10 things that are (almost) impossible to do with your body
 

There are things that you think you should be able to do with your body. But if you’re like 99.9999% of people in the world, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t quite manage to do it.
Here is a list of things that are impossible to do with your body, and the few mutants who can do ‘em:

10. Raise One Eyebrow


I can raise both of my eyebrows in bewilderment on how some people can raise just one. In fact, I know only one person in my life who can do this: my mother-in-law, who said that her ability just came to her during the pain of childbirth – and that this superpower was very useful in raising kids. Well, her and of course Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock: "Fascinating, Captain"), Sean Connery, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Stephen Colbert.
Some people call this the eyebrow ****, and it is known as the universal sign of O RLY … I mean, skepticism. The ability to raising eyebrows may be an evolutionary trait: baboons, mandrills and cebus monkeys raise their eyebrows as a threat gesture. (Source: David Givens / Center for Nonverbal Studies).
For all of you who want to do this (and yes, geeks who want to imitate Mr. Spock: I’m talkin’ to you), it turns out that you can learn to raise one eyebrow. Here’s the trick, according to wikiHow:

1. Start by keeping one eyebrow down with one hand and holding one up with the other. Keep practicing this in the mirror so you can
detect the correct muscle movement to obtain one eyebrow up.
2. Once you are familiar with this and can do it quite well, try it with out using your hands.
3. Practice this in the mirror intil you get it just right
4. Scare and thrill people with your new talent!

Didn’t work for you? Try the methods in this Ask MetaFilter thread or this Yahoo! Answer.

9. Lick Your Elbow


I once read a trivia that said it’s impossible to lick your own elbow. And that 75% of the people told this immediately tried to lick their elbows.
Well! It’s obviously not so impossible for some people. Supposedly, Guinness World Records get about 5 claims a day from people who think that they are special just because they can lick their elbows (Source).

8. Gleeking


Okay, it is kind of gross but it’s fascinating. Nothing to do with loving a TV series about singing high school kids, Gleeking (or gleeting / glicking) is like spitting – but not quite: the term means projecting saliva from the submandibular gland upon compression by the tongue.
Interestingly, the word gleek appears in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where a character named Bottom says "Nay, I can gleek upon occasion." (The Bard meant it as "joke," though, not spit like a camel)

7. Twitch Your Nose


Y’know, twitch your nose like the witch Samantha Stephens of Bewitched.
Elizabeth Montgomery, the actress that played Samantha, actually got sick and tired of being asked to twitch her nose by her fans that she refused to do it after the series was over.
They should bring back Bewitched. I missed that show.

6. Wiggle Your Ear


Your cat can do it. And so can the hippo and Jeff Goldblum. But only few other people in the world can wiggle their ears. It turned out that in 2006, scientists determined exactly why most people couldn’t wiggle their own ears:

"The mechanism behind ear movements is sophisticated," says Bastiaan ter Meulen, who led the ear wiggling study, accepted for publication in the journal Clinical Neurophysiology.
Unlike other facial muscles, ear muscles have their own accessory nucleus, a control area for muscle function, in the brainstem, says ter Meulen, a researcher at Erasmus MC, a university medical centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
"Compared to animals, especially bats and cats, this nucleus is rather small in humans," he says. (Source)

But fear not, non-ear wiggling people! You can train yourself to do it. WikiHow explains:

Isolate your ear-wiggling muscles. You may be able to wiggle your ears, but it won’t be that impressive if you have to raise your eyebrows or look awfully surprised every time. You may not be able to move your ears without moving your scalp, but you should be able to learn to move them without moving your eyebrows. Practice wiggling your ears without moving any other parts of your face.

5. Touch Your Nose or Chin With Your Tongue


I betcha Gene Simmons of the rock band KISS could do both easily, but most people can’t touch the tip of their nose or their chin with their tongue. Rumor was Gene had a cow’s tongue grafted onto his own. But Snopes, ever the party pooper, set the record straight:

But, as Simmons wrote in his autobiography, his unusual tongue was indeed the work of Mother Nature alone, a feature whose distinctiveness (and value) he first realized in his early teens:
I was oblivious, for the first thirteen years of my life, that I was endowed with a large oral appendage, my superlong tongue. It really was longer than everyone else’s, and I was soon to find out that having a long tongue came in handy with the girls.

