The biology of the human is well-studied. But the organ’s abilities continue to surprise even the experts. Adults can no longer see their entire reality and there are kids who dive with dolphin-like vision. Humans can also see the invisible or get tricked by their own eyes to miss something visible right in front of them.

See Also: 10 Animals With Incredible Eyes

10 Creative Individuals See The World Differently

Creativity is defined as the ability to see possibilities. A more technical term is “openness to experience.” This openness is what allows creative people to mine more information and ideas from an object, or idea, than the average individual.

In 2017, scientists wanted to know if something else drove creativity. Clearly this trait was both emotional and mental, and could even be taught. But to find out whether creativity had roots in something physical, they snared a bunch of volunteers and made them look at colors. More specifically, the participants had to look at a green patch to the left and a red patch to the right—at the same time.

Interestingly, those who were not really creative would switch their attention between the colors or experience a brief visual blend. People with more openness saw the blend more often and for a longer period of time. This strongly indicated that creative individuals literally see the world differently, in a physical sense that is separate from their emotional and mental artistic juices. Another test also confirmed that they see more details that other people screen out even when they are looking right at something.

9 The Blind Have More Nightmares

Can the blind see in their dreams? Yes, but only when they lost their sight was later in life. Interestingly, people who are born blind also have nightmares but experience them as emotions, sounds, and sensations, rather than anything visual.

A recent study roped in volunteers in three groups to learn more about dreams. The first was born blind, the second turned blind and the final group had normal vision. Anxiety can trigger nightmares, but none of the participants had more jitters than the rest. Despite this, there was a major difference. The majority of nightmares showed up when the sight-impaired went to sleep.

The blind-from-birth group had the most (around 25 percent of their dreams), while those who became blind underwent a curious decline. The longer they were blind, the fewer visuals appeared in their nightmares. However, the rate at which they had unpleasant dreams remained more frequent than the volunteers who could see.

The study supported the theory that nightmares are linked to waking experiences. After all, when a person must navigate society in total darkness, they live with a higher awareness of threats and feelings of vulnerability.

8 Babies Notice Everything

Infants see reality in its entirety while adults no longer do. Grownups literally lose the ability to notice all the details in their visual field, but there is a good reason for that. Seeing every line, crack and hair will result in sensory overload. Babies need to see everything because their world is new and their brains are still figuring out what is important and what to ignore.

In 2016, Japanese scientists showed babies photos of snails. A previous study had confirmed that infants stare for longer at new things and the snail-wielding scientists relied on that fact to determine whether children can see differences no longer obvious to adults. The photographs looked similar to the adult volunteers but the researchers knew which ones held subtle differences—and the rugrats found them.

This was most obvious with those aged between three and four months old. However, the freaky supervision seems to disappear between the ages of five and eight months. By then, the newborn brain has realized that some things can be shelved and other details, like Mom’s face, are more important.

7 Children Who See Like Dolphins

The Moken is a nomadic sea-people and lives along the coastlines of Thailand, and the Andaman Sea. Adults hunt with spears but the kids dive for food and it was the youngsters’ ability to effortlessly find sea cucumbers and clams that provoked curiosity. More specifically, scientists noticed that Moken children navigated underwater without squinting their eyes.

The researchers roped in European children on holiday and Moken volunteers. Several tests later and it became obvious that the local kids could see with clarity under the sea while everything appeared blurry to the Europeans. Remarkably, the Moken divers taught the holidaymakers how to do it but when asked, the visiting kids could not explain the actual process. They just “saw better.”

This called for physical analysis. In a mysterious twist, the sea-nomads could change the shape of their eye lens and make the pupil smaller. This eliminated the fuzziness other people normally encounter underwater. This ability has only been found in dolphins and seals. How they do it, or why they lose this incredible ability in adulthood, remains unknown.

6 The Woman Who Sees 100 Million Colors

The human eye is adept at telling shades apart, allowing the average person to distinguish between 1 million colors. Even color-blind individuals notice around 100,000 different tints. The extreme end of the scale was found in 2007 when neuroscientists encountered a woman capable of seeing 100 million colors.

The unnamed doctor from the United Kingdom was a “tetrachromat.” She was born with an extra cone cell in her eye, which prompted the super-vision. People with this additional fourth cone are so scarce that it took researchers 25 years to track down and confirm she was a genuine tetrachromat. Their existence has been suspected since the 1980s and her color tally was mathematically calculated.

A few more women were later identified, but nobody knows how many tetrachromats are out there or why it seems to be an all-female trait. Why do these women, an estimated 12 percent of the population, not come forward? Scientists suspect that most true tetrachromats never use their extra cone and thus do not realize how special they are. One explanation is that the world’s color use is geared towards “normal” vision, which might deactivate this ability.

5 Motion-Induced Blindness

The human eye is like a camera with a slow shutter. As a result, moving objects sometimes trail streaks across our vision. The brain’s attempt to protect us from annoying streamers led to something called motion-induced blindness. For the most part, this phenomenon erases the lines. But it also causes stationary objects behind the moving ones to vanish. One minute the fire hydrant is there but as a car passes at night (here the brain wipes the tail light streamers), the hydrant is gone.

