The Essential Odd Body

introduction

Has this ever

happened to you?

Did you ever want to know something about the human body but were afraid to ask? Or you didn’t know who to ask? Or there was nobody around to ask? Say you wanted to know about why you yawn, why your skin wrinkles after a bath, something silly like why do men have nipples, or something really weird like can you keep a severed head alive? At home you may have thought about asking your parents. Maybe you even tried. But more often than not they didn’t know themselves. If they told you to ‘look it up’ (the face-saving suggestion to maintain a parent’s dignity when faced with their own ignorance) and you did, you probably couldn’t find a book that gave you the answer you wanted. So you put the question to the back of your mind and eventually forgot about it. A few years later, in biology/life education classes in school, the question may have occurred to you again. Should you ask the teacher? You decided not to. After all, the question was off the subject, it would take up class time, your friends might think you were ‘weird’, Mr Fletcher probably didn’t know anyway and, after all, it wouldn’t be on the exam. So you put off your question again and eventually forgot it again.

Now you’re an adult. You’re in your doctor’s office for your annual check-up. No particular problems, but out of the blue you remember that question you first asked yourself when you were a kid. Should you ask the doctor? After all, doctors are trained in this sort of thing. They ought to know everything about the body since it’s their job to fix it when it’s broken. But you hesitate. The doctor is busy. There are other patients waiting. And, after all, your question doesn’t relate to your health or to any illness you’re likely to get. So you put off your question yet again and forget it again.

Has this ever happened to you?

If so, then this book is for you. You can stop putting off your questions about the human body. Chances are the answer is here. The Odd Body tries to explain all of those body mysteries you’ve had, both major and minor, whether for a short or long time. We call these OBQs—odd body questions. We ourselves have been asking these sorts of questions for many years—more than we’d like to admit. "We love the commonplace questions, the silly, the weird, the bizarre, the fascinating. We hope your question is answered here. Perhaps too there are a few questions within these pages that you never thought to ask. It might be fun to find out about them just the same.

If there’s any real lesson in this book it’s simply this: human beings are so interesting. Finding out more about us is one of the true pleasures of life.

Chapter 1

beginnings

Many of us ask questions about our origins, our in utero development, and how we are born into this world. It’s said that we come into this world with nothing. But that’s only the beginning of the story.

What makes me

a human being?

We are humans because we are classified as such based on our unique physical and cultural characteristics. "We manipulate symbols, express ourselves through language, and possess an enormous capacity to develop the intricacies of culture.

Taxonomy is the science of classifying life forms. As science classifies humans, we are members of the animal kingdom, the metazoan sub-kingdom, the chordata phylum, the vertebrata sub-phylum, the class mammalia, the sub-class theria, the infra-class eutheria, and the primate order. After this, it starts to get extremely interesting.

The suborder called anthropoidea is within the primate order. This suborder includes monkeys and apes as well as humans. Within the anthropoidea is the superfamily called hominoidea. This superfamily includes the anthropoid apes and both extinct and modern humans. It excludes the non-anthropoid apes. Anthropoid apes are tailless and include the gibbon, chimpanzee, gorilla and orangutan. Within the hominoids is the family called hominidea or hominids. Hominids include both modern and extinct forms of human beings. It excludes the anthropoid apes.

What makes the hominids so special is a large brain and the ability to walk on two legs (bi-pedalism). It is a line-ball decision as to where to draw the line between ‘human’ and our ‘human-like’ ancestors. One place to draw it is to simply include all hominids as humans.

As for the beginnings of the earliest hominids—the beginnings of us—anthropologists have been pushing the date back for most of this century as new fossil evidence is revealed.

In 1974, a female hominid skeleton, nearly 40 per cent complete, was found by Dr Donald Johanson and T. Gray of the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley at a site near Hadar in Ethiopia. Nicknamed ‘Lucy’, she was estimated to have lived for 40 years and attained the height of 106 centimetres. Lucy was dated at 3.2 million years old.

In 1978, fossilised footprints and parallel tracks left in volcanic ash and extending over a distance of 24 metres were discovered by Dr Mary Leakey and Paul Abell near Laetoli in Tanzania. The three obviously hominid beings that left behind the prints and tracks were estimated to be no shorter than 120 centimetres tall. The fossils were dated at 3.6 million years old.

In 1984, a hominid jawbone with two molars 5 centimetres long was found by Kiptalam Chepboi in the Lake Baringo region of Kenya. It has been dated at four million years old.