4. Strange Tongue Tricks

While we’re still on the subject of tongues, there are a few tricks that most people can’t do (just don’t get a tongue cramp trying to do all these, mmkay?):
3. Sneeze with Your Eyes Open

Nope, you can’t sneeze with your eyes open (well, without forcing ‘em open with your hands, anyhow). Why? Because when you sneeze, the "sneeze center" in the brain "sends coordinated motor impulses along nerves controlling muscles of the abdomen, chest, diaphragm, neck, face, eyelids and various sphincters, as well as the mucus glands and blood vessels of the nose. All this happens automatically." (Source) You can’t help it.
Now, if you did force open your eyes, would your eyeballs pop out when you sneeze? Adam Savage of The Mythbuster risked his eyes doing the experiment:

2. Tickle Yourself

We all have a ticklish spot or two, which are never a secret from the ones we love. Gentle tickling is fun – so one can be tempted to "auto-tickle" to amuse oneself. But alas, you can’t tickle yourself, and scientists actually know why.
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London explains:

The answer lies at the back of the brain in an area called the cerebellum, which is involved in monitoring movements. Our studies at University College London have shown that the cerebellum can predict sensations when your own movement causes them but not when someone else does. When you try to tickle yourself, the cerebellum predicts the sensation and this prediction is used to cancel the response of other brain areas to the tickle. (Source)

1. Draw The Number Six While Making Clockwise Circles With Your Leg

Think you can multitask? Try this: while sitting on a chair, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. Then, while doing that, draw the number 6 with your right hand. You can’t help it: your foot will change direction.
Similarly: move your right leg in anti-clockwise circles and simultaneously draw the number 8 with your right hand.
Another tricky thing to do: simultaneously rotate the index fingers of both hands clockwise. Do it slowly at first, but then pick up speed. Try to go faster and faster, and pretty soon your two fingers will be going in opposite directions!


LINK

I can do no. 10 and no. 6. I'm a slight freak then lol.

I can't do any of them.
I'm boring :P

I can gleek accidentally sometimes. My brother can do it on command, though. So weird..

I can wiggle my ears, lick my chin and raise one eyebrow.
All at the same time.

Oh heck, I'm attractive.

yes you are Marie *hugs*
You also have some things to show off next time we meet.

I believe I can 'Draw' circles in the air clockwise with my right ankle while writing a 6 in the air with my right hand. I can't do it with the number 8 though, my foot wants to change direction.

I can do odd things with my tongue too, I used to be able to flip it but I can only roll it now. :(

I can wiggle ears and raise one brow. Not at the same time however.

I can 'gleek' accidentally.

Is it terrible when I watched those youtube vids of tongue contortionists I thought, well I guess they could give good oral sex... Hm.

I can raise my eyebrow (only my left one - but I am not determined to learn to raise the right one!), gleek on demand (I ****ing love being able to do that! But awkwardly (and this is going to sound so attractive), I gleeked involuntarily when I tried to touch my tongue to my nose lol. Horrible), wiggle my ears (only both at the same time, and my scalp moves a little), touch my chin with my tongue, do a few tongue tricks like the roll, the wave, the bath and the flippy one, but not the smiley face which is a shame haha) and I can do the number 6 thing and draw spirals clockwise with both hands.

I'm a little concerned, I'm a bit of a freak.

edit: just clicked the link... I can also put my fist in my mouth and do the ring finger thing a teeny tiny bit, but it really ****ing hurts!

I can do number 5 :)

i can do 10 and 5

I can raise one eyebrow and i can also do some of the tongue tricks... My little brother and sister and touch their tongues to their chin and nose, ik this cuz I yell at them all the time for using their tongues for tissues (ew).

I can do 10 and 1. And I knew someone who could wiggle their ears. That was weird.

10 surely isn't (almost) impossible? Nearly everybody I know can do that. Similarly, most ticklish people I know can tickle themselves - it's why I struggle so much when I have an itchy foot, because I actually can't itch it without tickling myself. And the twitchy nose thing.

... I'd say this is more of a list of '10 things that (with quite a few exceptions) not many people can do'. Sorry to spoil your list, Adam :P

i can wiggle my ears , raise one eyebrow, twich my nose, and tickle myself! hahaha its actually really bad how ticklish i am i cant even walk barefoot on sand because it tickles my feet

I can twitch my nose. My brother can lick his chin and nose.