This striking illusion is not a sign that our vision suffers from a serious glitch. As a species, humans evolved to notice moving things. Predators and prey had to be seen in order to survive and neither stood still. For this reason, scientists believe that motion-induced blindness helps to see whatever is moving with clarity, rubbing out the streaks that interfere with perception while also blotting out the things that do not move—nor matter—at that moment.

4 The Surprise Discovery Of BARM

When researchers in Germany tested a group of volunteers, they pretty much expected the results to confirm an old suspicion. The study aimed to conclusively prove the link between blinking and tOKN. The latter is an automatic reflex and a well-known feature of the eye. Supposedly, it resets the eye muscles when a person gazes at a rotating object. This prevents the muscles from twisting past their limits.

The 2016 study stumbled upon something unexpected—a completely unknown eye movement was resetting the muscles. Since it happened automatically with each blink, the feature was called blink-associated resetting movement (BARM). The link with tOKN was confirmed but that was also how BARM turned up.

As the volunteers gazed at rotating stuff, tOKN frequently occurred but the movement lacked efficiency. The muscles eventually twisted to the maximum limit of between three and eight degrees of rotation. At that point, BARM suddenly kicked in and completely untwisted the eye’s muscles.

3 There Are People Who See Calendars

We all see calendars. One just needs to look at the wall and there it is. A roughly square-shaped paper filled with blocks and dates. But a small percentage of the population—around 1 percent—can see an almanac in their mind’s eye. Where the rest of humanity must look at an outside source these individuals see a vivid grid without assistance. In fact, they can see the dates and days far into the future.

This ability is called “calendar synaesthesia.” To listen to people describe how they experience this ability is spell-binding. One woman saw the months stretch before her in a V-shaped formation. Another’s calendar appeared as a large ring and no matter the time of year, December was always passing through her body.

Both women cemented scientific conviction that the phenomenon was not just seeing an imaginary image. In 2016, both went against the scientists’ best attempts to ruin anything that could be a mental image. If they really were seeing the calendars, their ability would survive. Not only did the pair come through with flying colors but their tests provided the first direct evidence that calendar synaesthesia is not rooted in the mind, but in the brain. Just like other synaesthetes, who can taste words or hear colors, their brains stimulated several sensory and neurological pathways to produce a tangible outcome—in this case seeing a real calendar.

2 We See Infrared Light

Open any science textbook and it will tell you that humans cannot see certain wavelengths. These include radio waves, X-rays, ultraviolet and infrared light. As it turns out, the books are outdated. In 2014, it became clear that people can detect infrared light.

Scientists were alerted to the fact after several of their colleagues reported seeing green flashes while working with infrared lasers. These look nothing like the lasers in action movies or pointers in boardrooms. Infrared lasers are supposed to be invisible.

In order to unravel the surprising possibility of seeing things in the invisible spectrum, an international team descended upon the eye cells of mice and humans. During the tests that followed, they zapped different parts with pulses of infrared light. The results showed something incredible. The human retina detects this wavelength when hit with a particularly strong dose of infrared energy. The concentrated light particles lengthen the retina’s visual spectrum and this allows the human eye to temporarily see into the invisible range.

1 The Eye Sees Patterns The Brain Cannot Detect

At first blush, one would think that the eyeball can never be better than the brain. After all, eyes exist only to see while gray matter has many abilities. However, our blinkers beat the brain in one way and it surprised even the experts.

Enter ghost images. These pictures are encoded as random patterns in other images. Only computers had the ability to pick up on their presence—or so everyone thought. In 2018, the complicated calculations required to identify the ghost images turned up in the human eye. Where the brain fails to see these individual patterns, the eye detects them, gathers the information and sums everything up.

This might not sound so incredible until you realize the complicated nature of ghost images. Making one is similar to taking a photograph in reverse. A laser then hits and “reads” multiple spots on the surface to reconstruct the image. Similarly, the eye registers the light points bouncing off a ghost image and use them to pull a picture together.

We come to expect some things as par for the course in the world. The sun rises in the east, tacos are delicious, roosters crow, and so on. But just because you expect a thing and have even grown used to a thing based on past experience doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how it always is. It may not even be that way at all, you just have a misunderstanding of the facts, like back when people thought the sun revolved around the Earth.  

Many things in the natural world are not always the way we think they are. Nature is nothing if not surprising. So with that in mind, let’s look at some life forms that may not work the way you expect.

10. The T. Rex Lacked the Ability to Roar

Do you remember the end of the first Jurassic Park, when the T. rex somehow stealths its way into the visitor’s center, takes on the velociraptors, and enables our heroes to escape before letting out a mighty roar? Most of us can probably pick that sound effect out of a crowd at this point. And that speaks to the power of sound in movies, and Steven Spielberg’s vision. It’s also very ironic because, as far as the evidence shows, the T. rex could not roar at all. 

