Man kind has always been obsessed with exploration. Whether it be chartering unknown lands, or pushing the limits of science, the need to constantly discover the undiscovered is almost ingrained into our nature. So far, we’ve done pretty well and science continues to impress.
One would think then, that considering our own bodies our literally right under our noses (making them prime subjects for scientific exploration), the guys in white coats would be close to having an explanation for pretty much every bodily function that goes down.

Nope! It would seem that the natural plains, mountains, canyons and valleys that make up the human body are still baffling even the most weathered of explorers. There are many unexplained phenomenon’s out there for sure, but to get you started here are 5 common bodily functions that scientists can still only offer theories without a solid explanation.

1) Nose picking

Bad habits are a common thing and no person can deny that they are perfect and habit free. Some are performed because they feel good, some because your body has become addicted to them, or some for no real reason whatsoever.

While we may be pushing it to class picking your nose as a common bodily function, you’d be lying if you said you never did it. Definitely one of the more embarrassing things to be caught doing, picking ones nose in generally frowned upon in most societies yet the statistics show that a shocking amount of people enjoy a good nasal exploration.
Existing studies found that when adults were asked directly, only a small number would confess to ever picking their noses but through surveys, it was reported that 70-90% had picked their nose at least once. What’s more, roughly 10% admitted to regularly practicing the act of mucophagy – that’s picking your nose and consuming your nasal discoveries to most of us.

So, we’ve established we all (probably) do it, but why? No particular reason. Our nasal passages are usually kept at a nice humid level so mucus passes down the back of the throat and unwanted particles are disposed of that way.
However, near the entrance of the nostrils, things dry up and dried nasal secretions (boogers) can become irritating and suddenly your fingers up your nose and you’ve self pruned before you know it.

In fact, picking your nose with your fingers actually increases your chance of getting sick as germs picked up via your fingers are passed directly into the nasal passage and into your system and suddenly, you’ve got a cold. What’s more, considering snot has no nutritional value whatsoever, there really is no explanation for why some people choose to sample it on a regular basis.

2) Laughter

We already know how good laughing can make us feel and the benefits of the natural endorphin high we experience after a good chuckle but it is still unknown as to exactly why we laugh. However, what we do know is that every society laughs and you could even say that laughter is the one universal language we all share.

All of us are born with the capacity to laugh but humans aren’t even the only species to share a giggle. Primates will produce a panting sound when tickled or playing games with their peers and many other animals, even rodents, will also produce sounds during play.

This observation has lead some to theorise that by laughing, we are communicating our playful intent and we therefore laugh to form social bonds and strengthen existing ties between individuals. This is supported by the fact that we rarely laugh when we are alone (people tend to talk to themselves more than they laugh with themselves) and one researcher discovered that even the effects of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) are considerably weakened when only single individuals were tested with the stuff.

From an evolutionary perspective, it is thought that the first human laughter as we know it today may have occurred to gesture the relief of passing danger. Humans, like all animals, have a flight or fight reflex and back then, we would have had many reasons to flee. Our ancestors would have been in an almost constant pent up adrenaline fuelled state, ready to act at any second, so the dopamine secretion that laughter brings about would have relaxed this heightened state of awareness and enabled the group to mellow out round the fire once again.

Studies have found that the dominant individual of social groups today use humour more than the subordinates of a group. For example, have you ever laughed just because your boss/friend/tribal chief was laughing? This is because it is thought that laughter could have originally evolved to alter the behaviour of others. This could have benefited our cave dwelling relatives as laughter would have indicated that the group was in a relaxed state thereby deflecting and reducing any anger or threat in a rival, thereby lessening the risk of confrontation.

Laughter is not necessarily about humour or what made you laugh, it’s about relationships. Our brain decides when we do it and as a result you can often find yourself laughing in the most bizarre situations. We are social beings and so it makes sense that laughter is a sort of social glue. Whatever the reason for it, it doesn’t really mater. Laughing is fantastic, enough said.

