35 Things Major Organs Do That Science Class Didn’t Teach

Home Biology 35 Things Major Organs Do That Science Class Didn’t Teach

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By Joe Burgett - August 1, 2019

When it comes to your overall health, it is clear that your organs play a massive role. The interesting part about all of this is that we’re still discovering new and exciting things about the human body all the time. In fact, there are several things major organs do that you may not even know about.

For some people, they may have experienced one of these unique and amazing things. Others, however, may be shocked to see what some of our well-known organs actually can do. We have learned so much over the last few thousand years, especially the last few hundred.

We went from a time in which people like Aristotle thought that the heart was where our thought process and overall thinking came from. He thought the brain was used as a cooling system of sorts too. We went from this type of assumption to knowing far different today.

In 2019, we’re able to do surgical procedures to protect people from horrific illnesses and diseases. We can even use them as a corrective procedure to help a person live a normal life. There are medications and procedures we have today that people would have killed for a decade ago. All of this comes from years and years of learning about our bodies.

That said, our organs are the most important things to our body. Some, of course, are more important than others. On top of this, organs in the body are not always the main type. You’ll discover that in our article below and much more on things major organs do that you didn’t know about. Enjoy!

35. Spleens Can Predict Weather Conditions

35 Things Major Organs Do That Science Class Didn’t Teach — *Spleen a Part of Human Internal Organ System Anatomy X-ray 3D rendering. Photo Credit: Art of Kosi/Shutterstock*

The human spleen is quite useful to our bodies, even if we don’t realize it sometimes. While both the kidneys and liver filter blood, the spleen also does this as a very big assistant to the others. It also plays a big role in the immune system. Most people know about the major functions of the spleen but did you know it can also predict weather conditions?

A man by the name of Gun Wickstrom, from Saskatchewan, was able to use a spleen to predict weather patterns up to 6 months in advance. Although he used a pig spleen, it had the same principle due to the close relationship humans have to pig organs. He found that when the spleen thickened, a cold spell was coming while a bulge meant bad weather, for example. He could even predict strong winds, squalls, and more.

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34. It’s The Best Medicine

Our brain does a lot of cool things that we do not really realize. One example involves our use of laughter. While we laugh at stuff all the time because we find it humorous, have you ever met a person who laughed every time they were hurt? Some people have a problem with their brain in that they react with laughter every time they are hurt.

This comes from a real part of the brain that is present in every human on Earth. The brain actually uses laughter to help us fight pain. The concept is that it releases a lot of helpful parts of the body, including some hormones, to act as a natural painkiller to help you. When someone says laughter is the best medicine, it’s not a lie whatsoever.

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33. We Know When You’re Lying

For people involved in criminal justice as well as those who are trained detectives, there are tells when it comes to lying. Some have tells that everyone has, meaning they suck at lying. Others have slight ones that you truly have to pay very close attention to. Yet most people have one tell that is hard for them to get away with. Your brain has some, well, trouble lying.

When a person lies, they blink more than when they tell the truth. The average person blinks 6 to 8 times per minute, which may differ in some. Anything surpassing this can, often, give away when someone is lying. The reason for the massive blinking has to do with something our brain does when it has to think excessively. Since a lie takes time to think up, you’ll blink a lot.

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32. Food Really Does Make You Feel Good

Did you know that you have more nerves in your gastrointestinal tract than in your entire brain? It’s true. It can seriously make you feel good to eat certain stuff. Inside your stomach is what many like to call your “gut.” With the rise in nerves, gut flora plays a huge role in how we feel overall.

Due to this, our gut can heavily influence our mood just as much as our brain. It is quite weird but completely true that people with good digestive health are some of the happiest people. Probiotics, which offer good bacteria, obviously help gut flora out a lot over bad bacteria. This is why probiotics have also been linked to improvement in mood for some.

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31. Your Brain Has A Pain Problem

While this list is mostly about some amazing things organs do that you may not know about, we should also mention something they don’t do. Your brain is quite unique compared to the rest of the body. While you can feel pain all over your body for a variety of issues, the body was only able to feel this because the brain sent a signal to it to feel the pain.

However, the brain itself cannot actually feel pain. Think of it as your home versus the power company. While a reaction to not paying your power bill is the power company shutting off your power, what happens if the power company’s power source goes out? There is no true reaction, outside fixing the issue. This is similar to your brain, in that, your brain cannot actually develop a pain response for itself.

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30. That Is A Manly Thing To Do

The human male has some body parts that differ from the human female. This is obvious to us, of course, but one thing is perplexing. For women, they have their reproductive tools inside their body. Yet for men, there’s a male private part and testicles just hanging on out there. What is up with that random bit of human evolution?