It’s hard to piece together the anatomy and real-life characteristics of dinosaurs based on fossils, but we’ve been doing this for a long time. While it’s also speculative, based on the science at hand, it’s unlikely a dinosaur like a T. rex had a larynx. That means it’s unlikely it could vocalize like any mammal that exists today, such as bears and lions and others we associate with roaring.

Birds, however, have something called a syrinx, and that allows vocalizations. It’s more likely a dinosaur could have something like that to allow for bird-like chirps, but even then, that may have been from the order of smaller, arboreal dinosaurs that evolved into modern birds.

Still, the T. rex could have made sounds, but they may have been more in line with more modern reptiles. Think the hissing that can be done by snakes and crocodiles, or even humming and drumming sounds. While they weren’t likely to be 100% silent, they were probably nowhere near as vocal as the movies make them seem.

9. Cheetahs Aren’t Big Cats Because They Can’t Roar

Speaking of roaring, in the modern world, a roar is a defining characteristic of what we consider a big cat. Obviously, a lion can roar, and tigers can do that, too. Jaguars and leopards also have that trait, so if you ever hear that coming from the woods at night, maybe stay indoors. But don’t think you’re always safe if you don’t hear it. 

Aside from roaring cats, there are purring cats and while that may sound like your cute kitty at home, there are other cats in the same group that are bigger than seems entirely normal. The cheetah, for instance. It can’t roar, and is therefore not a “big” cat in that sense of the word. It lacks a ligament in its larynx that allows the other big cats to make big noise.

Despite the fact a cheetah can weigh up to 140 pounds and run at over 60 miles-per-hour, it’s not a big cat. They’re actually in a weird family all their own called Acinonyx. They’re the only cats with only semi-retractable claws instead of fully retractable ones, too.

8. Earthworms Can’t Drown Very Easily

How many times have you gone outside after the rain and seen the sidewalk covered in earthworms, all pale and damp? If you’re like most people, you assumed, or even learned, that this is because they were escaping the rain so they don’t drown. After all, their little worm holes have to be full of water, right? Not so fast.

Earthworms breathe through their skin and can survive, fully immersed in water, for days. They need dampness to breathe properly. So the rain can’t drown them at all. Instead, it’s believed worms surface because it allows them to get where they’re going faster.

Because they need moisture to survive, burrowing in dry soil is actually a slow process for a worm. But in the rain, they can come up, stay as moist as they like, and likely move places much faster. It’s a convenience thing.

A second possibility is that rain confuses worms who may think the patter of drops is a predator, so they’re just heading up to escape. Either way, though, they’re not drowning.

7. Baby Pandas Cannot Poop Without Help

People make jokes online about pandas a lot. Thanks to many videos of the animals being goofballs, it’s not uncommon for folks to ask how they survive in the wild at all since they seem like limited-diet cartoon characters. With that in mind, here’s another thing to make you wonder how they’ve lasted this long.

Baby pandas are at risk of dying if they are not taken care of by their mothers from the moment of birth because they are some of the most helpless babies in all of nature. At just 1/900th of their mother’s size they cannot see, they cannot move, and they cannot even go to the bathroom on their own. They can potentially die of constipation without help.

Panda mothers can be observed licking their cubs frequently, not to groom them but to stimulate excretion. Yes, that means they need help to, shall we say, unload. For the crucial first week, mothers are with their young constantly, rubbing their bellies to make sure they can poop when they need to.

6. Reindeer Can’t Walk and Pee

Ever heard a joke about not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time? That’s an old school one that basically means someone seems clumsy and too incompetent to handle simple tasks. But the fact is some animals out there can’t walk and do other basic tasks at the same time. Reindeer, for instance, cannot walk and pee.

The fact reindeer need to stop for regular pee breaks, and they will all stop together in herds, is so well known that the Finnish reindeer herders have a name for the length a reindeer will walk before it pees. One poronkusema is about six miles. If the herd all stops to pee, you can count on them to all walk about six more miles before it has to happen again.

5. Birds Are Unaffected by Capsaicin

We know from YouTube that people love hot peppers. Hot Ones is a big deal, after all. But whether you love or hate spicy food, you’ve probably experienced the sensation that capsaicin, the ingredient in peppers that gives you that hot feeling, provides. 

If you’re not a spice fan, you may be envious of birds because they lack the ability to experience what capsaicin offers. Part of this is because of birds and their incredibly rudimentary ability to taste. Humans have 2,000 to 10,000 taste buds that help us experience flavor. A chicken has 24. Research suggests birds either have no capsaicin receptors, or just ones that are not very sensitive. This could also be beneficial to plants because it would allow birds to ingest seeds from spicy peppers and spread them around, making it an evolutionary advantage.

4. Velociraptors Lacked Higher Intelligence

We already visited Jurassic Park once. Why not go back and look at the raptors? The movies have also given modern audiences an idea of how a velociraptor works. They’re pack hunters, sly and deadly and intelligent, and nothing short of Chris Pratt with his arm extended can stop them. But, again, that’s Hollywood. And while raptors may have been smart in real life, that’s a loaded word.

