Did you know that it's literally possible to smell fear? Scientists have discovered that the scent of our body changes before we do something scary, even if we're trying to seem brave, and other people can literally smell the difference.
Scientists have unraveled many amazing mysteries about the body, including a secret our earlobes reveal about our heart health, and why a three-second yawn revs up our brain and even improves our mood.
Here are some weird body facts which seem too strange to be true-but are.
Your heart health is predicted by your earlobes
Oddly enough, a diagonal crease-or lack of crease-in your earlobe may determine the health of your heart. Although scientists are exploring the reason behind the link, a 1992 study of hospital patients was the first to report that those with an earlobe crease were far more likely to have coronary artery disease (CAD).
In fact, this indicator was 94 per cent accurate at predicting which patients had CAD, prompting the researchers to suggest this weird clue be used to help identify at-risk patients. More recent research also linked earlobe lines to risk for
Yawning is contagious, but less in the summer
Seeing other people yawning-even in photos-can make you yawn in response. However, a 2011 study with 80 participants per season showed that yawning in response to photos only happened 24 per cent of the time in the summer, versus 45 per cent of the time in the winter. Apparently, yawning cools down your brain a bit and keeps you alert, so outside temperature makes a big difference in how likely you are to catch the urge. It turns out that difficult mental tasks literally heat up the brain, while a yawn lowers the temperature. Also, you can't complete a yawn with your eyes open, reports neuroscientist Robert Provine in his new book, Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping and Beyond.
Hearing words and seeing colours
In most people, taste, sound and vision are distinctly separate, but those with a rare condition called synesthesia have a blurring of sensory experiences. Some actually experience tastes in response to words, while others hear sounds when they see certain colors. "The proportion of words that triggers taste varies...for those in our study it ranged from about 15 per cent of words, to one lady who experiences tastes for 100 per cent of words," researcher Julia Simner told WebMD.
You can literally smell fear
People can actually detect and respond to fear by smelling people's sweat. Research funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency shows that there are different pheromones (detectable chemical substances) from armpit odour when people are afraid than when they aren't. Researchers taped pads to 20 people's armpits right after they ran on a treadmill, and again right before they were about to take a tandem jump while skydiving for the first time. Volunteers were able to differentiate between the two types of sweat, and areas of their brain that react to fear were more active when they smelled the skydiving sweat than the treadmill sweat.
The scent of women's tearsreduces men's sexual arousal
A 2011 study published in Science magazine showed that tears act as a chemosignal, or a chemical substance detectable by others. Not only did men who sniffed tears (which were brought on by negative emotions) find photographs of women's faces less attractive, the men also reported that they were less sexually aroused, and the scientific data backed it up. (yahoo.com)