The reason for testicles alone being outside the body, and even hanging down more when men are warmer, is pretty interesting. Sperm, the man’s useful tool to help create new life during sexual relations, dies when it gets too hot. The sperm actually dies at the normal body temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit but can survive at 93.2 degrees. Therefore, the testicles hanging down away from the body keep the sperm safe from death.

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29. We Have An Idea!!

Do you ever remember watching cartoons and when someone in the show had an idea, you’d see a random lightbulb above their head just go off? It is clearly wacky and quite funny but it’s actually not entirely as crazy as you might be thinking. While having ideas do not result in random lightbulbs going off, your brain can power one.

While awake, a human brain produces enough electricity to actually power a lightbulb. This energy production is hard to really show people, so scientists had to measure it out. By measuring the electrical movement in the brain and then connecting it to the amount it takes for a lightbulb to work, they found that humans can generate enough to power a 10-watt lightbulb.

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28. Your Adrenal Gland Makes You Blush

We all know that there are times in which we tend to be either embarrassed or caught off guard that we end up blushing. How does blushing actually happen and why? Essentially, when your body is caught off guard or you’re embarrassed, it sends a signal to your adrenal gland. Of course, this gland is responsible for adrenaline being released.

Your adrenaline releases often during your “fight or flight” response. Thus, it makes sense to see that this shock to the system would trigger adrenaline. Once adrenaline is released, it causes your blood vessels to dilate. This is called “vasodilation” and it happens to improve blood flow and oxygen delivery. Ultimately, this causes your face to go reddish or, well, “blush.”

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27. Your Stomach Lining Lives For A Very Short Time

It’s pretty clear by now that your stomach is a weird yet clearly important organ. It’s hard to know exactly how it operates sometimes as one person’s stomach is not always the same as another. However, everyone has the basics that work the same way. In this, you’ll find the stomach lining.

This is quite important for the stomach as the lining has glands that produce stomach acid and other very important compounds. The enzyme Pepsin is just one example of these compounds. This helps break down food and protects you from things like infection. In one of the coolest things major organs do, your stomach acid actually falls away and replaces itself every 3 to 5 days. Why? In order for your own stomach to not actually digest it!

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26. That’s A Lot Of Beats

Your heartbeat is obviously important to your overall health. It cannot stop beating or you’re clearly not going to be living much longer. An average day for a person consists of having the beat of your heart going as much as you need. Keep in mind, that not all people will need the same amount of heartbeats to live on a given day.

In one of the coolest things major organs do, your heart actually beats 100,000 times a day on average. It may not be the exact number everyone gets to in a 24-hour period, but you’ll likely get very close. Try to keep count for one minute to see how many times your heart will actually beat while at rest, then do it when you’re active. Factor this out to the average you get in an hour, then a day. You’ll likely get to a similar 100,000 number average most average out to.

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25. Well, We Need Some Air After This One

Your eyes are made up of a lot of important parts, with a key portion being the cornea. For those unaware, this is the part of your eyes that actually protect it from dirt, germs, and several other things. This protective outer layer of the eyes clearly presents itself as highly important based on what it can do.

However, the cornea is actually a major part of your eyes, which are technically organs for your body. The weirdest part is that despite being part of the human eye, it is the only body part we have that has no blood supply at all. Red blood cells go throughout the body to oxygenate it. Yet the cornea gets its oxygen directly from the air, thus, no blood supply is needed.

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24. Pregnancy On The Brain?

Pregnancy can be a beautiful thing for women, despite the end result clearly being quite a pain. While a lot goes on during a normal pregnancy, a brain issue tends to be quite common. Have you ever heard of “pregnancy brain?” This is a very real thing where a woman’s brain actually has a number of issues, such as inattention as well as forgetfulness, and mental fogginess.

Overall, this cognitive problem is not as problematic in all women but it seems to happen to every pregnant woman. This happens due to the mother growing another human inside her that is taking needed nutrients from her. These normal nutrients affect a person’s cognitive abilities, and a lack of them will affect us. This is where the mental issues come from. Hormones being crazy on top of it will only go on to make this even worse. After the baby pops out, the woman is back to normal.

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23. Cilia You Later

Our nose and lungs have something in common, they both use little hairs to protect us. In our nose, the little hairs called “cilia” help keep foreign particles out of us. These hairs will mix with mucus to form a barrier that will shield us from inhaling some horrible stuff while we’re out and about. The same occurs in the lungs where both mucus and cilia will help us out.

