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%
Learnable
Can be trained with practice.
Showing 18 oddities.
This tag marks entries that can be trained with practice, even if they do not come naturally at first. Ear wiggling, cloverleaf tongue, and heart rate control are all skills some people pick up with effort rather than being born able to do them.
The tag exists for the reader wondering whether a trick is worth attempting, or whether it is simply a fixed trait. That distinction matters, because some entries in this catalogue cannot be learned at all.
This list will tell you that practice can plausibly move the needle, based on what is known about how people acquire the skill. It will not promise a timeline, or that every reader will succeed. Some people learn a trick in minutes. Others never manage it.
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
Results narrow the list below as you type.
Mouth Trick
Cloverleaf tongue
Folding the tongue into three lobes, like a clover leaf. In one Dutch study, about 15% of adults could do it. It is usually called the hardest tongue shape.
About 15% (one Dutch sample)
Ears Trick
Ear wiggling
Moving the outer ears using three small muscles that most mammals use to point their ears at sounds. About 1 in 5 people can wiggle their ears. Some people can learn.
About 1 in 5
Organs Rare ability
Extraordinary breath-holding
Untrained adults usually stop within a minute or two. The best freedivers manage over 11 minutes, and over 29 minutes after breathing pure oxygen. One group of sea nomads has evolved larger spleens for diving.
Trained divers only; no count
Eyes Trick
Eyelid flipping
Turning the upper eyelid inside out so the pink inner surface shows. Nobody has counted how many people can do it. Eye doctors do it to patients to look for grit.
No formal count Icky
Muscle Trick
Flaring your nostrils
Widening the nostrils on purpose. No study has counted how many people can do it on command. It also happens on its own during hard breathing and in strong emotion such as anger.
No formal count
Mouth Trick
Gleeking
Shooting a thin jet of saliva from under the tongue. It can happen by accident, often during a yawn, or on purpose. No survey has counted how many people can do it.
No formal count Icky
Eyes Perception
Haidinger's brush
Humans can see the polarization of light without any tool. It appears as a faint yellow bow-tie in the middle of your vision when you look at a white screen or a blue sky.
Most people, with practice
Heart Trick
Heart rate control
Slowing or speeding up your own heartbeat on purpose, using breath, attention, or training. Breathing can shift it a little within minutes. A few trained people shift it a lot.
No formal count
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
Muscle Trick
Platysma display
Tensing the thin sheet of muscle under the skin of the neck so that cords stand out from jaw to collarbone. Everyone has the muscle. Nobody has counted how many can flex it on its own.
No formal count
Mouth Trick
Pointed tongue
Making the tip of the tongue narrow and sharp, like a pencil point. About 55% of people in one Chinese survey can do it. It and tongue rolling are the two most common tongue tricks.
~55%
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%
Mouth Trick
Tongue folding
Folding the tip of the tongue backward over itself inside the mouth. Studies find that between 1.5% and 27.5% of people can do it.
1.5–27.5%
Mouth Trick
Tongue rolling
Between 65% and 84% of people can curl the sides of the tongue up into a tube. For decades it was taught as a simple one-gene trait. It is not.
65–84% of people
Organs Trick
Voluntary burping
Swallowing air on purpose and letting it back up as a belch. Nobody has counted how many people can do it. The loudest recorded burp reached 112.4 decibels.
No formal count
Ears Trick
Voluntary Eustachian tube opening
Opening the tubes that link the middle ear to the throat on command, without swallowing or pinching your nose. You hear a click, and your own voice gets loud. Some divers and freedivers learn it, but most never do.
No formal count
Eyes Trick
Wall-eyed divergence
Turning both eyes outward, away from the nose, on purpose. Nobody has counted how many people can do it. Most people can learn the mild version, parallel viewing, from Magic Eye pictures.
Not known