Raptors were smart for dinosaurs, which is like describing a hot dog as pretty tasty for gas station food. When you’re the best of the worst, you’re still not great. Smart for a dinosaur, based on the size of the cavity in which its brain was housed, means a raptor was probably smarter than a rabbit but not as smart as a cat. 

Also, don’t forget, movie raptors were actually closer to Utahraptors. Velociraptors were small, about the size of turkeys, and with less intelligence than a cat, they were less intimidating than we all think. 

3. The Domestic Silk Moth No Longer Has the Ability to Fly

Agriculture has done wonders for mankind, but that’s not always the case for things we farm—for instance, the silk moth. For thousands of years, humans have been making silks out of these insects, and that has changed the way these little creatures live. They’re the second most widely cultivated animal in the world after bees, and we breed trillions of them. 

Once upon a time, when a silk caterpillar went through a metamorphosis and became a moth, it could fly away. Thanks to generations of farming, the domestic moth no longer can fly because we’ve bred it out of them. For so long they’ve never been allowed to fly that now, even if they had the chance to fly away, they couldn’t. 

2. Cats Can’t Taste Sweetness

Cats can be remarkably finicky about the food they eat or they can be furry garbage cans taking everything from cat food to salad, bread, and rabbit turds. Like people, there’s no accounting for taste sometimes. But you shouldn’t let that trick you into thinking food is the same for cats as it is for us.

If your cat likes your ice cream, you might be tempted to think he has a sweet tooth, but that’s not the case. Your cat may love all desserts, but that’s probably because of the dairy or the fat or literally anything else. Cats are physically incapable of tasting sweetness.

Almost all other mammals can taste sweetness. There is a gene responsible for sending sweet signals to our brain and it’s useful for survival because sweet usually means sugar, which means a carbohydrate, which means energy. For most animals, sugar means something to keep you alive. But cats, carnivores as they are, don’t work that way. So the gene, known as Tas1r2, works with another gene to create the proteins that make up sweet receptors. But cats didn’t evolve that way.

Now, when it comes to cats that seem to go crazy for sugar, there may be something else at play. Researchers say it’s possible the other gene, Tas1r3, allows them to taste sugar at high concentrations. Or maybe cats are just weird. 

1. Not Everyone Has an Inner Monologue

It’s very easy to take for granted that the way you think is the way other people think. In fact, it’s probably impossible to get through life without wondering what the heck someone else was thinking when they did something foolish.  But the truth is, we do not all think the same way. And some of us think very differently than others.

Most people experience an inner monologue when they think. Your thoughts exist as words, whole sentences and you “hear” them in your mind, probably in your own voice, as though you were talking to yourself. You may be surprised to know not everyone can do that and even the people who can don’t do it all the time.

It’s been estimated that inner monologue is the predominant method of thought for between 30% and 50% of people. But we also engage in other manners of thinking. Another common method is visual thinking, which is picturing something in your mind. Not everyone can do that, either. But in this way of thinking, you imagine a place you want to go, a person you want to see, maybe a food you want to eat with no actual words or dialogue included.

There are other methods of thinking also based on feeling, based on sensory awareness, and based on a thoughtless kind of instinct. Most of us engage in all kinds at various times, and rarely just a single kind. So few people have an inner monologue 100% of the time, but some people seem to have it none of the time.

Anyone who’s had a pet dog, cat, or other animal is well aware of their amazing abilities. A dog can smell scents and odors imperceptible to people, and a cat’s fantastic balance and nimble coordination are greater than those of the most gifted acrobat or gymnast. Animals that aren’t usually kept as pets also exhibit incredible powers, such as hibernation, using sonar to navigate, walking on water, and delivering powerful electrical shocks to prey or threatening predators. These astonishing powers aren’t the only ones animals possess, though, as the 10 recently discovered awesome animal abilities on this list clearly attest.

Top 10 Animals That Surprisingly Make Good Guards

10 Heat Smell

 

Dogs have a tremendous sense of smell. Their noses are “up to a hundred times more sensitive” than those of people. They can even smell radiation, or, more specifically, thermal radiation, or heat, even when it’s “weak.” Their ability to sniff out the body heat of potential prey serves them well when they develop “impaired sight, hearing, or smell,” because their being able to detect body heat with their noses enables them to hunt, even when their senses aren’t as sharp as they used to be. Ethologist Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is so impressed with this newly discovered animal ability that he characterizes it as nothing less that “fascinating.”

Other animals, including black fire beetles, some snakes, and the common vampire bat, are known to use this ability, but no one suspected dogs could be capable of sniffing out body heat. The “smooth skin on the tips of [dogs’] noses around the nostrils” is both “moist [and] colder than the ambient temperature.” Aware of this fact, scientists wondered whether dogs might be able to sense heat with their noses. They put the matter to the test by subjecting them to an MRI scan while the dogs were exposed to objects emitting various levels of thermal radiation. The resulting data showed that, yes, dogs can smell “weak hot spots.”^[1]

9 Magentoreception

 

Dogs’ ability to smell heat isn’t the only amazing power scientists have recently discovered. It’s been known for some time that birds, salamanders, and frogs, among other animals, can navigate by sensing the planet’s “weak magnetic field.” The sense that accounts for this ability is known as magentoreception. Dogs, it has been found, also possess this sense, just as has been “long suspected.” Although it’s unclear how canines are able to detect the Earth’s magnetic field, it’s now known that they do. “I’m really quite impressed with the data,” biologist Catherine Lohmann said.

