The human body is a machine that is full of wonder This collection of human body facts will leave you wondering why we are designed the way we are.

Blood vessels:

There are over 60,000 miles of blood vessels on the human body.

43% of all Central Europeans have the blood group A, followed by 0 (39%), B (13%) and AB (5%).

Bones

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.

Our spine has 24 vertebrae (7 cervical, 12 thoracic, 5 lumbar).

Our skull consists of 22 different bones. One of them (the “intermaxillary” jawbone) was discovered by the writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 1784.

Brain:

The human brain cell can hold five times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The brain's temporal lobes help you distinguish one smell from another. The limbic system of the brain is the emotional centre of your brain. It deals with your emotional memory, which is why smells are often linked to your memories. The brain's occipital lobe is responsible for your ability to see.

Cells:

At the moment of conception, you spent about half an hour as a single cell.

The largest cell in the human body is the female egg.

The smallest cell is the male sperm.

Cancer cells: For information, click on this link:  Cancer Cells

Dreams:

The average human dream lasts 2-3 seconds.

Scientists say that the higher your I.Q. is, the more you dream.

Eyes

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

When you are looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate, they do the same when you are looking at someone you hate.

Women on the pill blink roughly 1/3 more often than others.

Feet:

Your big toes have two bones each while other toes have three each.

The two feet of each person have 250,000 sweat glands.

There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.

The length of your forearm (wrist to elbow) is roughly the same length as your feet.

Hair:

One human hair can support a weight of 3 kg (6.6 lb).

Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. A man could grow a beard up to 35 feet long in his lifetime, if he never shaved.

Blondes have more hair than dark-haired people.

Men without hair on their chests are more likely to get cirrhosis of the liver than men with hair.

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

We lose between 40 and 100 hairs daily.

Man Vs Woman:

The skin of a woman is more sensitive than that of a man, because there are 34 nerves per square cm on a woman's skin compared to 17 on a man's.

The average woman is five inches shorter than the average man.

A woman's heart beats faster than a man's.

Women blink twice as often as men.

Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

Women’s tears are half a degree warmer than men’s tears.

A man’s foot lenght corresponds to 1/7 of his height. With women… it’s more complicated!

Women’s hearts beat faster than men’s hearts (on average 70 vs. 78 BPM on account of the 10% size difference).

There are far more left-handed men than left-handed women.

Muscles:

300 muscles are used to maintain your balance when you stand still.

The strongest muscle in your body is the tongue.

The muscles in your heart have the strength to shoot blood for a distance of 9 meters.

You use 200 muscles to take one step.

An adult has 656 muscles, 206-214 bones, over 100 joints and at least 100 billion nerve cells.

Skin:

The average person's skin weighs twice as much as the brain.

The skin has several types of touch recptors. Most of them are simple free nerve endings, which react to pressure. Recptors in your skin also register pain, warmth and cold. The skin on your finger tips is some of the most touch sensitive skin on your body.

There are around 625 sweat glands on ¾ sq inch (5 cm²) of skin.

Humans inhale approximately 700,000 of their own flakes of skin every day.

Smokers have 10 times more wrinkles than non-smokers.

Teeth:

Your teeth started developing (in your gums) six months before you were born.

The enamel in your teeth is the hardest substance in your body.

Tongue:

The tongue's nocireceptors respond to pain and certain chemicals. Chilli peppers contain a chemical called capsaicin which excites the nocirecptors of your tongue, and also makes you sweat and flush.

Travel sickness:

You can get travel sickness when you see things that don't match with what your balance system senses. Focussing on the horizon while you are travelling in a car reduces the discrepancy between what you feel and see, thus reducing the tendency to get travel sickness.

Miscellaneous Facts:

A full bladder is roughly the size of a softball.

The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.

It takes the food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.

Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon of water to a boil.

Your thumb is the same length as your nose.

It is impossible for you to suck your elbow.

People are more afraid of spiders than dying.

If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.

Coughing accelerates air up to a speed of 480 km/h.

About 80% of people breathe through only one nostril, but this alternates regularly.

A person’s height is roughly the same as the length of their outstretched arms.

An adult breathes in and out about 15 times a minute. Inhaled air contains 21% oxygen, and exhaled air 16% oxygen, 4% carbon dioxide and 1% noble gas.

In the evening we shrink by up to 2 cm smaller than in the morning because our spinal discs are pressed together during the daytime.

Marilyn vos Savant, an American writer, had the highest IQ ever recorded. At the age of 10 already she achieved a value of 228. Other measurement methods recorded 186 and 218.

Up to 100,000 bacteria live on a “brushed” tooth. An “unbrushed” one plays host to up to one billion.

The width of the shoulders corresponds to 1/4 of a person’s height.

Humans are host to 10 times more bacteria (approximately 100 trillion) in their body than their own cells.

About 200 different types of cold viruses are known to us. However, the true numbers are probably much higher.

Taken together, we suffer roughly three years of our life from colds, coughs or sore throats.

Who’d have guessed the “G” in G-Spot comes from the surname of a famous German gynecologist “Gräfenberg”. If you have trouble finding it, Gräfenberg is also a 15 sq mile (38 sq km) town in Frankonia. That should be easier. It turns out the G Spot doesn’t exist so we can all stop looking now.

Coffee drinkers have sex more frequently than non-coffee drinkers. Whether the coffee is drunk before, during or after remains a mystery to us.

Right-handers scratch themselves more often with the left hand and vice versa.

Captain James Cook was the first man to walk on all the continents (except Antarctica)

The root of the penis is located at 1/2 a man’s height.

The nail on the middle finger grows faster than that of the thumb.

When we are full, we hear worse.

Nobody can kiss their own elbow.

According to Carl Linnaeus, man belongs to the domain Eucarya, to the animal kingdom, the phylum Chordata, the sub-tribe of the vertebrates, the class of mammals, the order of primates, the family of hominids, the Homo genus and to the species sapiens.

Our lungs have a surface about the size of a tennis court.

Each day throughout the world humans engage in intercourse about 100 million times – that’s collectively not each in case you were wondering.

Our small intestine is 6 feet (2 m) long on average.

The most common disease in the world is tooth decay.

On average a person living to the age of 80 walks a distance equivalent to three times around the earth.

Most fast-food chains have red in their logo and on their equipment because red triggers hunger pangs in humans.

Japanese supercentenarian Jirouemon Kimura was the oldest man in history when he died on 28th December 2012 at the age of 115 years and 253 days.