In 1994, Drs Johanson and William Kimbel, along with Dr Yoel Rak of the University of Tel Aviv, reported finding fragments of a hominid skull as well as a number of limbs and jawbones at Hadar. These were dated as being about the same age as Lucy but this hominid was much taller.¹

Later in 1994, Drs Tim White from the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, Gen Suwa from the University of Tokyo, and Berhane Asfaw from the Ethiopian government reported finding part of a child’s jaw and two teeth at a site near the village of Aramis, 65 kilometres south of Hadar. These fossils have been dated at 4.4 million years old—the earliest hominid remains so far.

The existence of this last fossil supports the theory that a common hominoid ancestor for all hominids lived in Africa no more than six million years ago.²

Humans are also Homo sapiens. We belong to the genus of Homo and the species of sapiens.

The earliest member of the Homo genus is the Homo habilis or ‘handy man’. In 1964, part of a ‘handy man’s’ skull was found at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and named by Drs Louis Leakey, Philip Tobias and John Napier, with the assistance of Raymond Dart. The following year another skull fragment was found in western Kenya but not dated until 1991. The oldest ‘handy man’ remains have been dated at 2.4 million years old.

Homo erectus is the nearest direct ancestor to Homo sapiens. In 1985, Kamoya Kimeu found the earliest remains of Homo erectus at a site near Lake Turkana in Kenya. It was a nearly complete skeleton of a 12-year-old boy who stood 165 centimetres tall. The skeleton was dated at 1.6 million years old.

The earliest human tools were found in 1976 by Drs Helene Roche and John Wall near Hadar. These basic stone implements used for chopping and slicing have been dated at 2.7 million years old.

When did I first know

I was alive?

We probably know that we are alive sometime before we are born but it is difficult to remember this. It is theorised that we fail to remember because we do not have language to hold on to the memory.

The foetus becomes conscious sometime during the second trimester of pregnancy. Tactile sensitivity begins as early as the seventh week when a foetus first reacts to the stroke of a hair on its cheek. Skin sensitivity expands to include most parts of the body by the 17th week.³ From the 16th week onwards, the unborn baby is easily startled by loud noises and turns away when a bright light is flashed on its mother’s abdomen. The foetus reacts actively to rock music by kicking frantically. Interestingly, the foetus reacts in the opposite manner to calm music. It is unlikely that anything other than the physical sensation of sound can be heard by a foetus. It is rather like the noise that one hears from a distant house where a stereo is blasting away. You can hear the pulsation of the bass, but cannot distinguish the lyrics.

Even as early as 12 weeks, the foetus can be observed apparently squinting and scowling. At 14 weeks, it apparently sneers and looks dissatisfied. But at 24 weeks, the foetus shows behaviour which may indicate true thinking (cognition). The foetus can be observed frowning, grimacing, and smiling. But more importantly, while being viewed via ultrasound, a foetus at 24 weeks who was accidentally hit by a needle during an amniocentesis, was observed twisting its body away, locating the needle with its arm, and repeatedly striking the barrel of the needle with its arm and hand.⁴

There is speculation that the foetus must be thinking when it demonstrates anxiety. At 24 weeks, the foetus seems to be anxious since it can be observed sucking its thumb—sometimes so hard that blisters are raised.

By 26 weeks, the foetus can do some rather interesting gymnastics inside the womb. For example, it can do an elegant forward roll. It is speculative whether such movements are intentional and thus indicative of thinking.⁵

When did I first dream?

Other evidence of thinking concerns dreaming. There is evidence that the foetus dreams. Indeed, the foetus dreams more than newborn infants who, in turn, dream more than older children, who dream more than adults. Sonographic studies show that REM sleep (rapid eye movement sleep in which dreaming takes place) occurs at 23 weeks. This is virtually the only type of sleep the foetus engages in. It is only at 36 weeks that non-REM sleep is detected. Thus, one could almost say for a foetus after 23 weeks, whenever it is sleeping it is dreaming.⁶

*     *     *

There are 10 human body parts that are only three letters long: eye, hip, arm, leg, ear, toe, jaw, rib, lip, and gum.

According to anthropologists, life in the Stone Age might not have been too much fun. Our ancestors wore the skulls of their dead ancestors as mementos, ate elephant meat raw, smeared their bodies with animal grease to keep warm during the coldest winters, washed their bodies with dirt, and kept wolves as pets.

