As humans, there are some of our traits that we take for granted. Some behaviors such yelling at funny things, known as laughing and that we spend one-third of every day in a deathlike state of suspended animation known as sleep. We may seem not to take this things seriously as it looks normal but with a little contemplation, we will find out that these behaviors seem truly bizarre.
Here are some of the weird things we do all the time, and why we do them.
FART
The answer may stink, but everything we eat or drink gives us gas. In fact, it’s normal to fart up to half a gallon (1.9 liters), or about 15 to 20 toots worth of gas each day.
Particularly fragrant flatulence, however, comes from colonies of bacteria shacked up inside our lower intestinal tract. In the process of converting our meals into useful nutrients, these food-munching microbes produce a smelly by-product of hydrogen sulfide gasthe same stench that emanates from rotten eggs.
Just like the rest of us, the bacteria like munching on sugary foods best. The types of sugar naturally present in milk, fruit and, of course, beans produce the most farts .
CRY
How odd that sadness causes water to spill from our eyes! Among all animals, we alone cry tears of emotion.
Not only do they serve the purpose of communicating feelings of distress, scientists believe tears also carry certain undesirable hormones and other proteins that are produced during periods of stress out of the body, which may explain the cathartic effect of “a good cry.”
HICCUPS
Hiccups are involuntary spasms of the diaphragm the muscular membrane in your chest that figures importantly in breathing. A spell of them ensues when that muscle gets irritated, often by the presence of too much food in the stomach, or too little.
Weirdly, though, hiccups are as useless as they are annoying; they serve no apparent purpose. One hypothesis suggests they may be a remnant of a primitive sucking reflex.
SLEEP
We spend roughly one-third of our lives asleep. No human can go without it for more than a handful of days, and yet sleep may be the least understood of all our activities.
It certainly allows for a lot of body “maintenance work,” from production of chemicals that get used during waking hours to the self-organization of neurons in the developing brain. REM sleep, with its high neuronal activity, occurs for longer each night during periods of brain growth.
KISS
It’s weird, when you think about it, that swapping spit seems romantic. Turns out it’s a biological instinct.
Kissing allows people to use smell and taste to assess each other as potential mates. People’s breath and saliva carry chemical signals as to whether they are healthy or sick, and in the case of females, whether they’re ovulating all important messages for potential partners in reproduction.
Furthermore, the skin around peoples’ noses and mouths is coated with oils that contain pheromones, chemicals that broadcast information about a person’s biological makeup. When people pick up each other’s pheromones during a sloppy kiss, they’ll subconsciously become either more or less sexually attracted to each other depending on what they detect.
Alongside the chemosensory cues exchanged during kisses, psychologists also believe the actual physical act of kissing helps couples bond. This theory is supported by the fact that oxytocin a hormone that increases most peoples’ feelings of sociality, love and trust floods brains when mouths kiss.
LAUGH
The punchline of a joke hits you, and with it comes a funny feeling: You’re suddenly overcome by the urge to yell out spastically , over and over. Laughing is weird. Why do we do it?
Psychologists think this behavioral response serves as a signal to others by spreading positive emotions , decreasing stress and contributing to group cohesion. For those same reasons, chimps and orangutans smile and laugh during social play too.
SHAVE
Whether you’re a woman battling armpit or pubic hair, or a man keeping a beard at bay, shaving is the norm for modern humans so much so that not shaving certain body regions strikes many people as unattractive. But strangely, this culturally-determined behavior defies our own evolution.
After all, armpit and pubic hair evolved to help trap pheromones. Considering that we exude those odorous chemicals for the sole purpose of attracting mates, it’s odd that we now perceive their smell as pungent, and the hair that traps them, shave-worthy. Furthermore, beards evolved to help women distinguish men from boys; they indicate a man’s maturity, and exaggerates his masculine jaw line. Nonetheless, today, most men opt for a clean-shaven look.
BLINK
It’s not that strange that we blink: The tenth-of-a-second-long activity clears away dust particles and spreads lubricating fluids across the eyeball. What is strange, though, is that we fail to notice the world plunging into darkness every two to 10 seconds!
Scientists have found that the human brain has a talent for ignoring the momentary blackout. The very act of blinking suppresses activity in several areas of the brain responsible for detecting environmental changes, so that you experience the world around you as continuous.
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