Human Anatomy Facts
Human Anatomy Facts

86 Amazing Human Body Facts

By Karin Lehnardt, Senior Writer
Published October 24, 2016Updated January 13, 2019
  • The largest bone in the human body is the femur. It can support 30 times the weight of a person's body. Ounce for ounce, that's stronger than steel.[19]
  • Messages from the human brain travel along nerves at up to 200 miles an hour (322 km/h).[19]
  • In an adult human, 25% of their bones are in the feet.[10]
  • The gluteus maximus is the body’s largest muscle.[14]
  • A human’s ears and nose never stop growing.[22]
  • There are more bacteria in a human mouth than there are people in the world.[22]
  • A human’s little finger contributes over 50% of the hand’s strength.[15]
    • Amazing Human Body Fact
    It would take a someone typing 60 words per minute, eight hours a day, around 50 years to type the human genome
  • If a human being’s DNA were uncoiled, it would stretch 10 billion miles, from Earth to Pluto and back.[22]
  • Within three days of dying, the enzymes that digested a person’s food will begin to diegest that person’s body.[22]
  • For an adult human, taking just one step uses up to 200 muscles.[22]
  • A human skeleton renews itself completely every 10 years.[21]
  • The same skin cells that make up a human vagina are the same type of cells that are in a human mouth.[22]
  • By the time a person reaches 70 years old, he or she will have consumed over 12,000 gallons of water.
    [22]
  • Bone is five times stronger than a steel bar of the same width, but it is brittle and can fracture on impact.[22]
  • The body can detect taste in .0015 seconds, which is faster than the blink of an eye.[22]
  • Every hour, humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin, or about 1.5 pounds every year. By the time a person is 70 years old, they will have lost about 105 pounds of skin.[1]
  • The largest cell in the human body is an egg (or ovum) and is barely visible to the naked eye.[10]
    • Human Body Interesting Facts
    The taste cells in our taste buds live for only about two weeks
  • Taste buds are not visible to the naked eye; the little bumps that can be seen on the tongue are actually papillae, on top of which rest the taste buds[22]
  • There are ten times more bacteria cells in your body than human cells.[22]
  • The brain contains 86 billion nerve cells joined by 100 trillion connections. This is more than the number of stars in the Milky Way.[22]
  • Like fingerprints, each human tongue has its own unique print.[1]
  • Two percent of the human population has a bifid uvula, which means it has a forked appearance.[2]
  • Rhinotillexomania is the excessive habit of picking one's nose.[2]
  • The lining in a person's stomach is replaced every 4 to 5 days to prevent it from digesting itself.[1]
  • An adult humans small intestine is about 18 to 23 feet long, which is about four times as long as an adult is tall.[1]
  • Semen normally contains 1-8 billion sperm per fluid ounces (140-300 million sperm per millimeter).[10]
  • A person’s feet has about 500,000 sweat glands and can produce about a pint of sweat a day.[1]
  • A human sneeze can travel about 100 mph or more.[1]
  • The average human produces 25,000 quarts of saliva in a lifetime, enough to fill two swimming pools.[19]
    • Amazing Facts about the Human Body
    Your spit contains your entire genetic blueprint
  • Fingernails grow faster on the hand a person writes with. They also grow faster than toenails, and faster on longer fingers.[1]
  • The strongest muscle in the human body is the masseter, or the jaw muscle.[10]
  • The liver the largest internal organ and is the only organ that can regenerate itself. However, repeated damage to the liver can eventually injure and scar this amazing organ.[14]
  • The human brain uses just as much power as a 10-watt light bulb.[21]
  • The word “organ” comes from an old Greek word, organon, which means “tool” or “instrument.”[22]
  • There are so many nerve cells in a human brain that it would take almost 3,000 years to count them.[22]
  • An adult’s skin weighs between 8 and 11 pounds (3.6 to 5 kg). It’s surface area is about 18-22 square feet (1.7 to 2 sq. m), which is the size of the floor in a one-person tent.[22]
  • The longest bone in an adult human is the thighbone, measuring about 18 inches (46 cm). The shortest bone is in the ear and is just 0.1 inches (.25 cm) long, which is shorter than a grain of rice.[21]
  • An adult who weighs 150 pounds has a skeleton that weighs about 21 pounds.[22]
  • An average person walks about 100,000 miles (160,934 km) in his or her lifetimes, which is like walking around the world four times at the equator.[22]
    • Mind-blowing Human Body Fact
    An adult is made up of 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7 octillion) atoms
  • An adult human body is made up of about 7 octillion atoms.[14]
  • The fastest muscles in a human body are the ones that make the eyes blink. They can contract in less than one-hundredth of a second. In just one day, a person may blink their eyes over 11,500 times.[14]