When did I first feel?

Solid evidence suggests that the foetus feels pain by no later than 26 weeks. Yet some claim this ability occurs much earlier. One study suggested that the foetus feels pain by the seventh week.⁷

Pain pathways in the brain, as well as the cortical and subcortical centres necessary for pain perception, are well developed by the third trimester. Responses to painful stimuli have been documented in newborns (neonates) of all viable gestational ages.

In 1969, Dr Davenport Hooker at the University of Pittsburgh found that a foetus aborted during the 13th week (but not yet dead) will respond reflexively to the touch of a hair around its mouth. He also reported that a baby born three months prematurely will respond reflexively to the touch of a hair anywhere on its body.⁸

There is every indication that a newborn baby is in some ways just as sensitive to touch as older humans are. A newborn’s skin is thinner than an adult’s. As such, its nerve endings are less well insulated. Moreover, a newborn’s nerve endings are just as mature and far more numerous than an adult’s. The portion of the brain that processes touch sensations (the somatosensory cortex) is more developed at birth than any other portion of the brain.⁹

Nevertheless, it takes years for the sense of touch to fully develop. Children cannot distinguish most objects by touch alone until they are about six or seven years old. The first foetal touch receptors appear on the skin by no later than the 10th week—while still surrounded by water. Nevertheless, according to Dr Maria Fitzgerald, professor of developmental neurobiology at the University of London, ‘although the foetus lives in fluid, it never feels wetness’.¹⁰ It is just like a person swimming underwater not feeling the water as such, but ‘will notice the pressure of the wave’.¹¹

*     *     *

If Stone Age people were not feeling well, they would sometimes cut holes in each other with a sharp stone to let the pain escape.

Between fertilisation and birth, a baby’s weight multiplies an extraordinary five million times.

Teratoma is the term for something that grows out of your body.

A newborn baby expels the equivalent of its own body weight in poo every 60 hours.

Human birth control pills work on gorillas.

When did I first see?

Vision develops to some extent before birth. However, the newborn is very nearsighted. The foetal eyelids form by 10 weeks but remain fused shut until the 26th week at the latest. Nevertheless, the foetus will react to lights flashed on the mother’s abdomen.¹²

Visually, babies are fascinated by two things. These are the human face and high-contrast geometrics. Briefly, the general thrust of research in this area leads to the following conclusions:

From birth to about two months of age, babies see objects best at close range. This is about 20 centimetres from the eyes at birth and about 30 centimetres away at six weeks. They can discriminate differences in shape, size, and pattern and are more attracted to high-contrast patterns than to colour or brightness alone. They prefer to look at patterns of simple to moderate complexity and look more frequently at outside edges than internal patterns.

From about two months to four months of age, babies scan their entire vision field and explore both interior patterns and outside edges. They prefer patterns of increasing complexity and curved lines and shapes to straight lines or angular shapes. They are especially attracted to faces and shapes. Babies begin to show that they remember what they see.

After about four months of age, babies adjust their focus to see near or far objects. They see in full colour and continue to prefer curved patterns and shapes. They seek out complexity and novelty in their visual environment and begin to develop depth perception.¹³

Children usually learn to identify colours between the ages of three and seven. If they seriously confuse colours after this time, then colour blindness is a distinct possibility.

When did I first hear?

The foetal listening system begins to function by 16 weeks—even before the ear is complete.¹⁴

Surprisingly perhaps, the sense of hearing in a foetus begins with the skin. According to Dr David Chamberlain, president of the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health in Arlington, Virginia, the skin is ‘a multisensory receptor organ integrating input from mechanoreceptors, thermo receptors, and pain receptors (nocireceptors). This early form of hearing is linked with the vestibular system which is sensitive to gravity and space, and with the cochlear system as it forms’.¹⁵

The hearing of the newborn is excellent. We have known this for decades from experiments with the startle reflex. In fact, hearing is far more mature than vision in the newborn. In a series of classic experiments, it was demonstrated that before the infant is fully delivered from the birth canal, when just the head is popping through, if a sound is made at one side or the other of the head, the infant’s eyes will turn toward the sound—as if the baby knows that something is there to be seen.¹⁶ It is also interesting to note that the newborn hears as well when sleeping as when awake.

When did I first smell?

