Our bodies are amazing things. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes kinda gross.

From the way we develop to how our bodies literally shed their skin, there are probably some things you didn’t know about the way our flesh, bones, organs – and even tears! – work.

Here are 15 weird-but-true things about the human body that we tend to skip over in health class:

1. Your skin accounts for roughly 16% of your body weight

That doesn’t mean you can subtract it from the scale since it’s an organ (our biggest one!) but your skin can weigh 20 pounds or more.

2. Babies have more bones than adults

How can that be?

Well, babies are born with 300 or more bones, but over time, they fuse together, leaving us with around 206 total bones.

Cool, right?

3. Our eyes are closed for 10% of our waking life

Humans blink 15-20 times per minute.

We know this helps lubricate our eyes, but a research team from Japan also posited in 2012 that blinking helps us process information, gather our thoughts, and refocus.

4. There are more bacteria living in your mouth than people on Earth

Your mouth is like a damp, warm jungle, perfect for bacteria to thrive.

Harvard scientists have documented at least 615 species of bacteria in the average mouth – and they’re not done counting. And there are billions and billions of individual organisms in there.

Enjoy that visual image! They’re not something you can – or in most cases want – to get rid of.

5. You’re probably taller in the morning than you are at night

Anyone who has ever managed to get out of bed and survive the day knows that your body takes quite a pounding as you walk around, plop down, wait around, bend over, or sit hunched in a chair.

At night, the gelatin-like material that cushions the discs in your spinal column has time to recover and expand from the beating it took, making you just a tiny bit taller when you wake up.

However, long term, the total amount of the fluid in your spinal column decreases as you age and the discs start can start to flatten out permanently, which is part of why older people can sometimes get shorter.

6. You really can feel the music

Do you get emotional at the opera? Can you only work out if you have your playlist pumped up?

That’s probably because your body can synch with music on a cardiovascular level.

Certain kinds of crescendos (in a 2009 study they used Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”) can make your heart beat faster and your respiration rate increase.

7. The average human produces at least 2 liters of spit every day

Here’s one to tell your kid (just don’t let them prove it): our salivary glands produce 2-4 liters of saliva a day!

Saliva is actually a good thing for your mouth, so don’t worry if you start drooling at the smell of cookies baking – it’ll help you digest them!

8. Your tears are different based on whether you’re happy or sad

Crying tears of joy? Laughing until you tear up? Having an ugly cry?

Chances are we could tell if we looked at your dried tears under a microscope. That’s what one photographer did back in 2013 when she published photographs of the microscopic structure of tears showing that they had different compositions based on why the person was crying.

We’re still not sure what to make of all of it but plenty more crying research is underway.

9. Our teeth are as strong as a shark’s

While human teeth are made up of softer material than a shark’s (well, at least the shortfin mako shark and tiger shark) they’re just as tough when push comes to shove – quite literally.

Researchers pressed tiny metallic pyramids into wisdom teeth from humans and two types of sharks and found that they made no more of an impression on our teeth than on those of the shark’s.

We do tend to be neater eaters though.

10. We all start our lives as butts

In research that sparked hundreds of snarky headlines, researchers discovered that during the early development of an embryo, an opening called a blastopore forms. In some species, such as insects, this eventually becomes a mouth.

In humans, it eventually becomes your anus.

You’re welcome!

11. Your small intestine is about 20 feet long

Meanwhile, your large intestine is about 5 feet long.

Neither one of these things is something you want to find out the hard way.

While it sounds pretty inefficient, our small intestines are where 90% of the digestion and absorption of nutrients and minerals of food takes place. Good things take time and that long and winding road gives our bodies the time we need to get the most out of our food.

12. If you can read this, you can’t swallow and breathe at the same time

Go ahead, try. It’s just a fact of anatomy.

Our airways are simply not able to open at the same time we are swallowing.

Some people claim infants can, but our pharynx is used for both processes and while suckling babies seem to be able to swallow and breathe at the same time, there’s actually microseconds in between – they can just coordinate the switch faster.

13. We all have a unique tongue print

While the police department doesn’t have those on file, 3-D imaging has shown that our tongue prints are just as unique as our fingerprints.

More podder for those future biometric scanners!

14. We shed 1.5 pounds of skin per year

Over our lifetimes, that’s about 100 pounds worth of skin.

While we don’t notice it day by day, some of this ends up as “dust” in our homes, which is why dust mites get such a tasty meal and exist just about everywhere.

15. Your jaw is the strongest muscle in your body, based on weight

Ok, so don’t give up on leg day. But considering its mass, the masseter, which is the muscle used for mastication (or chewing) is the strongest in your whole body.

You can chomp down with a force of up to 55 pounds with your incisors and 200 pounds with your molars.

***

Did you learn anything new or are you already well versed in strange facts about the human body?

Please SHARE this with your friends and family.