Dogs use this awesome ability to scout out new paths through unfamiliar territory, which helps them to hunt, and their magentoreception may help them to perform other tasks as well. Further research is needed concerning this amazing discovery. It seems a safe bet to predict that it will soon be forthcoming.^[2]

8 Oxygen-less Survival

 

It’s tiny. Its home is the salmon, in the muscle of which the parasite lives. Neither its size nor its abode is what’s most awesome about the animal, though. It’s able to get along just fine without an element vital to the lives of every plant and animal on the planet—except itself. The 10-celled Henneguya salminicola (H. salminicola) is the only animal known to be able to breathe without oxygen. One of the many people astonished by H. salminicola’s ability is Dorothée Huchon, a zoologist at Israel’s Tel Aviv University, who declared, “Aerobic respiration is a major source of energy, and yet we found an animal that gave up this critical pathway.”

The absence of mitochondrial DNA in the parasite’s structure indicates it doesn’t need the genes required for respiration, because these genes are contained in this portion of DNA. The fact that the genes are missing shows that H. salminicola can no longer “perform aerobic cellular respiration.” In other words, it survives without the need for oxygen. Although it’s not known how the parasite accomplishes this unique feat, Huchon said that it’s possible that H. salminicola somehow siphons off energy from its host’s cells. It’s also possible, the zoologist says, that the parasite “may have a different type of respiration such as oxygen-free breathing.” In either case, Huchon said, “It is generally thought that, during evolution, organisms become more and more complex, and that simple single-celled or few-celled organisms are the ancestors of complex organisms. But here, right before us, is an animal whose evolutionary process is the opposite.”^[3]

7 “Lasso Locomotion”

 

Some snakes have exhibited a bizarre, but fascinating ability to “climb” trees using a method called “lasso locomotion.” The brown snakes, which were brought from Australia, Papau New Guinea, and the Pacific Islands by cargo ships back in the days of World War II, have become more than nuisances in Guam, where the predatory reptiles have wiped out ten indigenous species of birds. To fight back, local inhabitants of the island have come up with some creative tactics, including “air-dropping drug-filled mice” for the snakes to nibble on and using dogs to hunt down the snakes. So far, such efforts have met with failure.

Birds are especially susceptible to attack, because the brown snakes live in trees. To protect the birds, Colorado State University ecologists Julie Savidge and Tom Seibert recommended that smooth metal poles be installed “at the base of bird nest boxes.” The snakes wouldn’t be able to climb such smooth surfaces, and the birds would be safe, the scientists reasoned. The snakes surprised them. On-site video cameras caught the predators winding their bodies about the poles, like lassos, and then wiggling up the poles. Seibert’s response: “We just kind of looked at each other in shock. I mean, this wasn’t something a snake was supposed to be able to do.” This awesome, recently discovered ability adds a fifth means of snake motivity, lasso locomotion, to the four already identified: slithering, rectilinear movement, lateral undulation, and concertina locomotion.^[4]

6 Empathy

 

Like many other animals, rodents are social. They live in groups, and they depend upon one another for their survival. But do they also feel each other’s pain? Can they empathize? That’s what a team of researchers wanted to know. Defining empathy as “the ability to understand what other individuals in their group [or “conspecifics,” as scientists call them] feel and to share that feeling,” the researchers set out to find out. They divided their mousy subjects into three groups, each of which would be subjected to a different sort of stress. One group had their tails pinched. The second group was injected with formalin. The third group was anesthetized.

“The test mice in this study could . . . reliably determine that the treated mouse was in a pain state using visual cues,” the team’s article in the Brain and Behavior journal stated. As a result of empathizing with the mice in pain, other mice, the “cage-mates” of the “distressed” animals, showed empathetic behavior toward the victims by exhibiting “no heightened interest in anesthetized conspecifics or conspecifics with swollen limbs,” but showing “interest in formalin?injected conspecifics.” It was less clear whether “stranger mice” experienced empathy for the “distressed mice.”^[5]

5 Shape-shifting

 

Although the mutable rain frog was first discovered in 2006, in the rain forest of Ecuador, the amphibian’s awesome ability to shift its shape wasn’t known until some years later, when a second of its species was found. Its ability to change the texture of its skin from rough and “spiny” to “smooth” in only minutes made one researcher, in catching the frog for a photograph, thought she’d grabbed the wrong specimen. Later, intending to return it to its natural habitat, the researchers placed moss in the amphibian’s container. When they looked in on the frog after a while, it had reverted to its rough skin.

A series of photographs show the mutable rain frog at various segments of time—90 seconds, 150 seconds, 180 seconds, 270 seconds, and 330 seconds. Within three minutes, it could be mistaken for a different frog; within five and a half minutes, it probably would be.