Removal of the cilia actually can affect us a great deal. Certain tribes forced people to remove all hair from their noses, which in the end resulted in the tribe having several diseases. Smokers burn out part of the cilia protecting their lungs too, which results in a smoker getting things like pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses more often than non-smokers.

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22. Sound Unseen?

Most people on planet Earth are blessed to be able to see and hear. Even if we need hearing aids or glasses to do it better, we at least have the gift of both senses. However, some people have special abilities. In one of the coolest things organs do, there are some people who have the special ability to see color in sound. You read that right, seeing color in sound.

The name for this is chromesthesia and it’s relatively rare, affecting 1 out of every 3,000 people. However, it has involved several prominent people in the world of fine arts like Billy Joel and Vincent Van Gogh, just to name a few. This condition also falls under Synesthesia, the linking of a person’s senses in an uncommon manner. It is not a sight or hearing thing, but rather, an amazing neurological condition.

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21. Ahhh! Brain Freeze!!

We all know what it feels like to have a brain freeze, right? We were all kids at one point in time and had our first one while liking eating ice cream or having a smoothie or slushie. It hurts for a minute or so because we’ve made everything too cold and now our head feels so weird. It’s really horrible.

Yet there are ways to stop it in its tracks and one way has to do with your tongue. In one of the most useful things major organs do that we love, your tongue is truly where brain freeze starts. The best way to stop it is by merely putting your tongue on the roof of your mouth, warming it up. The roof of your mouth also has a little kick to it that affects the sinuses, which is the main area the brain freeze affects. This kills two birds with one stone, essentially.

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20. It’s A Smelly Smell That Smells…Smelly

Our nose is extremely useful and helps us with a lot of different things. The way something smells can help dictate how you might operate with it. This happens often with food as well as other things. People who have a bad sense of smell may have an easier time working with smellier things or even smellier people.

However, the normal human nose can recognize up to 1 trillion different overall smells. Yet we can remember up to around 50,000 of those. This is likely due to smelling something more often. If you eat muffins all the time, you’ll know the smell they have versus something like a dead rat, for example. One is clearly going to be around you more or less, so it makes sense.

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19. Well, That’s A New One

For the longest time, science was uncertain if we needed to call the mesentery an organ. It’s especially hard to claim it’s a major organ, right? Not exactly. Major organs like this are massively important to the human body and we now know they play a much bigger role than originally assumed. You may be wondering, however, what is the mesentery?

This is a set of a contiguous set of tissues that actually attach the intestines to the abdomen, usually to the posterior abdominal wall. Interestingly, it is formed by the double fold of peritoneum. We now know that it helps in storing fat and aides blood vessels, lymphatics, and nerves to supply the intestines. The role it plays is now considered to be drastic.

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18. Taste Is Bigger Than You Thought

Taste buds are absolutely incredible. They help us, well, taste the things we put in our mouth. However, most assume that this is only handled by the tongue. In reality, several different parts of the body actually taste things essentially. You have an average of 2000 to 4000 overall taste buds. Funny enough, taste buds are actually considered organs by science.

We were shocked by this too! They’re all over the place from the tongue to the back of your throat, esophagus, and even your nose. Oh yes, your nose is very important to this and it actually is the first part of our body that tastes something. Our sense of smell is a drastic aid in our taste process overall. This is why airplane food does not always taste great, as sinuses are affected in the air, so your nose doesn’t smell like normal and it throws off the entire taste of food.

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17. Déjà Vu!

The term déjà vu is actually a French word that simply means “already seen.” It makes sense to just say what the term is rather than the term itself. However, it’s a fun word, right? Simply put, déjà vu is the feeling you get when you believe you experienced something already. Some even like to call it a case of precognition or a future vision, even though it isn’t.

Déjà Vu feels so real that it is truly hard to claim something did not really happen. The reason for this is merely a small brain ordeal that many people go through. The feeling of déjà vu is closely related to the issues that happen with temporal lobe epilepsy. Essentially, it’s an epileptic electrical discharge in the brain. Those with true epilepsy will experience stuff like this far more. They too will be completely defensive that something happened, when it didn’t.

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16. Quiet Down Kids, I Can’t See!

While it may seem weird, sound can actually play a role in how we see too. We evolved as humans to need both our hearing and eyesight to work in tandem a lot. In fact, when something is far away, many people actually look the direction they think it is in and try to make out what it is. Even though they’ll likely never see it.

Both loud and small noises can be distracting, which is why it might be hard to read or even perform surgery while noise is going on around you. Even small noises can make your eyes dilate. This causes your pupils to change focus and that blurs your vision, thus the sound affected your vision. Your brain went on auto, back to factory settings in this period to use your eyes to check out wherever that noise is coming from.