Although the foetus is surrounded by fluid, it can definitely smell. However, according to Dr Stephen Roper, professor of anatomy and neurobiology at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, ‘the foetus doesn’t sniff. Rather, odours are absorbed by nasal tissues.’¹⁷ Indeed, many species of fish have this same ability.

The amniotic fluid that the foetus swims in is full of odours. If the mother eats spicy foods, the fluid can smell like a Mediterranean salad. Also, subtle smells in the fluid are unique to the mother—just as body odour is unique. After birth, these smells may help solidify the baby-mother relationship.

Immediately after birth, the newborn cannot smell through its nose because it is clogged with amniotic fluid and other substances for about a day. This clogging effect resembles the stuffiness of an adult’s nose. A baby’s sense of smell starts to emerge right after the clogging stops—two days after birth. There is even evidence that babies who are just a few days old have as good a sense of smell as adults.

As early as 1934, Dr Dorothy Disher found that one month old babies were more likely to wriggle in their cribs when presented with a number of odours compared with smelling merely pure air. Babies responded most to the smells of violet, asafoetida, sassafras, citronella, turpentine, pyridine, and lemon.¹⁸

In a now classic laboratory experiment, Dr Jacob Steiner of the Hadassah School of Dentistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem asked a panel of adults to select the most ‘fresh’ and the most ‘rotten’ from among a large collection of odours. The adults judged that honey was the freshest followed by banana, vanilla, and chocolate smells. Rotting eggs followed by rotting prawns were unanimously judged the most rotten smells. Dr Steiner then held swabs of these odours under the noses of babies only a few hours old. They smiled when smelling the fresh odours and grimaced when smelling the rotten ones. Furthermore, the widest smiles came from smelling the honey and the biggest grimaces came from smelling the rotting eggs—the identical choices made by the adults.¹⁹

Other researchers have found evidence that a majority of newborn babies can smell better than adults—in this case, the researcher. In 1975, Oxford University psychologist, Dr Aidan Macfarlane, tested whether a newborn could tell the difference between the smell of its own mother (and her milk) compared with the smell of another baby’s mother (and her milk). The smells came from gauze pads that the mothers had kept within their bras to absorb any milk leaking from their breasts. Dr Macfarlane draped a pad from the baby’s mother along one side of the baby’s face. Along the other side, he draped a pad from another mother. More than two-thirds of the six-day-olds tested ‘turned toward their mother’s pad, as did more than three-quarters of the eight- to 10-day-olds. Young babies prefer the familiar to the unfamiliar: here they recognised their mother’s odour, and turned toward it. Although babies less than six days old did not turn toward their mother’s pad, the older babies certainly did smell a difference—a difference that Macfarlane, when he smelled the pads himself, was unable to detect…Macfarlane’s babies did not just detect an odour, they recognised one. To recognise something requires high-level processing within the brain—some kind of conscious processing beyond the reflex-like processing of the midbrain…Macfarlane’s study does make it look as though the newborn’s sensitivity to smells is close to being adult.’²⁰

When did I first taste?

The foetus can taste at 14 weeks. By that time, all of the tasting mechanisms are in place. Swallowing can be seen via ultrasound. By the end of the first trimester, the foetus controls the frequency of its own swallowing in response to sweet or bitter tastes.²¹ The foetus regularly swallows amniotic fluid. Thus, according to Dr Gary Beauchamp, director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, a foetus swims in a ‘smorgasbord’ of flavours—the sweetness of glucose, the saltiness of sodium, and the bitterness of its own urine. According to Dr Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine, ‘amniotic fluid is kind of brackish-tasting, and we have videos of a foetus grimacing when it swallows the fluid’.²²

For nearly 60 years we’ve known that humans have a definite preference for sweet-tasting things over bitter-tasting ones.²³

The newborn is very good at distinguishing tastes. They will stick their tongues out when they taste sour things. Babies whose mothers frequently ate garlic during pregnancy will show a specific preference for garlic-flavoured foods. We think that’s because they associate the garlic taste with mum—and of course they love mum!

*     *     *

Human babies are less intelligent at birth than chimpanzee babies.

For some time now, chimpanzees have been taught sign language. Today, some of the original learners have taught the language to other chimpanzees such that they have conversations among themselves.

How soon was I able

to cry and laugh?