The scientists were even more amazed when a second species of frog, the Sobetes robber frog, was found to have this same astonishing ability. Now, researchers think, many other amphibian species may be able to shift their shapes as well.^[6]

4 Brainless Learning

 

It’s yellow—or “yellowish”—and it resembles a plant, sometimes. Other times, it looks like a mushroom. Still other times, it might be mistaken for, well, mucus. It’s a mystery. Scientists have no idea, yet, whether “The Blob,” as the whatever-it-is is called at present, is an animal or a fungus. The bizarre life form was discovered in France, at the Paris Zoological Park, looking “like a fungus, but acting like an animal.” It also has some other awesome features, among which are “720 sexes,” the ability to “move without legs or wings,” and the power to heal “itself in two minutes if cut in half.”

Needless to say, the zoo’s director, Bruno David, is impressed with The Blob, perhaps most of all because “it has no brain but is able to learn.” It can find its way out of a maze to locate food or bypass a line of salt, which it “hates.” When food awaits it beyond a “salt barrier,” The Blob will find a way to get around the line of salt more quickly than it’s apt to do otherwise. Such learning is impressive, indeed, but it’s not all The Blob can do. “If you merge two blobs, the one that has learned will transmit its knowledge to the other,” David said. The mysterious Blob is named for the alien in the science fiction-horror movie The Blob, starring Steve McQueen. Like the zoological Blob, the movie Blob liked to eat, too, so much so that it consumed pretty much everything in its path during its visit to a small Pennsylvania town.^[7]

3 Survival Genes

 

Despite their microscopic size, tardigrades are tough. These “water bears,” as they’re better known, survive extremes that would kill other animals much larger than themselves, including us. They owe their awesome survivability to special “survival genes.” One genus of tardigrades, Ramazzottius variornatus, are especially hardy. In fact, they are “arguably the toughest and most resilient species found in the entire tardigrade clan.”

Geneticist Takekazu Kunieda and his colleagues at the University of Tokyo have discovered one of the secrets of the water bears. They’ve “evolved a special protein that protects [their] DNA from radiation damage. Extremophiles, they are also capable of surviving such extreme conditions as “freezing, total dehydration, . . . and even the vacuum of space.” In fact, “scientists successfully revived a tardigrade that had been frozen solid for more than three decades—a new record for this durable species.”

It was once thought that tardigrades didn’t develop their awesome abilities on their own but that they had had help. Geneticists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “found that 17.5 percent of the tardigrade genome comes from other organisms, including plants, fungi, bacteria, and viruses” as a result of horizontal gene transfer. However, the findings of the Japanese researchers “challenges this assumption,” suggesting that the tardigrades’ awesome survivability are “proprietary,” rather than consequences of gene transfer. Researchers believe that the tardigrades’ amazing abilities may have remarkable medical and genetics applications.^[8]

2 Super Taste

 

A taste bud is an amazing receptor. These clusters of specialized cells, which detect the flavors of everything from vanilla ice cream to olives, may not be as well understood as once thought. The taste buds of mice are revolutionizing the way scientists think about the sense of taste and the ability of taste buds to detect flavors.

Tastes are usually classified into five types: bitter, sweet, salty, sour, and umami. (“Umami” refers to a savory taste.) Traditionally, scientists held that taste buds could detect only one or two types of flavor, and research showed that taste cells seemed able to pick up only certain compounds. For example, such cells might detect “sweet sucralose” or “bitter caffeine,” but not both. Thanks to the taste buds of mice, this picture has become a lot more complex.

When neurophysiologist Debarghya Dutta Banik and colleagues removed certain taste cells from the taste buds of mice, the rodents’ other taste cells responded to various flavors that were introduced to them. After the subject mice were presented with several tasty compounds, researchers discovered that the mice had “a group of cells” capable of sensing “multiple chemicals across different classes.” To make matters still more complicated, the brain was also shown to affect a mouse’s sense of taste. Without a “key protein needed for these broadly tasting cells to relay information,” the brain didn’t receive “the flavor messages” and the mice would lap up “bitter solutions,” despite the rodents’ normal dislike of such tastes, Banik said.

As Kathryn Medler, a neurophysiologist at the University at Buffalo in New York, points out, the sense of taste has survival value. Without the ability to taste foods, people would find meals much less palatable and might eat less, becoming malnourished. The sense of taste has another survivability function as well. Taste also helps people avoid food that might be “spoiled or toxic,” since it is likely to taste unpleasant, should it be sampled. The fact that “taste works similarly in mice and humans” suggests that the sense of taste might be restored to people who lose this sense because of the effects of chemotherapy.^[9]

1 Time Measurement

 

Animals can tell time. When an animal is waiting, a group of recently discovered neurons “turn on like a clock.” Daniel Dombeck, the leader of research conducted at Northwestern University, said that his team’s findings show that dogs, like other animals, have “an explicit representation of time in their brains” by which they are able to “measure a time interval.” That’s how pet dogs know whether their caretakers are behind schedule in feeding them.

