Lots of things that ultimately come down to hyper-mobility (thanks Ehlers-Danlos!), including:
- Lick my elbow
- Pull my shoulder visibly out of socket (not painful at all, and happens if I carry something heavy if I’m not careful)
- Pop my hip out of socket while standing (sometimes painful, always somewhat unpleasant, so I’ve had to learn how to not do it)
- Hold my hands behind my back and pull them to my front
- Rotate my arm >360°
- Bend my thumb to my forearm
I have a few that some others in the thread have already mentioned, but I can also:
- wiggle most of my scalp back and forth
- retract the middle of the tip of my tongue so when I stick it out, it looks like an ass
- stop peeing mid-stream. Maybe this is perfectly common, but people talk about not being able to just stop, or at least not for longer than a few seconds.
I can fit the majority of my little finger up my nostrils. My nose might be slightly larger than normal and my hands are about normal. It just fits up there with a little twist.
The best way I can describe it is I can make the nerves on the back of my neck, upper back, and shoulders feel sensitive at will.
I can hammer a 4" nail into my head. I’m very fire resistant and eat fire. I have a split tongue. I can keep my eyes open for a VERY long time.
Are you a demon and who summoned you
Yes
I can flex some muscle in my head that causes a roaring sound in my ears. Not sure what that’s for.
I get mine to make a clicking sound. Audible to someone else if they stick their ear next to mine.
Same here. Someone else in the thread said that’s your tensor tympani muscle.
Is it the same muscle that lets you wiggle your ears? Because I can do that, and I get a similar roaring.
My ears don’t seem to move when I do that.
I can rotate one finger at one direction and the other on the opposite direction while pointing one to another, simultaneously. I don’t know how uncommon it is but, back at high school, no one else in my class could do it. Totally unuseful skill.
My fingers don’t rotate unless you count wrist involvement, so I’m a little confused by what you’re describing.
Something like this. Sorry for the poor image. The wrists can move too, I think it doesn’t change much.
If I’m understanding your description correctly (the image didn’t come through), I can do this too! I heard once as a kid it was impossible and I refused to accept that, so I practiced until I could do it.
Rephrasing to see if we’re talking about the same thing: I can point my fingers towards each other in front of me, then circle one hand way from myself and the other towards myself, and continue looping them in opposite directions. Most people can do it for 1-2 loops, but then end up moving both fingers in the same direction.
I believe we’re talking about the same thing. Welcome to the club!
Neat! I just tried it and it’s hard (harder one way than the other, for some reason), but doable.
Exist.
Psssshhhhhh, look at this guy, existing! Not like the rest of us simulated humans! Buy ovaltine! Just sitting around in society. Pretending to exist, so we can slip subtle advertising into daily conversations. Buy ovaltime! Bet you didn’t realize that we’re all in the matrix, and your entire purpose for existance is to be made to be miserable. Currency is worthless outside the matrix. We’re only doing this to make all in the matrix suffer!!!
Mwahahahaha!!! Thats my evil laugh! Do you like it?
Fall asleep standing
The trick is to wake up standing, as well.
Yeah that part is a bit shaky
I can twitch my eyeballs left and right really fast, and not just a little bit - but most of the way.
Completely grosses people out when I do it.
This is called Voluntary Nystagmus.
Neat! Thanks for the name/info.
I’m the only person I’ve ever met who can do this. It’s apparently somewhat more common than I thought.
I’m an old man, but I still do it specifically to my sister because she cannot stand it. /sibling rivalry lives on
Ey wobbly eye gang here
Samesies! But it makes me feel like I need to sneeze.
There used to be a subreddit for us. It was called /r/eyeshakers.
By the way, the scientific name for the eye shake thing, IIRC, is nystagmus.
I think we have the same talent. Does it look like your eyes are vibrating?
I don’t know because I can’t see a thing when I do it ;)
Edit: I suppose I should make a video of myself - just never have. Sounds like I’ve got plans for the evening :)
Oh…then maybe we have different talents. I can see the whole world having an earthquake when I do it.
I just remembered this, I can open my eyelids and look in a direction where only the whites of my eyes are visible. Apparently it’s very creepy
Do you roll them up or down?
I think upwards, kinda hard to tell though
Oh hey, I can do that too!
I can hum and whistle at the same time. Makes me sound kinda like a Theremin
Lol I just tried that to see how it works.
It’s hard because if you close your lips too much to whistle it restricts the airflow and kills the hum.
Hmm I can hum independent of my lips 🤔
I love doing this because it sounds like you’re charging a laser weapon
Ah yes, multiphonics.
