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Bodily Oddities: strange things the human body can (sometimes) do
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gist
Demjan Vester's Bodily Oddities is a browsable catalog of everyday human quirks—reflexes, illusions, anatomical variants, and harmless alarms—each with a short plain explanation and a prevalence estimate. The homepage groups recently added entries, try-it-now tricks, and scary-but-normal sensations so readers can recognize aphantasia, blue-field dots, call of the void, and similar phenomena without mistaking them for emergencies.
ideas
- Name the quirk, then size how common it is. Each entry pairs a plain mechanism with a prevalence range, from universal afterimages to under-1% ambidexterity.
- Scary often means ordinary. Sections like “It felt scary but it is normal” reframe fasciculations, brain zaps, and call of the void as common, usually harmless signals.
- You can try several on yourself. Afterimages, blue arcs of the retina, and blue-field entoptic dots turn perception into a quick self-experiment.
- Anatomical variants are easy to misread clinically. Accessory ossicles, bifid uvula, and cervical ribs are often silent until an X-ray or exam mistakes them for injury.
- Prevalence estimates stay humble. ASMR and Linburg–Comstock ranges span widely, so the catalog treats counts as provisional.
quotes
“People with aphantasia see only a faint image or none.”
“They are your own white blood cells moving through the capillaries of the retina.”
“It is the brain's safety system being misread, not a hidden wish.”
“They are harmless but can be mistaken for fractures on an X-ray.”