Audible crying of a foetus has been recorded as early as 21 weeks.²⁴ Laughing occurs much later at about six months of age. Smiling is something else again. Research by Dr Susan Jones at the Department of Psychology at Indiana University has firmly established that we all have the equipment to smile from birth. The most recent work by Dr Jones involves observations of 18-month-old toddlers. She has also demonstrated that babies stop smiling very quickly if no one pays attention to them.²⁵

How soon was I

right- or left-handed?

Research on foetal thumb-sucking behaviour shows that handedness starts in the womb. When foetuses are observed by ultrasound imaging, some foetuses already indicate a preference for one hand over the other as early as 15 weeks gestational age. Dr Peter Hepper led the team of researchers from the Fetal Behaviour Investigations Unit at the Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland.²⁶

*     *     *

If you could remove all the space from the atoms that make up your body, you would be small enough to pass through the eye of a needle.

Was I born with

more than five senses?

This concerns the fascinating phenomenon of synesthesia—the merging of senses. It may be that we are born with senses which are undifferentiated and only become separated into our recognised five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch sometime after birth.

"We learn in school that each sense is separate and relates to a particular body organ. We hear sounds with our ears and see sights with our eyes—never vice versa. Indeed, we are led to believe that our senses are distinct, individual, and completely independent of each other. Thus, although a person may be totally blind, they may still have excellent hearing. We are also taught to assume that a human being cannot see sounds, hear sights, or touch tastes. The very concept of someone doing so seems completely foreign.

Synesthesia refers to the process wherein an individual experiences ‘confusion’ of senses—as if the five senses were somehow merged or fused into one. Sounds are seen, sights are heard, tastes are touched, and so on.

A growing body of evidence shows that synesthesia can occur in adults, although it is extremely rare. Notable so called ‘synesthetes’ include the composers Olivier Messiaen, Aleksandr Scriabin, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. In fact, one alleged adult synesthete, the anonymous Russian vaudeville ‘memory-expert’ known simply as’S’, was studied for almost 30 years by a Russian psychologist.²⁷

Nevertheless, stronger evidence exists that we are all synesthetes as newborns. Our five senses are at first blurred and become more specialised as we mature and our sensory channels to and from the brain become fully developed.

Dr Robert Hoffmann from the Department of Psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa attempted to measure the speed at which sensory impulses reached the brain in newborn infants aged between one and three months.²⁸ In an experiment, he first attached electrodes to the infant’s head, exposed them to flashing lights from translucent panels, and recorded the speed of their electroencephalogram (EEG) waves. Readings were taken from directly over the visual cortex as well as from three areas of the brain far removed from the visual cortex. What happened then was as follows:

‘These waves came through all four EEG electrodes: they welled up from all over the cortex. They were formed by energy from the eyes that was channelled throughout (and amplified by) the brain, where it would impinge upon, and mix with energy flowing through, other neuronal channels. Such impingement is the stuff of thought—not just verbal thought, but all associations both meaningful and confused…This showed that all of the babies did indeed perceive the stimuli directly—but these differences came not from the direct sensations; these differences came from the impingement of varying amounts of visual energy upon non-visual areas of the brain. There energy from the eyes might mix with energy from the ears to produce vague sounds; or it might mix with energy innervating muscles to cause a twitch—which would in turn fire sensory neurons within those muscles, causing the sensation of movement. The amount of mixing depends on the amount of energy entering the nervous system. This total amount of energy added to the nervous system is a prime determinant of a newborn baby’s perceptions.’²⁹

Drs David Lewkowicz and Gerald Turkewitz from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York discovered that babies between three and four weeks of age ‘equate brighter lights with louder sounds’.³⁰ In an experiment, the two researchers first asked adults to attempt to adjust the volume of a loudspeaker to make it equal the brilliance of a light. The adults agreed remarkably well on the level of noise that seemed to equal the intensity of the light. Next, 20 infants were repeatedly exposed to the light while their pulse was monitored. A burst of noise was then substituted for one of the flashes. Although the level of noise that the adults had decided was equivalent to the light caused little reaction, every other level caused a marked quickening of each infant’s pulse. And the quickening was proportionate to the difference between the intensity of the light and that of the matching sound.³¹

The two experiments suggest that the senses are intertwined in infants—that synesthesia exists in the infant’s brain.

Can we learn to recapture in adulthood our previous state of synesthesia in infancy? And could we ever be taught to see without eyes or hear without ears by drawing upon our other senses? If so, then it may be possible to retrain people who have lost a sense to draw upon another.

