eyebrow while the other stays down. Informal estimates say 30% to 35% of people can do it without training. No study has measured how many of the rest can learn it.
30–35%
Body Variation
Situs inversus
All the organs in the chest and belly sit on the opposite side from usual, as in a mirror. About 1 in 10,000 people are built this way, and most are healthy.
About 1 in 10,000 people
Skin Variation
Supernumerary nipples
An extra nipple, usually small and flat, on a line running from the armpit to the groin. Between 1 in 500 and 1 in 18 people have one, and it is often mistaken for a mole.
0.2–5.6% of people
Brain Perception
Synesthesia
In some people, one sense triggers another. Letters have colours, sounds have shapes, or days of the week sit in fixed places in space. The pairings are automatic and stay largely the same over many years.
About 4% of people
Bones Variation
Webbed toes
Two toes joined by skin, most often the second and third, in about 1 in 2,000 to 2,500 babies. The toes usually work normally and many people leave them as they are.
About 1 in 2,000–2,500 births