Weird Facts About Female Body

The human body is undoubtedly an incredible thing,  but the female body is extra amazing. Not only can  

the female body grow entire human beings from  scratch, ensuring the survival of our entire  

species in the process, but women’s bodies can do  plenty of other crazy, impressive and downright  

strange things. You won’t believe some of these  incredible and weird facts about the female body!

It’s a well-documented fact that  women tend to live longer than men.  

While American men can expect to live until the  age of 76, the life expectancy for an American  

woman is a full 5 years longer at age 81. There  are many reasons for the difference in life  

expectancy between men and women, and it’s not  just that women tend to take less risks than men.  

One of the major factors is the fact that women  are better at fighting off infections than men.

The female immune system is stronger than  the immune system of men, thanks to the fact  

that the hormone estrogen suppresses an enzyme  that can get in the way of our body’s defences  

against bacteria and viruses. Women can also  thank their higher levels of estrogen for  

being significantly better at surviving traumatic  injuries than men. Women recover faster from their  

injuries and are more resistant to infections.  No one is sure why exactly this is the case,  

but it might be the female body’s way of  providing extra protection for any children  

the woman might be carrying. Plus, regular sex  can help boost a woman’s immune system even more!

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to  suggest that men and women think differently,  

but the science shows that there actually are  differences between the male and female brain.  

For one thing, women regularly outdo men on  memory tests. It turns out that women aren’t just  

better at remembering to-do lists, but are also  better than men at remembering names and faces.  

And it’s not just remembering faces that women  excel at - they are better at reading them too.  

Women can read emotional cues from facial  expressions much more accurately than men,  

which might be why they tend to  be more empathetic on average.

Science has also conclusively proven what  we all already know - that women are better  

listeners than men. Researchers at the  Indiana University School of Medicine  

used an fMRI machine to track brain  activity while participants listened  

to someone read aloud a passage from a novel. As  men listened, the left side of their brain - the  

area associated with listening and speech -  showed increased activity. Women, however,  

showed activity in both the left side and the  right side, the side associated with creativity  

and expression. In fact, women use both sides  of their brain much more often than men do,  

which could be why they tend to  be so much better at multitasking.

Women don’t just listen better, they’re  also better with words than men.  

Women have larger frontal and temporal lobes, the  brain regions associated with language skills,  

which might account for why women speak an average  of 20,000 words per day - 13,000 more than the  

average man speaks in a day! This brings a whole  new meeting to the phrase “a man of few words”...

And, in case you were wondering,  the science also points to women  

actually being the more rational sex -  so much for that stereotype! However,  

it’s not all good news in the brain department  - period cramps aren’t just a physical pain,  

they also mess with a woman’s mind. Cramps and  other PMS symptoms can be incredibly distracting,  

and can temporarily prevent a woman’s  brain from working at its full potential.

Men and women also see the world differently -  literally. A mutation on the X chromosome allows  

about 40% of women to see a much broader  range of colors in the red-orange family,  

while many men are actually “Christmas  color-blind”, meaning that they have  

a hard time distinguishing between red and  green. Women also blink more often than men.

Speaking of eyes - it’s absolutely true that  women cry more often than men. Adult women cry an  

average of 5.3 times per month, while men average  only 1.4 times. But it’s not just hormones, or the  

fact that it’s more socially acceptable for women  to cry - there’s a biological reason for this,  

too. Women have larger tear ducts than men, and  they have 50-60% more of the hormone prolactin,  

which is primarily responsible for  lactation but also controls our tears.

Neither sex can claim a superior sense of  smell, but research shows that women are  

better at learning and distinguishing different  smells. One study even showed that women can  

tell when their partner is stressed by sniffing  one of their dirty t-shirts! Women might have  

the edge when it comes to taste, though, thanks  to an abundance of taste buds compared to men.

Men may be stronger than women on average, but  women can claim more endurance than men - in  

studies, women can last up to 75% longer than  men in stamina-related exercises. Once again,  

women can thank their higher levels  of estrogen, which makes their muscles  

more resistant to fatigue - something that  definitely comes in handy during childbirth.

Women are also more flexible than men, thanks to  increased levels of elastin in their muscles and  

tendons, a protein that allows muscles and even  organs to stretch - yet another useful feature  

during pregnancy and childbirth. Women’s bodies  are also structurally different than men - the  

lower part of a woman’s spine curves over the  last 3 vertebrae versus just the last 2 in men,  

and they have a greater range of motion in their  pelvic area. All of this makes women much more  

flexible, and also helps accommodate  the carrying and birthing of a baby.

Women’s skin is also different  from men’s. Women’s skin is much  

more sensitive due to being 25% thinner than  men’s skin. Unfortunately, that also means  

that women’s skin is more prone to wrinkles  thanks to a loss of collagen as they age.

Women also have more guts than men - really!  The lower part of the colon is longer in women  

than in men. Women also have more stuff  crammed into their lower abdomen - between  

their digestive tract and their reproductive  organs, there is less room for things to expand,  

which might be why women tend to experience  more digestive distress than men.