3) Kissing

Us humans like to kiss and we are the only species to do it to the extent that we do. Whether it’s a thank you, a greeting or a passion fuelled act saved for that special someone, different cultures kiss in different ways, for different reasons and some don’t even kiss at all.
Philematologists are scientists who study kissing (yes, it’s a real field of academics) and they’ve been trying to discover the scientific reason as to why we regularly lock lips with each other but only theories have come about so far.

The most prominent being that; like many other forms of social interaction (hugging, comforting etc), kissing originated as an act performed during infancy when our hairier cousins would pass chewed food via their mouths to their infants – a natural food processor if you will.
This mouth to mouth food transfer could have easily then continued into adulthood to strengthen social bonds or as a unique gesture for loved ones.
But seeing as this form of bonding continued even when it was no longer necessary for survival, and has transformed into something much more intimate these days, there must be other reasons behind it.

Researchers now speculate that kissing enables us to get close enough to each other to assess some vital information. Many animal species communicate via chemical signals known as pheromones and use these to pass on various messages ranging from directions to a food source, to a readiness to mate. It is often speculated as to how much humans rely on pheromone communication, if at all, but studies involving such phenomena have shown fascinating results.

Claus Wedekind conducted the first study of its kind when he gathered the t-shirts worn by 40 men for 2 days and proceeded to ask women to have a good sniff of each shirt (lucky ladies) and indicate which ones smelled the best to them. Wedekind then compared the DNA of both the women and men and found that the scents the women had chosen weren’t random at all but that the women actually preferred the smell of the men whose major histocompatibility complex (MHC) differed from their own.

The MHC is made up of various genes involved in our immune system and its importance in mate selection has long been studied in mice where it can make a huge difference in the production of stronger, more disease resistant offspring. Further studies on mate preference showed that women also preferred scents of a similar MHC profile to their fathers (Freud, the man gets everywhere). So women not only wanted a mate with differing genes, they didn’t want to rule out the existing stronger genes either.

So you see, if you experience a bad kiss it might literally be down to bad chemistry and this in turn, could prevent any more time being wasted on courting an inappropriate mate.
Men bring something to the table too and researchers have discovered that they can pass on testosterone found in their saliva to their partner which primes their bodies for procreation. Dopamine and oxytocin are the feel good chemicals we love and these are also released when kissing helping to promote social bonding.

However, if it is a by-product of evolution, it’s estimated that around 10% of the population does not kiss – at all. So kissing could be part of our cultural backgrounds as much as part of our primal desires.

4) Blushing

Blushing is unique in that it is one of the few bodily phenomena that only occur in humans. You might think that we’d know why it happens then but while we have learnt the physiology of it, the psychology behind it still remains unknown.

Blushing is a completely involuntary response that usually accompanies the feeling of embarrassment and probably played a pretty big role in significantly worsening your teenage years. During a blush, your body experiences a rush of adrenaline (similar to the processes that are part of the flight or fight response) which causes your blood vessels to dilate to allow for more oxygen delivery.
However, in a normal flight or fight response, veins in general are not normally affected, especially not in the face. This dilation of the veins in your face only occurs when a signal from the chemical transmitter adenylyl cyclase is released and lets the affects of the adrenaline take hold. The result of all this is a red face, maybe an uncomfortable tingling sensation and that sudden jolt you may have experienced in a particularly embarrassing situation.

Of course alcohol and certain states of exhaustion or arousal can cause a reddened face too but an adrenaline fuelled blush only occurs when you are subject to feelings revolving around embarrassment or shame.

So the big question, why would our bodies evolve to produce a physical response that completely betrays our attempts to cover up an embarrassing situation?
A psychologist in the UK, Ray Crozier, asked this and concluded that blushing must have evolved as a way of enforcing the social codes that groups have to stick to so the group can continue to function without conflict. Blushing enables others around us to witness our recognition for a social misstep and gain their empathy or forgiveness as a result.
To be able to feel embarrassed in the first place, you have to be aware of how others are feeling and we learn this social ability at an early age. Psychologists have studied this form of social intelligence and report that blushing due to embarrassment develops alongside our empathic abilities. This supports the notion that blushing is purely for social interaction.