I can lick my chin, gleek on command, and tickle myself. I'm going to try the last one on the list now.

._. You could always include that detail in one of those dating adverts. "Seeking tongue contortionist, if you know what I mean."

And I can do number 1, too.

Oh! And I can do everything the girl in the second video did with her tongue. *nods* The first girl just scared me.

I can't do any of those things.

I can touch my nose And my chin with my tongue. *proud*

I can raise both eyebrows independantly. I actually find it rather odd that most people can't do this...
I can gleek, wiggle my nose and my ears! Although I can only wiggle either both ears at the same time or just my right one,
for some reason my left one simply refuses to do it on its own... Oh and I know it isn't on the list, but I can move my second to biggest toe on its own!
Its pretty difficult though, I can only just about twitch it.
Yay I'm special :D

I can touch my nose with my tongue...and before I got my tongue pierced I could make a 'W' with it.

I totally failed at the last one lol, I keep trying and my leg just keeps changing direction *humph*

I could naturally raise my right eyebrow(I'm naturally very skeptical) and taught myself the left for some reason. I can lick my nose and definately tickle myself.

i can do the feet and finger things, tickle myself and raise one eyebrow.. oh and apparently i can touch my chin with my tongue. and the bottom of my nose...if that counts :P
i can also do that weird thing where you shake your eyeballs. not many people can do that apparently :)

I can't do any of these

I can wiggle my ears!

Hehehehe.. I taught myself to do the one-eyebrow-raise using that exact method as I was a teen. Can still do it now :D

Also, regarding the drawing a number 6 thing... I'm left handed and I can draw a 6 fine whilst moving my right leg clockwise.. but if I try and do it with my right hand it doesn't work. Well odd!

this isn't on the list but its odd so I thought I would share. When I write with my left hand I can write mirror image from right to left side of the page and the printing is neater then when I write with my right hand left to right with letters correct way around...

my friend can do 4 and 5, very strange to watch... a wasted talent!

Nope I thought this too :blush:
I can't do any of them.
My sister can do this eyebrow one though.
Marie - that sounds amazing!

I can raise one eyebrow. As a young WWF fan in the late 90's, I devoted endless hours to training myself to do it. Why? Because of The Rock.

Also, it is possible to tickle yourself on one part of your body - the roof of your mouth. Try licking it very softly.

I can raise just one eyebrow - the left ne is easier, but I can do it with the right one too haha -and lick my chin

Oh, I can do some tongue tricks too, but only the most boring ones :(
wish I could do the happy face like that girl

Oh damn it, I didn't notice that typo. I meant *now haha
Definitely want to learn! I taught myself to wiggle my ears and similarly, I could only raise my left eyebrow a little to begin with but I can do it all the way, now.

I can touch my chin and nose with my tongue,I can wiggle my nose and I can lift one eyebrow.amazing

I can only do number 10 but only the left side not my right lol I know weird :)

I guess i'm weird...i can raise my eyebrow, twitch my nose, wiggle my ears, touch my nose with my tongue, and the writing 6 things...ive also tickled myself upon occasion aswell o-o

i can raise one eye brow..

but i can no do the others....

gleeking on accident < yup

i can not do the spock sign...i can not go crossed eye on command....

i not very good ..

though when i was younger i could roll my arms down my back..but cant anymore

I can raise one eyebrow.

oh my god is that even possible! that my friend is a talent that i would pay to see! haha

I'm the opposite in that I can only raise my right eyebrow. I'm half tempted to learn how to raise my left eyebrow. I'm a bit surprised it's on the lift as I can do it naturally.

I can do most of those, I must be a right freak!

^ Haha I love that you do it without realising! It would be great if it were an automatic response to being happy - like a puppy wagging its tail! Oh, Mustard seed is happy today, watch her ears wiggle!

I can raise one eyebrow, and with my tongue I can do the wave and flip it over.

It's not that impressive I'm afraid, at the moment it just sort of twitches.
But I will learn!!

I can raise one eyebrow, wiggle my ears and do no. 1 :D

I cant do any of these xD
But my sister has actually managed to teach her self to raise one eye brow lol.