Dombeck’s knowledge that the temporal lobe of the brain “encodes spatial information in episodic memories” led him to hypothesize that the lobe might also be “responsible for encoding time.” As James Heys, a postdoctoral fellow in Dombeck’s laboratory, explained, every memory has two common elements: “space and time,” since memories occur “in a particular environment and are always structured in time.”

To test his hypothesis, Dombeck and his team built an actual treadmill “in a virtual reality environment,” through which a mouse ran down a hallway to a door “halfway down the track.” Six seconds after the mouse arrives at the door, the door opens, admitting the rodent to a waiting reward. The physical door was later replaced by an “invisible door” in the virtual reality scenario. Various cues alerted the mouse to the whereabouts of the invisible door, but, in repeated tests, the animal still waited six seconds before continuing down the track to claim its reward.

With the mouse hooked up to a brain imaging apparatus, Dombeck and his colleagues monitored its brain activity and found that neurons related to “spatial encoding” fired as the mouse ran toward the invisible door but “turned off” when it reached the door, and that “a new set of [timing] cells” were activated instead. “This was a big surprise and a new discovery,” Dombeck said. One of the potential applications of his team’s research, Dombeck observed, might be “new early-detection tests for Alzheimer’s” in which people suspected of having the disease would be asked to “judge how much time has elapsed or ask them to navigate a virtual reality environment.”^[10]

Top 10 Surreal Animals That Really Exist

About The Author: An English instructor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Gary L. Pullman lives south of Area 51, which, according to his family and friends, explains “a lot.” His four-book series, An Adventure of the Old West, is available on Amazon.

The world as we know it is fairly explainable by science. However, there’s still an aspect of existence that blows the most brilliant of minds. There are things science simply doesn’t understand. And we’re not talking about the mysteries of time and space—we’re talking about people with abilities science can’t explain.

Some people seem to have superhuman capabilities. They do things that nobody else can do, often because they acquired these abilities at some point in life without working for them. The common trait in their super abilities is the brainpower these people have. The supernatural has gone over matter in the life of these super, paranormal incredible human beings. These are the ten people with abilities science can’t wrap its head around.

Related: 10 Times Artificial Intelligence Displayed Amazing Abilities

10 The Memory Man

Stephen Wiltshire’s specialty is drawing urban landscapes. But he’s not your typical artist. He once flew over New York in a helicopter for twenty minutes. He managed to recreate everything he saw on a twenty-foot piece of paper. Even the number of windows in the buildings is accurate.

How? He has a photographic memory and can reproduce anything he’s seen just as it is in real life.

When native-Londoner Wiltshire was growing up in the ’70s, he had trouble speaking and relating to others. An autism diagnosis helped to explain how he connected to the world. At school, teachers noticed how much he loved drawing. He started to draw animals, London buses, then buildings. They discovered he had a photographic memory and could reproduce anything he saw.

Stephen became fascinated with sketching London architecture when he was about seven. A year later, he received his first commission from the British Prime Minister to draw the Salisbury Cathedral. His realistic style was mind-blowing even for the most educated art critics. He’s currently one of the most famous artists in the UK.

9 Sleepless in Vietnam

According to science, the average person can’t spend more than a few days without sleep. You don’t sleep; you die. Right?

But somehow, Thai Ngoc, a 75-year-old Vietnamese man, claims he hasn’t slept in forty-two years. His body just doesn’t shut off. Thai Ngoc’s sleepless life story has been reported several times. Vietnamese television has interviewed him, and he was mentioned in a National Geographic magazine blog. Unfortunately, his condition hasn’t changed since 1974.

After getting sick, Ngoc found himself with the ultimate form of insomnia. Ngoc manages to carry on with his daily activities without any symptoms of sleep deprivation. He works hard on his farm and takes care of his pigs. Scientists still can’t explain why this man is still kicking. After a trip to the Danang Hospital, the only problem doctors found was an old war injury. He’s awake and still a mystery to modern medicine.

8 My Samurai Senses Are Tingling

It looks like a Hollywood movie special effect. But a modern-day samurai warrior was filmed in slow motion slicing a high-speed projectile in half with a sword at an LA shooting range in 2011. In a Guinness World Records video, we can see Isao Machii’s blade cutting a bullet, moving at 0.088 km/s (0.0547 mi/s), into two parts.

The organization had to film with a special camera that slowed down the footage 250 times to capture the moment. Machii became world-famous after setting the record for the most sword cuts to a tatami mat. He was also able to make 1000 cuts to a straw mat in just over 36 seconds. In 2004, Isao cut a mat seven times before hitting the ground. Eleven years later, he cut a standalone mat eight times while in the air. When the thing hit the ground, he had reduced it to rags and threads.

Scientists believe Machii has a sensory ability beyond good sight and motion. However, simple clinical and laboratory tests could not confirm this unusual condition. The fastest samurai on the face of the earth makes scientists scratch their heads.

7 The Ice Man Cometh

Wim Hof is a Dutchman with several records with Guinness World Records for showing remarkable resistance to extreme temperatures. He climbed mountains of ice in sneakers and shorts, ran in the desert at over 50°C without food or water, and was covered in ice for nearly two hours.