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15. Moms Are Amazing

It is quite clear your mother gave up a lot in order to bring you into this world. What she did was clearly impressive, not just carrying you for around nine months, but also pushing you out of her vagina. The human vagina is insanely complex and one of the most fascinating body parts in humans. While only one sex has it, they’re also the most well-equipped overall for it too.

One of the most commonly misunderstood things about the vagina is that women end up being loosened a lot down there after having kids. While it is true that the vaginal muscles are stretched out a lot to push a baby through, they actually heal up well. Around 6 months after the birth of the child, vaginal muscles go right back where they were before. At that point, like any muscle, the more you work it out, the better it’ll be.

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14. Eyesight Is The Best HD Ever!

We all know that televisions have gotten more and more impressive over the years. We went from black and white to color television, then from standard definition to high definition. Then, we saw TVs that reached 1080p and even Ultra HD. Today, the big love is behind 4K televisions with 8K TVs being released soon too.

Yet despite all of these advancements in technology, the most amazing high definition in the world is found in your own eyesight. The human eye is capable of seeing around 576 megapixels. To understand this, the professional-made Canon CMOS camera has a sensor that can capture 250-megapixel images, with a resolution of 19580×12600. This is the highest a camera has ever been able to go and your eyes more than double it!

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13. You Can Turn Into A Zombie When Starving…Sorta

One of the coolest things about the human body is its ability to adapt. We’ve evolved to literally adapt to our environments as a species. This is the reason we look the way we do and operate as we do. However, one thing major organs do is adapt to starvation in some weird ways. We all know that the body will eat fat in cases of starvation, right?

However, you may also become a zombie somewhat. We don’t mean in the horror movie side of things but it’s not far off. After your body has eaten itself from the inside, your organs will begin to go next. In the case of extreme starvation, your brain will actually begin to eat itself to satisfy the body’s hunger. The saddest part is that there is nothing you can do about it, outside of getting food into your body.

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12. We’re Very Similar To Snakes When It Comes To Our Skin

You may have been out and about in the woods or forest, perhaps in a desert-like area. All of a sudden, you came across what you thought was a snake except it was the skin the reptile shed and not the actual snake itself. After you gather yourself from nearly freaking out, you may find it to be odd that the snake shed its skin like that.

However, did you know humans did the same thing? While not as noticeable as snakes, our lovely organ known as our skin will actually shed and re-grow about every 27 days. Essentially, every month, you’re in a new skin technically. On a weirder note, around your home, you may see a lot of dust. About 70 to 80% of that dust is dead skin particles from our ever shedding skin. If that doesn’t make you want to clean, we don’t know what will!

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11. Hearing Is Better Than Eyesight, Technically

We are not going to just flat out say that you need to choose between seeing or hearing. Let’s be honest, both are so much better than just one. However, if you had to choose, which would you go with? Before you decide, you may want to know about one very key thing that hearing has over eyesight.

In one of the coolest things major organs can do that we found, scientists have concluded hearing has better recognition in speed than eyesight. Your ear will hear a sound and recognize it up to 10 times faster than the blink of a human eye. That said, yelling for someone is clearly better than just going to them. At least, that is our lazy 13-year-old ideology now having some credibility in science, finally!

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10. Third Eye-Lid, Not Blind

One of the weirdest things you were likely not taught in science class was about the human’s third eyelid. Mostly, we know of just two really. However, there is a third known as the nictitating membrane. This is a translucent eyelid that goes across the eye to help protect it and even moisten it while still allowing you to see.

While this membrane is more pronounced in reptiles, birds, and even sharks…most mammals do not really have much use for it. We have a small, vestigial portion of this still remaining that can be found in the corner of our eyes. We evolved over the centuries to not need this for our eyes the way reptiles and birds do. However, it’s still there and though it does not really do as much as it used to, it is still a useful asset to protecting our eyes.

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9. The Kidneys Adapt Incredibly Well

Most humans are born with two kidneys from birth. Many people may donate one to help save someone or they might have to remove it for another reason. Meanwhile, some are simply born without one of their kidneys. Whatever the reason for the solo kidney, they are incredible at adaptors.

If you have a solo kidney due to donation, the one remaining will adapt to do the job of both kidneys. However, if you were born with just one, the solo kidney will do the same thing. It’ll even grow to near the size of two kidneys and weigh the size of two as well. This happens, of course, due to the body growing as we get up in age. The fact that it grows to near the size of two normal kidneys just goes to show you the amazing things major organs can do when adapting to something.

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8. Stuff In Your Stomach Can Rip Through Metal

In our stomach, we have to digest the things we put in it. We are capable of doing this because of something known as stomach acid. This acid is incredibly efficient and has the capability to do much more than you might assume. While it is hard to get stomach acid outside of the body to see how impressive it is…we have been able to measure it well.