Dr Richard Cytowic, a neurologist in Washington, D.C., thinks that this just might be possible. Dr Cytowic is the author of the two best-known books on adult synesthesia.³² He has seen over 40 synesthetes in his practice and is among the foremost authorities on the subject. According to Dr Cytowic, the sensory world of his patients is one of salty visions, purple odours, square tastes, and green wavy symphonies. One of Dr Cytowic’s patients even allegedly has technicolour orgasms. Nevertheless, Dr Cytowic believes that understanding synesthesia will provide the key towards understanding the human mind.

What is the most common form of synesthesia? That seems to be ‘colour-hearing’. According to Dr Simon Baron-Cohen of the Department of Psychology at the University of London, such colour-hearing synesthetes nearly always have ‘coloured vowels’ and ‘coloured letters’.³³ When they hear vowels or read letters, they report ‘seeing’ colours.

How common is synesthesia in adults? Of course it is rare. Approximately one in 20 000 people are synesthetes. Interestingly, ‘when he [Dr Baron-Cohen] reported the [1987] findings in an interview on Radio 4, over 200 women (and two men) wrote in, claiming to have synesthesia—an astonishing response, given that it was a science programme with at least equal numbers of male and female listeners’.³⁴

Related to synesthesia, but very different, is ‘blindsight’. Some blind people possess a form of ‘unconscious vision’ that allows them to ‘see’ after a fashion—without being aware of it. This is ‘blindsight’.

The term ‘blindsight’ was coined in 1980 by Dr L. Weiskrantz of the Department of Psychology at Oxford University and colleagues at the National Hospital in London. What the researchers discovered was this: ‘Working with patients who had acquired visual defects as a result of damage to the brain cortex, they found that their subjects, if asked what they saw, said they saw nothing. In testing, though, asked to guess, they ‘guessed’ right nearly 90 per cent of the time. This is far beyond the success rate accountable to pure chance. The researchers theorise that the kind of ‘sight’ detected by these tests depends on a different neural pathway from the eye to the brain, one that passes through the midbrain rather than the cortex. In evolutionary terms, the midbrain is much older than the cortex. In a sense, it may be the animal part of our brain—an evolutionary holdover from our pre-human past.’³⁵

Other experiments with blind people with ‘blindsight’ have found that some can catch a ball tossed to them—‘while insisting that they cannot see anything’.³⁶ In any case, deprived of vision, people with ‘blindsight’ somehow do seem to draw upon other senses to ‘see’. Scientists have so far been unsuccessful in explaining such ‘blindsight’ abilities.

How early

can I conceive a baby?

Girls can begin conceiving at puberty. The average age of puberty has decreased by about two and a half months with each generation since the end of last century. A Brazilian girl reputedly gave birth at six years, seven months, and three days of age. The oldest mother, from the US state of Oregon, gave birth at 57 years, six months, 15 days of age without the use of fertility drugs. However, modern drugs and artificial fertilisation techniques have pushed this date further and further up. Theoretically, there is no upper age limit on when we can no longer conceive children. But who wants to chase after a running toddler when you’re 70?

How many

babies can I have?

Before the era of fertility drugs, an 18th century Russian woman gave birth to 69 children of whom 67 survived into adulthood. She was able to do this by giving birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets along the way.

Every human female possesses some two million eggs (ova) at birth. Of these, about 300 000 survive to puberty. And of these, only 450 are ultimately released for possible fertilisation—one each month during the reproductive years (roughly from 12 to 50 years of age). The human male produces half a billion sperm each day. Four hundred million are released in a single ejaculation. Men can remain fertile somewhat longer than women.

Assuming that a monogamous couple have sexual intercourse often enough so that all sperm produced are released, and assuming that a man remains fertile for 50 years, the chance of any one sperm fertilising any one ovum is 18,263,000,000,000,000,000 to one.

Is ‘immaculate conception’

possible?

Reproduction without sperm is called parthenogenesis. This can occur in some plants and in invertebrates. It can also occur in some species of insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and birds. Honey bees, wasps, and some lizards are examples. But it does not occur in mammals—including humans.

Experiments at Yale University have attempted to induce parthenogenetic development in mice. In these experiments, ova start to develop after exposure to these three factors: electric shock, mechanical agitation, and a saline solution. However, the embryo always dies prior to the halfway point of gestation.

How much did I weigh

at birth?