He managed to do all this without shivering, growing dehydrated, or getting sick. These temperatures would be lethal to any other human. It seems Hof can control his immune system, making his body increasingly resistant.

No, he’s not actually in the X-Men. In fact, anyone can gain the same abilities as long as they practice a series of activities known as the Hof Method. Scientists have conducted several studies with Hof and some of his pupils to establish whether the rumors of his super resistance were true. They could only prove that Hof and the group who performed like him were stronger and healthier than the control group.

6 Call Him Mr. Mistoffelees

The artist featured in number ten on this list isn’t the only human with a heart-warming ability science can’t explain. Kevin Richardson calls himself an animal behaviorist. He can interact with lions in an amicable, almost intimate way.

Richardson grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, away from the wildlife. He decided to study zoology but was unsuccessful at first and almost quit his career as a scientist. At twenty-three, he was a physiologist who curiously began working with lion cubs. This experience brought back his passion for working with animals.

Richardson is now a TV celebrity known to play with big cats, lions, hyenas, and leopards while commanding them to sit. He can put his forearm in the lion’s mouth without being attacked. Some believe that Richardson’s ability to communicate with dangerous animals is a tool for his real purpose as a wildlife activist. He owns a wildlife sanctuary in Africa to protect animals and raise awareness.

5 Real-Life Iron Man

Dean Karnazes has the ability of physical endurance. He has managed to run 350 miles without stopping, has completed fifty marathons in fifty days, and even ran in glacial weather in a race at the South Pole.

One day, the American soon-to-be ultramarathoner decided to test the limits of his body, so he started running, at the age of thirty, after having a tequila blast. He has been unstoppable ever since. He has a resilient, strong body with a metabolism science can’t explain. He can rapidly flush lactic acid from his system and has never had a cramp in his life.

When ordinary people exercise, the body converts glucose to energy, producing lactic acid as a by-product. As that builds up in the muscles, fatigue and cramps are inevitable as a signal from the body to stop. Karnazes never receives those signals. His ability to perform physically for an extended period under challenging conditions has impressed many sports fans worldwide and intrigued the minds of scientists.

They found that his body has a lower fat percentage than the average person due to a condition, but this is not the only reason he’s so strong. It’s like he’s made of iron. Can somebody get Tony Stark to weigh in on this?

4 Seider Sees Spot Run

Veronica Seider is a German dentist. But her “powers” have nothing to do with teeth. Seider didn’t know she had superhuman vision until she was in her early twenties when scientists at the university she attended discovered her phenomenal eyesight.

Seider can see clearly at the length of over a dozen football fields (1.09 kilometers or 1,200 yards) when you’re squinting at things a few meters or yards away. From a biological point of view, this should be impossible. However, Seider has taken several tests that showcase her miraculous sight. Her supervision ability was featured by Guinness World Records.

Now, Seider lives a quiet life as a dentist and helps people with her smile. Just imagine how well she can see your plaque.

3 Biba the Battery Man

Slavisa “Biba” Pajkic discovered his incredible ability when he was seventeen years old. Since then, he’s been demonstrating what seems to be an extraordinary power. The human body isn’t made to withstand high levels of electrical current, but Slavisa appears to be the exception. He first set a record with Guinness in 1983, when he took a 20,000-volt discharge.

His second record dates back to 2003 when he heated water to 97°C (206°F) in 1 minute and 37 seconds. So far, scientists haven’t been able to figure out exactly how he’s doing all these things. He can light a light bulb, cook sausages, and even ignite flammable material soaked in alcohol. Pajkict uses his abilities to conduct electricity and is known as the Battery Man.

Doctors said that Slavisa’s powers originate from a genetic defect. Slavisa Pajkic has no sweat and salivary glands. Scientists suspect the energy is not passing through his body but outside his skin, which acts as a natural insulator. Any person who hugs Biba is very brave.

2 The Monk with an Exoskeleton

Shaolin monks possess superhuman strength. Trained since childhood, they acquire skills that no normal person could have, such as walking on hot charcoal or taking several kicks without feeling any pain. In addition to the countless mysteries and secrets, showcasing strength is one of the monastery’s traditions. A video posted on YouTube shows the most shocking performance of a monk called Zhao Rui.

His ability to withstand pain or get hurt has made him famous as a man of impenetrable skin. Rui once held a power drill to his temple without breaking the skin for ten seconds. His performances include bending an iron bar against his throat, lying upon sharpened metal arrows, and breaking stones with his head.

Science can’t explain why he never gets injured. He credits his ability to face pain to his daily practices of deep meditations. Whether that is the case or not remains a mystery.

1 Uri Geller Bends Metal With His Mind

Psychokinesis is the ability to manipulate objects without touching them. Uri Geller can bend spoons, move things, and reveal details of objects hidden from his sight.

The Israeli psychic can bend a spoon upward with absolutely no force and demonstrated this ability during a visit to the U.S. Capitol. There is some speculation that Geller’s abilities were magic tricks based on scientific principles. However, he’s been doing it since he was five. That sounds like an evil genius origin story to me.