Thankfully, women seem to be  pretty good at managing their pain,  

thanks again to the extra estrogen coursing  through their bodies, which acts as a natural  

pain reliever. However, during some parts of  their cycle when estrogen is at its lowest levels,  

women actually feel more pain than men do. Some  studies suggest that women’s threshold for pain  

is actually 9 times stronger than men’s.  Perception is a big part of it - while men  

tend to get stressed when thinking about their  past pain, women seem to forget about pain much  

faster. This might be a protective mechanism to  help women forget just how awful childbirth is.

Women may be able to handle their pain, but  they aren’t as good at handling their alcohol  

as men - and it’s not just because women  tend to be smaller than men on average.  

Women have less of the stomach enzyme that  breaks down the ethanol in alcohol, and less  

water in their bodies to dilute the booze,  so even when adjusted for body size, a woman  

will have a higher blood alcohol content than a  man after consuming the same amount of alcohol.

Keen observers might have noticed a trend in a  lot of these incredible facts about the female  

body - many of the things that make women’s  bodies different than men’s have to do with  

the fact that women’s bodies are designed  to carry and birth babies. Without a doubt,  

the ability to grow an entire human from scratch  is the most amazing thing about the female body.  

Some of the weirdest facts about the human  body have to do with the reproductive system.

A woman is born with all of the eggs she  will ever have in her entire lifetime.  

Before she’s even born, a female fetus will have  6 to 7 million eggs, but by the time she’s born,  

that number has already dropped dramatically  to just 1 to 2 million eggs. By puberty,  

she’s down to 400,000 eggs, and by her late 30s,  a woman only has 20,000 eggs left. By the time she  

hits menopause in her 50s, a woman has just  1,000 eggs left in her reproductive system.  

Once released, an egg can survive for days  in a woman’s fallopian tubes, and since sperm  

can survive for up to 5 days in the reproductive  tract, we can see why birth control is so popular.

The uterus is an incredibly elastic organ.  During pregnancy, a woman’s uterus grows  

from the size of an orange to the size  of a watermelon in just nine months,  

pushing her other organs out of the way and up  into her rib cage in the process. During labor,  

the uterus exerts pressure of nearly 400  pounds per square foot during contractions.  

During pregnancy, a woman’s cervix is tightly  closed to keep the baby inside and protected  

from the outside world. During labor, though, the  cervix stretches to become the baby’s gateway into  

the world. To even begin pushing, the cervix  must be dilated to 10 centimeter - about the  

size of a bagel - and it can get even larger to  accommodate the baby’s head as it’s delivered.

The average woman will have around 450 periods  during her lifetime, and will use up to 15,000  

menstrual products over her life span. Before the  invention of the disposable menstrual pad in the  

1890s, women used some pretty weird methods to  deal with their periods. Women would use rags,  

cotton, sheep’s wool, rabbit’s fur and even  grass to stem the flow of menstrual blood.  

In ancient Rome and Greece, women would wrap lint  around a piece of wood to make homemade tampons.  

Despite how it might seem, women don’t actually  lose that much blood during their period - they  

typically only lose about 4 tablespoons of blood  in total over the course of their entire period.

That’s the not-so-good news about the  female reproductive system - but never fear,  

there’s plenty of reproductive  advantages to the female body,  

especially when it comes to sex. Not only is  it true that women can have multiple orgasms,  

but the female clitoris alone has 8,000 nerve  endings - more than double the number of nerve  

endings in the entire penis. The clitoris also  serves no biological purpose other than to bring  

women pleasure. It also grows over time,  meaning that sex actually gets better for  

women the older they get. An orgasm can also  help relieve the pain of period cramps - that  

seems like the least nature could do to make  up for the annoyance of periods, the discomfort  

of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth! Weirdly,  the part of the brain that gets aroused during sex  

is the very same part of the brain that lights  up when a woman is craving a specific food.

Although it might be hardly noticeable,  

one breast is always larger than the other - no  woman has perfectly identically sized breasts.

This last fact just might be the weirdest of them  all. What do sharks and vaginas have in common?  

This may sound like the set-up for  a dirty joke, but it’s 100% true.  

The natural lubricant in the vagina is made up of  many things, including sweat, mucus and something  

called squalene. Squalene is not unique to humans  - it’s also found in the liver of sharks, and is a  

common ingredient in moisturizers. Recent research  also suggests that squalene can help protect skin  

from the harsh effects of chemotherapy. Who knew  that sharks and vaginas had so much in common!

Given all of the amazing and impressive  things that the female body can do,  

it should come as no surprise that women actually  need more sleep than men! Although they tend to  

follow a more Eastern circadian rhythm and  wake up earlier than men on average, women  

actually require an extra 20 minutes of sleep each  night just to keep their amazing bodies going.

The human body is truly a marvel, but the female  body is a whole other level of impressive,  

as these weird facts about the  female body clearly illustrate.

If you thought this video was interesting, you’ll  definitely want to check out our other videos,  

like this one called “What Would Happen  To Your Body If You Lived In The Ocean?”,  

or maybe this other video is for you.