Ask your parents about this one. Nine out of 10 babies are born weighing between 2400 and 4800 grams. Male babies are slightly heavier than girls on average (the difference is about 20 grams). The heaviest baby on record weighed 13.15 kilograms at birth. The lightest baby to survive weighed a mere 283 grams. For some unknown reason, babies born in November in the southern hemisphere and May in the northern hemisphere weigh on average approximately 170 grams more than babies born in any other month.

Interestingly too, more babies are born between midnight and 8 am than during the two other eight-hour periods. Tuesday is the most popular birthday, while Sunday is the least popular. More babies are born during days with a full moon than during any other time in the lunar cycle.

For unknown reasons, babies born to brown-haired mothers are delivered slightly faster than babies born to blonde-haired mothers.

*     *     *

For roughly six to seven months after birth, an infant can breathe and swallow at the same time. Older children and adults cannot do this.

Are babies

born without scars?

At birth, many newborns look like they’ve boxed 12 rounds with Mike Tyson. Babies who’ve been delivered with the help of forceps tend to be somewhat bruised. This heals very soon afterwards. However, in utero surgical procedures, which have now been undertaken around the world, have resulted in the discovery that the foetus does not scar.

Why are babies

born without teeth?

Ask any breastfeeding mother why nature builds this one in! Less pain to the nursing mother results in the baby being less likely to be rejected. Strangely, approximately one in every 2000 babies has at least one erupted tooth at birth. Even more strangely, a large number of famous world leaders, including several emperors and dictators, are known to have already ‘cut’ a tooth at birth. Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler are among these. Could it be that the mother’s pain during breastfeeding caused them to react negatively, withhold love, and even reject the child emotionally if not physically? In turn, did this rejection and denial cause the child to seek world power and domination later on as a substitute? It’s fun to speculate. What would Sigmund Freud say?

*     *     *

More in-vitro babies are born in Australia than in any other country.

One out of every 88 births results in twins. One out of every 512 000 births results in quadruplets.

Will we ever be able to make an

android to replace the human body?

We are near the time when we can replace human beings with robots in human form. The spectre of Arnold Schwarzenegger as ‘The Terminator’ or Lt Commander Data of Star Trek: the Next Generation is becoming less of a science fiction fantasy and more of a science fact.

According to one US scientist, ‘the age of intelligent androids—not merely better computers, but a new form of life—may be as little as 20 years away’. Dr Maureen Caudill, a researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has surveyed the achievements to date of various technologies required to make androids a reality. It is a new and fascinating research field. New advances occur almost monthly.³⁷

Already, simple robots can navigate themselves around a room or pick up an egg without breaking it—a task once thought impossible even by experts. Far beyond this, there are now artificial neural networks closely approximating the human brain, along with sophisticated vision systems, memory systems, language systems, pattern recognition systems, and other processes. All of these processes would have to be replicated to a human level by any self-respecting android.

A robot may soon be carrying your baggage through the airports of the future.³⁸ Autonomous mobile robots equipped with sensing devices and artificial intelligence will soon perform a number of similar duties. Some potential robot jobs include house cleaners, office-mail carriers, minefield sweepers, and underwater or outer space-based construction workers.

Robots will soon be used in the travel industry to greet guests (in any language), babysit, and perform security tasks.³⁹ The night watchman may soon be a thing of the past. Admittedly, robots may not have ‘the human touch’, but they will work tirelessly and not complain when they are put in a closet during the off-season.

A new ‘artificial muscle’ is being made for robots. The muscle, made from a gelatin-like substance, has been developed by Dr David Brock at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. This invention may lead to smaller, stronger, and more flexible robots—bringing us another step closer to the age of androids.

More specifically, the Brock artificial muscle consists of polymer gel fibres. Polymer gels change their volume quickly in response to changes in pH. Thus, adding an acid solution causes the muscle to contract, while adding a basic solution makes it expand. By alternating doses of acid and basic solutions, the muscle can be made to lift or lower a 100 gram weight.

This artificial muscle may someday replace many of the gears, pulleys, and motors required in today’s robots. In addition, robots could be free from dependence on electrical outlets because the muscle is operated solely by changes in pH.⁴⁰

Dr Caudill describes a Japanese robot, the WABOT, that can read simple sheet music, play keyboard instruments, and accompany a human singer. And there is a machine-vision system, developed by German researchers, that has been able to successfully guide a car without human control at speeds up to nearly 90 kilometres per hour. Dr Caudill also notes progress in speech generation and speech recognition systems (versions of which are already being installed in some computers).