  • The word “muscle” is from the Latin word musculus, or “little mouse.” The Romans thought a flexing muscle looked like a mouse moving under the skin.[22]
  • Omphalophobia is the fear of the navel.[5]
  • Humans spend about five years of their lives eating.[21]
  • An adult’s stomach can hold over two quarts (1.9 l) of food. That’s enough to fill four large or eight small drinking glasses.[22]
  • The average human produces about three to eight ounces of feces a day.[22]
  • The average person has about 5 pounds of bacteria in his or her digestive system.[21]
  • "Eructation" is the medical word for burping.[2]
  • "Coprastasophobia" is the fear of constipation.[4]
  • In an adult human, blood circulates about 12,000 miles (19,000 km) a day. This is like traveling from east to west across the widest part of the Pacific Ocean.[22]
  • A human heart beats over 3 billion times during an average human lifespan.[14]
  • The word “lung” is from a German word meaning “light”; together two adult human lungs weigh only 2.5 pounds (11.1kg).[22]
  • If you spread out an adult human’s brain, it would be about the size of a pillowcase.[22]
  • Adult humans spend about 33% of their lives asleep. A python spends about 75% of their life, and a dog spends about 44%.[22]
    • Interesting Human Digestion Fact
    A person will eat approximately 35 tons of food in a lifetime
  • In a lifetime, a human body will process about 100,000 pounds of food.[22]
  • A human eye can distinguish between approximately 10 million different colors.[22]
  • The space between the eyebrows is called the "glabella," which is derived from the Latin word glabellus, meaning smooth.[13]
  • "Rubatosis" is the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.[11]
  • A person takes about 23,040 breaths a day, or about 672,768,000 breaths in a lifetime.[12]
  • Like Wolverine, the liver is the only organ that can completely regenerate. As little as 25% of the original liver mass can regenerate back to its full size.[20]
  • The word "blood" is from the PIE root "bhlo-", which means "that which bursts out." This root is also related to "bloma," (flower), which also "blossoms" outward.[3]
  • The heaviest ever trichobezoar (human hairball) surgically removed from a human weighed 10 pounds (4.5 kg). It was found in the stomach of an 18-year-old woman in 2007 in Chicago, Illinois.[7]
  • Dead skin comprises about a billion tons of dust in the earth’s atmosphere.[17]
  • You get a new top layer of skin (epidermis) every 30 days.[2]
  • Your skin is its thickest on your feet (1.4mm) and thinnest on your eyelids (0.2mm).[17]
  • An adult small intestine is about 22-23 feet long, which is longer than a minivan.[2]
  • "Onychophagia" is the medical name for nail biting.[2]
  • Before ChapStick was invented in the 1880s, people used various products to treat chapped lips, including earwax.[2]
    • Fun Human Body Facts
    A disorder of the inner ear causes every sound within the body to be amplified, including eye movements
  • Some people can hear their eyeballs moving around in their head.[6]
  • The average scalp contains about 100,000 hairs. Hair grows about 6 inches per year.[2]
  • The medical name for ear wax is "cerumen."[2]
  • Mucophagy (literally "mucus feeding") is the act of eating one's own "boogers."[2]
  • The uvula is the fleshy extension that hangs down from the back of the soft palate. It is from the Latin word, uva, meaning "grape."[2]
  • Fingers don’t have muscles that facilitate movement. The tendons in our fingers are moved by the muscles of the forearm.[9]
  • Fingernails grow about 3 millimeters per month, which is about twice as fast as toenails.[2]
  • The medical term for "bum crack" is the intergluteal cleft.[18]
    • Amazing Human Body Facts INFOGRAPHIC
    Human Body Infographic
  • The average person passes gas about 15 times a day. Most people try to do it privately, but kids (of all ages) like to share them with friends and family.[2]
  • Matthias Schlitte (b. 1987) was born with a rare bone disorder that made his right arm bigger than his left. Rather than seeing this as a weakness, he became a professional arm wrestler.[2]
  • The average person breathes about 20,000 times a day.[2]
  • Blood in arteries is bright red, and blood in veins is dark red. A human's blood is not blue.[2]
  • The human body contains over 35 trillion cells. Earth has about 7 billion people, which means that there are 5,000 times more cells in one body than there are people on the planet.[2]
  • "Bromidrophobia" is the fear of body odors.[2]
  • "Emetophobia" is the fear of vomiting.[2]
  • A person suffering from anosmia is unable to detect smells.[2]
  • The average person has about 250 hairs per eyebrow. Eyebrow hairs have a lifespan of about 4 months.[8]
  • The shape of eyebrows can predict a person's personality. Straight eyebrows indicate that someone is more fact-oriented and direct. Slightly curved eyebrows suggest that someone is more people-oriented.[8]
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