Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers (4 page)

Which mostly useless body part is named after the beak of a bird?

The
coccyx
, also known as your tailbone. The word comes from an ancient Greek word for “cuckoo bird” because the bone looks like the bird’s beak.

It’s a strange fusion of bones, the coccyx. Your spine is probably the most important sets of bones in your body (it holds up your head, after all), but at the base of the spine, right above your bottom, the fusion of bones that makes up your coccyx doesn’t really do much for stability (except for when you’re sitting). It’s not entirely useless, though—the coccyx connects several important muscles and ligaments.

In most mammals, the coccyx is
very
important: That’s where the tail begins—hence its other name, the
tailbone
. In humans and some other primates, the coccyx is nearly identical to that of other mammals; there’s just no tail. So could we conceivably grow tails? Yes, except that the gene that instructs a tail to grow is not turned on. What would it take to turn on that gene? A genetic mutation—which could possibly lead to a small group of isolated humans growing tails.

That reminds us of one of the weirdest quotations of all time. Actor Christopher Walken once opined: “How great it would be if actors had tails! Because a tail is so expressive. On a cat you can tell everything. You can tell if they’re annoyed. You can tell whether they’re scared. I wish I had a tail.”

What’s the main ingredient in the old-fashioned cure-all known as “Mummy Powder”?

How many organisms are living on and inside you right now?

Mummies…as in, the remains of dead people. By the 12th century, many doctors in Europe and Asia were grinding mummies into powder and using it as medicine. Not unlike other quack remedies, mummy powder was prescribed to heal all sorts of ailments: epilepsy, migraines, nausea, sore throat, fractures, and even paralysis. Used as a tea or a poultice, it remained popular through the 1800s (even Abraham Lincoln supposedly drank it). There are, however, no known healing properties of mummy powder, and the fad died out at the end of the 19th century. Unfortunately for archaeologists, the practice of grinding the remains into powder destroyed several thousand mummies—along with whatever information they could have provided about how ancient people lived and died.

As many as two quadrillion bacteria microbes. We are made up of cells, approximately 100 trillion of them. Moving within, on, under, and between those cells are an incredible number of uninvited guests. In fact, for every one cell in the human body, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 times as many microbes, both healthy and unhealthy. That totals roughly 2,000,000,000,000,000 bacteria, concentrated in the places where microbial communities prosper: the nose, mouth, skin, digestive tract—and in females, the urogenital tract. Your skin alone is host to upwards of 500 different species of bacteria.

When you were a baby, what did you have 100 more of than you do now?

Why did Australian doctor Barry Marshall’s experiments give him an ulcer?

Bones. You were born with around 350 of them. Over time, many of the bones—mostly in your spine—fused together into single, larger bones, reducing the number by nearly a third to 206 bones in an average adult. That doesn’t mean that you definitely have 206 bones. Not everyone’s baby bones all fuse together, so you may actually have a few more.

Dr. Marshall gave himself the ulcer…on purpose. Until the 1980s, the prevailing notion was that ulcers are caused by stress. Marshall believed otherwise. He hypothesized that ulcers are caused by corkscrew-shaped bacteria known as
Helicobacter pylori
. When he announced his theory in 1982, the medical community laughed at him. Every doctor worth his diploma knew that bacteria can’t survive in stomach acid. Marshall was convinced they could but was having trouble proving that to his peers. Why? The usual test subjects—pigs and rats—aren’t affected by
H. pylori
. So Marshall cooked up a batch of the bacteria and drank it himself. Result: He got a raging ulcer, which proved his theory and changed the way ulcers are treated.

Footnote:
Back in 1899, a Polish doctor named Walery Jaworski discovered
H. pylori
and even suggested that it might cause some stomach ills. However, his theory remained unknown outside of Poland until Marshall’s discovery.

What are the three parts of the small intestine?

The hip bone may be connected to the thigh bone, but there’s one bone that’s not connected to any other bone. Do you know what it is? (A forensic investigator sure does.)

How many gallons of blood will your heart pump today?

The
duodenum, jejunum
, and
ileum
make up the small intestine, which is about 18 feet long and an inch in diameter. After leaving the stomach, partially digested food enters the C-shaped duodenum, which is about a foot long. Next, it goes into the jejunum and then to the ileum, both of which twist and turn upon themselves. The inner linings of these two sections contain tiny finger-like bumps called
villi
; their job is to absorb nutrients into the bloodstream. What’s left of your meal then goes to the large intestine. Although it’s only five feet long, it’s much wider—about three inches in diameter (which is why it’s referred to as “large”). The entire journey takes several hours…and ends with a flush.