When studying how tremendous it was, we were able to find out that stomach acid can actually dissolve right through metal objects. In fact, if this acid touched your skin, it would actually burn right through it. Yet somehow, we’re able to have this stuff inside of our bodies. How amazing is that?

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7. Your Brain Knows How Important It Is

The human brain realizes how important a role it plays to the overall body. If you think about it, most things go through this area anyway. The way we feel, how we move, what we say and how we say it, and much more. All of it, in the end, happens because the brain allowed it to or forced it.

That said, when you eat and drink things, your brain uses up most of this. Your brain truly uses up a lot of calories in order to properly operate. No matter how much you eat or drink of something, the brain will take up to 20% of it. This means the brain takes up more nutrients from food and drink than any single organ in the body.

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6. Music Is Good For The Heart

They say when you do CPR to save a person’s life, you need to do it to the beat of Stayin Alive by the Bee Gees. This is compelling for a few different reasons. The first is, well, the obvious connection to “staying alive” during CPR but also that we use a song to manage this. Music makes humans do a lot of compelling things.

One of the most interesting things major organs can do is connect to music in their function but no other organ does this like the human heart. In fact, our hearts will actually change the pattern of their beat to sync up with the rhythm of the song you’re listening to at the time. Go ahead and put on a cool song you love and check your heartbeat about 1 minute in, you’ll notice the beats line up pretty well.

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5. The Diving Reflex

Have you ever wondered why your body feels or functions differently in the water as opposed to being outside of it? It’s true that when you’re in the water, the body works differently. The question is, why does it do this, and truly how? You may not feel different in the bathtub or shower, so why is the function different in a pool or at a lake, river, or ocean?

One of the most efficient things major organs do is something that we evolved to actually manage. The body has something scientists call the “diving reflex.” This reflex shuts down bodily functions when you’re submerged in water. This is happening in an effort to prevent drowning and it has been quite useful to us for thousands of years.

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4. Goosebumps Are Present For One Cool Reason

You know how when you get scared or find something to be amazing you’ll experience goosebumps? They usually pop up on your arms more than anywhere else. We at times will have different feelings that result in our body reacting this way, which leads to goosebumps coming about. However, when researching into things major organs do that we weren’t aware of, we came across the reason goosebumps exist.

Since skin is an organ, we found goosebumps to be compelling for human skin to experience. Our early ancestors had them to help battle the cold for their skin. During that time, they had far more hair on their body and the goosebumps would formulate the hair to a proper spot on their bodies to warm them up. This is a similar reason you might get something known as “chill bumps” on your arms when you’re cold too.

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3. The Liver Can Come Back From The Dead

The human liver is one of the most unique organs we have. While we can live without part of it, one of the coolest things about it is that it does so much for us. The liver performs a little over 500 functions for the human body, so its importance of it cannot possibly be overlooked. It seems something out there knew how important the liver would be for humanity.

Thus, we were given an amazing organ. The liver stores glucose, as well as creates bile, detoxifies the blood, produces antibodies, recycles hormones, and so much more. On top of this, it has the ability to grow back almost completely. That’s right, your liver can actually regenerate if part of it is damaged or removed. There are a lot of things major organs can do for the body, but no other organ can regenerate.

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2. Your Appendix Actually Does Something Incredibly Useful

For centuries, when it came to the appendix, we always thought it was useless to us. In fact, the appendix burst in people and ended up killing them as a result of the poison released into the body. For an organ to be useless yet possibly dangerous to us made most wonder why we never evolved to just not have it. Every organ plays a huge part in the body’s function, so why did we have this thing?

In just the last decade, we were able to find out. The appendix actually helps in the immune system, however, its most important role is the storing of good bacteria. This good bacteria helps to maintain proper gut flora, which is needed heavily for the efficient digesting of food. As mentioned above, proper gut flora also offers better moods. Your appendix helps more than you thought, huh?

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1. Your Major Organs Can Do So Much, You Don’t Always Need Them

It may seem kind of weird to believe but your organs are so incredible that you do not actually need them all to technically live. It might be problematic health-wise eventually, but it is possible. We know you can live without one kidney, without part of your liver, without part of your intestines, without a lot of your stomach, without your testicles/ovaries, and so much more.

The rest of the body can make up for the lost parts by merely adapting to the loss. They are all so amazing that losing large chunks of some or others completely just won’t matter. It’s like having a team of the best players in one sport on the same team. All are great to have but you could lose a few and still be successful as a team. Your body is literally made up of a dream team of organs.

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