The key technology for building androids will be sophisticated neural networks. Dr Caudill explains that ‘neural networks are information-processing systems physically structured in a way that mimics our current understanding of the brain’.

Neural networks differ from digital computer systems. Instead of following the instructions of a program or pigeon-holing every bit of data in a specific location, as a digital computer does today, neural networks—like nerve cells that have many connections with each other—function by stimulation through patterns of activity. Dr Caudill argues that ‘these patterns can be trained, rather than programmed, to achieve desired results’. Furthermore, ‘neural networks also differ [from older technology] in other ways. Older artificial intelligence systems emphasise developing intelligent behaviour through logical step-bystep procedures, while neural networks are much less structured and much more flexible.’

Dr Caudill notes that neural network research is providing models to test how human brains work, learn, and organise themselves—the fundamentals of human psychology.

One experimental neural network, using a new psychological model, has successfully imitated the classical conditioning process by which animals are trained. This process was first described by Ivan Pavlov a century ago and represents a cornerstone of human psychology.

Another new neural network is modelling the internal ‘mapping’ that occurs when a newborn baby’s brain absorbs its first environmental stimuli outside of its mother.

Thus, by trying to build an artificial brain—and ushering in the Android Age—we are also learning more about ourselves.⁴¹

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The most foetuses found in a human body were 15—10 girls and five boys—which were four months old when they were removed from the womb of an Italian housewife in July 1971. The woman had been taking a fertility drug.

One person in five alive today is Chinese.

Can we ever live forever?

We humans may very well and very soon come very close to achieving immortality. Aging may become a thing of the past. And if aging is licked, then all the age-related diseases that kill us will also be licked. This would bring us very close to living forever.

As impossible as it sounds, genetically engineered drugs which will reverse the aging process will be available in the near future. Thus, it will be possible not only to halt the aging process but to turn the clock back. At age 70, we will be able to look and feel as we did at 50, and better than we did at 60. And should the age reversal process continue for another 10 years, at 80 we could look and feel as we did at 40.

Age reversal is possible based on what scientists already know about the process of aging itself and about the already proven capacity of genetically engineered drugs to cure diseases. That same technology is being applied to aging.

Science tell us that we age because of problems with individual cells of our bodies. As it were, the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. Cells are continually being replaced by other cells throughout our lifetime. But the cells produced later in life are known to have more defects, mutations, and so-called DNA ‘spelling errors’ in them than the cells produced early in life. As time goes on, the proportion of these error-prone cells is larger than cells that are error-free. Our bodies do not look as good and we notice they do not function as well either.

Why do our cells commit more ‘spelling errors’? This is probably due to the cumulative damage from free radicals within the cell. Free radicals are molecular fragments produced during normal cell metabolism that react wildly and unpredictably. Radiation, toxins, carcinogens, stress, and other factors can aid the production of free radicals. Furthermore, enzymes that serve as a kind of DNA’spelling error’ repair kit for cells are not produced in as great a quantity as before in the new cells our bodies produce when we are older.

Based on this idea, scientists are working to devise ways to boost and extend the life of the DNA-repair system. This would mean both the correcting of ‘spelling errors’ that can occur when DNA replicates itself when each new cell is born and the repair of DNA damage caused by free radicals. The reversal of aging would occur since error-prone, damaged, ‘old’ cells would eventually be replaced by error-free, undamaged, ‘new’ cells until the entire body is composed of only youthful cells.

Although it may seem a mere dream, this is no science-fiction fantasy. It is theory being turned into reality in laboratories around the world. At the Center for Molecular Science at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Dr Samuel Wilson is undertaking experiments, which will lead to animal experiments and after that to human experiments, which will eventually result in drugs that humans can take to transform old age into youth.

Dr Wilson ‘has already isolated the gene in mice for one of DNA’s key repair enzymes in both humans and mice. The production of this enzyme is known to decline steeply with advancing age. His plan is to produce a line of mice that carry many extra copies of the gene for this critical enzyme, in the hope that those extra genes would keep turning out an abundance of the enzyme. These would be on hand to carry out their genetic repair work for much longer periods of time. Thus, the animal’s DNA would accumulate errors and mutations at a much slower rate, and the mice would live to a venerable age.’ According to Dr Wilson, ‘I would guess it will be a year or more…before