Same! I liken it to a knock off version of Mongolian Throat singing.
I can rumble my eardrums. Mostly useless unless i wanna block out some annoying sound but i can only do it for like a minute at a time.
Yep. I can rumble, and I can click.
Gee, I can do this too! I’ve tried explaining it to others before but only one person ever got it
I think I have the same thing. Is yours also kinda connected to blinking? I can do it without blinking, but closing my eyes at the same moment as rumbling the eardrums feels easier and more natural than rumbling with eyes open.
I can do it without closing my eyes but when i was younger, I remember closing my eyes or scrunching my face made it easier to do. If you can wiggle your ears without lifting your eyebrows, it kind of feels like its the same muscle group that causes the rumbles. The rumbling sounds like white noise inside my head. Its caused by constricting Tensor Tympani muscle in the ear voluntarily. From Wikipedia:
Some individuals can voluntarily produce this rumbling sound by contracting the muscle. According to the National Institute of Health, “voluntary control of the tensor tympani muscle is an extremely rare event”,[5] where “rare” seems to refer more to the scarcity of test subjects and/or studies more than the percentage of the general population who have voluntary control. The rumbling sound can also be heard when the neck or jaw muscles are highly tensed as when yawning deeply. This phenomenon has been known since (at least) 1884.[6]
TIL; I always thought it was temporarily spiking your blood pressure that made that rumble. Now I’m no longer scared to do it
Mine feels more connected to my jaw, I kind of tense my jaw right near the joint to activate the rumbling.
I can also ear rumble, it is not tied to my blinking at all, but if I vibrate my eyes while my ears are rumbling they both move at the same ~60hz frequency.
Same. I hold my eyes shut and I can activate it. I like to think of it as my automatic ear-cleaning mode.
Mine is connected to blinking, but it doesn’t always work.
I do this thing where I pop my ears (like when pressure changes from altitude) and then it’s like I’m hearing my breathing inside of my sinuses or something. When I breathe this way, it effectively blocks conversations I don’t want to overhear. Do other people do this, or am I odd?
I can do this! I forget the name for it but I can rumble my ears, and then I can also ‘pop’ them if I go a little further. I’m so grateful for it if I ever go through a pressure change, I can’t imagine how people cope without being able to do it.
Wait a minute. If I hold my jaw right, I do get a very short rumbling apart from my breath. Is that what you guys mean?
Sounds about right. I would connect this action to my jaw, not anything with my eyes like some others have said. When you say short, do you mean the sound doesn’t last very long? I can keep it going more or less as long as I want.
As long as I tense my jaw, I guess, but it’s kinda awkward for me. I kinda have to pop my jaw down and hold it. I feel I’m making a silly face when I do it, so I’m not holding it long.
I guess there’s multiple ways to hit it. I feel it in my jaw but it’s the same process as wiggling my ears (though I don’t have to do that at the same time if I don’t want to).
I can do this. If I’m in a really quiet area, I like to take in a deeper breath and then exhale as slowly as possible while doing it, which then allows me to hear my heartbeat. Super nifty.
I can also use my soft pallet to block airflow from my throat to my nose. Can you do that too?
I can’t block my nose in that way. I tried when your comment came in, but I can’t conceive of how to do it.
With the ear popping thing, I just hear the rushing of my breath. I can see how you might be able to hear your heart. I might be making this up in my head, but I feel like maybe I could hear it when I was younger.
The trick is that while you hold your ears ‘open’, you have your lungs try to not breath out but you don’t close your mouth. This lets the heart beating against your lungs be what pushes air in and out and then you hear the sounds of the air pulses as it moves past your eustachian tubes in your throat. Making sure your lungs are as full as possible is required so the lungs push against the heart.
Came here looking for the tensor tympani rumble cause I know it well; not sure what your thing is! If I notice sounds going quiet on a flight I’ll pinch the nostrils shut and make an exhalation effort till I hear a pop in each ear, then sounds are normal. Almost like the reverse of yours.
Not OP, but mine’s not connected to blinking.
Mine is activated by blinking hard.
I can move my fingertip joints without moving the rest of my finger.
You know that feeling you get when you listen to really awesome music and your hair stands on end and your skin has like an electric tingle all the way up and down? I can do that feeling at will. It’s called ‘voluntary frisson’, normally an autonomic response. Makes music a real.trip.
I can do this too.
It’s fun to watch people freak out when one can raise his body hair up on command. And since I have an abundance of body hair, the effect is pretty profound.
I think that’s the weirdest one I’ve seen yet