Other animals have come up with their own apologetic responses and many will expose their vulnerability (ever had your dog show you its belly after he’s left you a little present on the floor?) so as to gain the offended parties forgiveness rather than anger them further. Blushing could therefore be our way of showing contrition for the breaking of social rules.

However, what about the times we blush just from simply being the centre of attention or talking to a teenage crush? Why would we need to show regret in these sorts of situations? It could just be down to the fact that blushing tends to occur when we are in a heightened state of self-awareness and as we all react differently to receiving attention, this just depends on how sensitive we are to the opinion of others and our own perception of a situation.

5) Dreaming

Possibly the most studied, yet unexplained bodily function, dreaming has been examined by just about every psychologist out there and while there are many, many theories, we still don’t know the actual purpose of dreaming.

Probably the most famous of the dream theories is good ol’ Freud’s Psychoanalytic Dream Theory which suggests our dreams are a representation of our unconscious thoughts and desires. Manifest content is made up of the images and scenery of your dream whereas the latent content is what goes down and supposedly represents the hidden meanings of the dream. So during the day, we have to suppress our natural aggressive and sexual drives which constantly threaten to bubble over the surface, but during the night our consciousness lets its guard down so our repressed desires let loose and party the night away.
However, there just isn’t enough research to support this one and Freud hasn’t exactly been the most reliable source in the past.

Dreams tend to only occur in REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep and humans are not the only animals to experience this kind of sleep. In fact, the platypus has more hours of REM sleep than any other mammal, including ourselves (who knew!). So, from an evolutionary perspective, if dreaming and REM sleep are still prevalent today, they must fulfil some sort of biological purpose. Enter the Threat-simulation theory.

Presented by Antti Revonsuo in 2000, this theory claims that as dreams usually tend to revolve around negative feelings (abandonment, threats, anxiety), dreaming would have helped prepare our ancestors recognise and avoid real-life danger by giving them a taste for it in their sleep. Those that were prepared for threatening situations would survive, thus dreaming survived the evolutionary process.
In today’s world, we don’t have the same environmental threats as we did back then, so this could explain why our dreams consist of much more threatening (and bizarre) situations than those we experience in real life as our brains are still trying to stimulate anxieties to better prepare us for any encounter that could occur.

Other theories revolve around the purpose of REM sleep and a basic explanation could just be that as we sleep, our brains are trying to organise our memories – strengthening positive connections and disposing of the weak ones. Even in sleep, our brains are just as active as they are during the day so our conscious brain is able to detect these memories and still thinks it needs to make sense of it all by piecing the random information together. This helps to explain the bizarre way that dreams can jump from one completely unrelated scene to another.
As REM sleep is experienced the most during infanthood, this strengthens the idea that it is needed to help the brain process new skills and information learnt during the day. In fact, depriving animals of REM sleep in previous studies has lead to a significant deterioration of physiological functioning and memory retention of the animal in question.

Other theorists simply believe that dreams serve no natural purpose whatsoever and that they are an evolutionary epiphenomena. In other words, sleeping and thinking are our primary functions and dreaming just hitched a free ride in the process.
Whatever the reason behind dreams, they will no doubt continue to fascinate us for many years to come. Dreams are unique to each individual and we’ll never know what another is experiencing, so maybe science should really just call it a day where dreams are concerned and let people make up their own reasons for their own dreams.

Our bodies are fascinating things and it’s clear that many a mystery still remains. While the unexplained may haunt some scientists in their sleep, most of us have been doing fine without an explanation thus far so maybe we should just stop thinking so much and accept our bodies for the scientific phenomenon that we all are. Yeah, it may be a lazy solution, but playing host to an array of unexplained mysteries may be the one cool thing us humans have got going, so just embrace it!

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